Chapter 7 - Easy Money Was Bait
Trent returned the next morning.
He walked into the sheriff’s office voluntarily.
No bruises.
No kidnapping.
No explanation.
Until he saw me.
Then the arrogance disappeared.
“I didn’t know.”
“Know what?”
“That they wanted you.”
Keene closed the interview-room door.
Trent admitted a sports marketing company had contacted him months earlier.
They offered sponsorship money if he livestreamed every tavern fight.
Nothing suspicious.
At first.
Then they began offering bonuses whenever certain people competed.
My name appeared Thursday.
One day before my alternator failed.
Clayton Hale.
$10,000 if he enters the ring.
Trent stared at the table.
“I thought you were some local farmer they wanted for content.”
“Who contacted you?”
“Guy named Darren.”
Keene showed him photographs.
Trent identified a former Cole Dynamics employee.
Now it was clear.
My combine failed.
A $500 prize appeared irresistible.
Trent humiliated me.
The livestream exposed my military instincts.
The coin exposed my identity.
Too many coincidences.
“Someone sabotaged the alternator,” I said.
Keene nodded.
The failed component had been cut internally.
Someone had manufactured my desperation.
That realization made me angrier than the fight.
They knew my mortgage.
My bank balance.
My crop schedule.
They had studied the life I built to escape them.
Trent looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
I said nothing.
He expected absolution.
He wasn’t getting it.
“You still chose to humiliate strangers for entertainment.”
His face tightened.
“That part belongs to you.”
He lowered his eyes.
Good.
Then Walter Briggs entered the station.
Keene frowned.
“He asked for you.”
Walter carried an old military photograph.
Not Navy.
Army intelligence.
Rusty appeared in it.
So did Walter.
“You knew each other?”
Walter nodded.
“We knew Voss too.”
I almost laughed.
“Does anybody in this town actually own cattle?”
Walter ignored that.
“Rusty wasn’t Voss’s only backup.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Voss ordered us not to.”
“Voss seems to have ordered half Colorado to lie to me.”
Walter placed an envelope down.
“Open it.”
Inside was a key.
And coordinates.
“What is this?”
“Something Voss left for you if the coin ever became public.”
Keene immediately objected.
“No.”
I looked at her.
“We verify the location first.”
Walter shook his head.
“Voss specifically said Clayton comes alone.”
“That’s exactly why he isn’t.”
Then my phone vibrated.
Unknown message.
A photograph.
Voss.
Current.
Holding today’s newspaper.
Below it:
You finally found the combine.
Now decide whether you want the truth about Black Cedar—or the truth about why your wife really left you.
I stopped breathing.
Keene read it over my shoulder.
“Clayton?”
My former wife had left four years earlier.
May you like
I had believed my silence destroyed our marriage.
Apparently someone wanted me to question even that.
