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Through the open end of the barn, the team roping arena spreads out beyond the rail. A steer breaks from the chute. A loop settles over both horns, the heeler scoops up two feet, and the flag drops.

"That's Clint Wilson and Quinn Gallagher, folks, and that run keeps them in the average," the announcer says.

Clint rides back along the fence with the reins loose in one hand and the grin in place, calling something over his shoulder that makes a timer laugh. Quinn follows on the bay gelding, coiling his rope, eyes on the ground ahead of his horse. Neither of them glances toward the barn.

"He doesn't know," I say.

Slade sets the hoof down. "He knows Neil's in a van."

"Then he's either stupid or he's been told to sit still."

"He's not stupid."

Then somebody told him to sit still. Somebody up the line still thinks this morning belongs to them.

The hours of highway catch up with me in the aisle. When I say so, Slade peels himself off the stall door without a word and walks me out past the grandstand to the restroom block.

The restroom is a cinderblock building painted the green of hospital walls, with a concession stand across the service lane selling lemonade and snow cones. He stations himself at the corner of the concession stand, where he can see the door and both ends of the lane.

"You're going to guard a women's restroom," I say.

"I've stood in worse places."

"That's not a comforting sentence."

"It wasn't meant to be one."

Inside, a fluorescent tube flickers over a row of steel stalls. I wash my face at the sink. The woman in the mirror is gray under the eyes and wearing yesterday's shirt, and I wonder what my ASAC would say if he could see her. Then I stop wondering.

My building access is suspended, but the review left my credentials and my duty weapon with me. The ASAC hasn't changed that yet. He'll put his opinion in the review file soon enough. This morning I have more immediate problems.

When I step out, the service lane is full of steel.

A stock contractor's semi is grinding through at a walk, bucking horses shifting behind the slats in a wall of paint and hide. It fills the lane from the restroom block to the concession stand. For the few seconds it takes to pass, Slade is on the far side of it, and I'm on this one.

A man steps up close on my left, close enough that his shoulder presses mine. The pressure under my ribs arrives at the same instant, hard and round.

A second man moves in on my right. His hand goes to my right hip and lifts my weapon out of the holster before I can clamp my arm down on it. He pats my back pocket and takes my phone.

"Walk with us, Ms. Engel," the man on my left says. "Keep it nice and friendly."

He's younger than his voice, sunburned across the nose, a feed-store cap pulled low. The pistol is under his untucked shirt, and the muzzle stays against my side like a knuckle.

The man on my right is older and weathered to leather, with a hot shot in his fist, the fiberglass shaft yellow and the steel prongs bright. He tucks my Glock into the back of his waistband and my phone into his shirt pocket, and he doesn't bother to look at me while he does it.

The semi's trailer rumbles past the midpoint of the lane. Through the gaps in its slats, I catch the barest flicker of Slade's shirt.

He used that name on purpose. Neil ran my plates. They knew to take my gun before they said a word, so they know what I carry and who issued it. Engel is the name the circuit knows. Not one head turns for a woman walking off between the trailers with two men who call her by it.

Near the concession window, a little boy is working on a blue snow cone, the syrup running down his wrist. His mother is counting out change. A round fired through my side keeps going, and I know which way it points.

I walk.

The younger man steers me down the lane behind the semi's tail and into the trailer lot. I let my feet drag on the gravel like a woman too frightened to move well.

At the mouth of the first row, I duck my head and send my sunglasses sliding off into the dust. They land beside a trailer tire. Nobody looks down.

The rows are deep and close, goosenecks parked hitch to bumper, horses tied along their sides with hay bags swinging. Generators hum. A radio somewhere plays a steel guitar through a blown speaker.