Page 9

"Brenda talks to everyone," I say.

"She does." Engel doesn't smile. "She mentioned a steer wrestler who used to pick up summer work here. I have some questions about his insurance and equipment accounts that might help close a few older claims."

The sun sets on the mesa behind me and puts my face in shadow. She can't see me as clearly as she wants to. I keep that advantage and give her nothing to work with.

She bends and sets the card on the ground beside my boot without comment, a small deliberate placement that says she's leaving it whether I want it or not.

"Can't help you."

"I haven't asked you anything yet."

"You don't need to. I mend fence. I don't handle transport, I don't file claims, and I don't track competitors who used to work rodeo."

She lets the silence sit for a long count. An adjuster would fill it. She lets it run, and the length of the quiet is the second tell. Salespeople hate dead air. Investigators live in it.

The sun drops another degree behind the mesa, and the shadow line moves past my boots and across the gravel toward her. She doesn't step back. She stays planted in the narrowing light and waits for me to fill the space she's left open, and when I don't, she changes approach without changing her expression.

"The property records list Tom Eldridge as the owner," she says. "You're not Eldridge."

"I said that."

"Is Eldridge available for questions? A phone number would be fine."

"He comes out from town when he feels like it. I don't keep his schedule."

"Understood." She writes something on her clipboard, and the motion is smooth enough to be real. Whether the note is genuine or performance is a question I file alongside everything else about her that doesn't add up.

She shifts her weight onto her back foot, settling into the conversation instead of wrapping it up. A woman finishing her paperwork would be moving toward the truck by now. She's moving closer to me.

The distance between us has shrunk by half since she arrived, and I haven't given a step. She's been closing it in increments, and the discipline of the approach is better than anything I've seen from a claims rep.

"You said you mend fence," she says. "How long have you been working the Eldridge property?"

"Awhile."

"Before the most recent circuit season?"

That is not a claims question. That is a timeline question, and timeline questions come from people building a chronology. Her cover cares about dollar amounts and policy numbers. She's mapping when I disappeared.

"I fence for a living," I say. "I don't follow the circuit."

"I didn't say you did."

Her gaze tracks across my hands, my forearms, my shoulders. The measure is quick and professional, and I recognize it because I've been measured before. Corrections officers look at inmates the same way: sizing up what a body is capable of, filing the information where it will be available if the situation changes.

"Could I trouble you for a glass of water?" she says. "I've been on the road since Las Cruces and I'm ahead of my check-in."

The water request is a door. She's angling for a look at whatever I keep near the house.

The check-in mention is deliberate. She's telling me someone knows where she is, which is information an adjuster wouldn't think to volunteer and an agent wouldn't forget to establish.

Red is behind me in the pen, ears forward, watching her vehicle. He hasn't called out or stamped, so her vehicle is the only unfamiliar presence he's detected. If she has backup close, Red hasn't found it. That leaves plenty of country beyond the mesa.

I pull a jug from the truck bed and set it on the tailgate between us. She takes it, drinks, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

The gesture is practiced enough to pass as natural. Everything about Engel is practiced enough, until you hold it to the light and watch the seams pull apart.

The jug goes back on the tailgate, and her hand moves to the clipboard's front pocket. A photograph comes out, printed on matte stock. Engel lays it on the metal beside the water jug and takes her hand away.