Reject Sniper: My Wife Banged a Bullrider novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Bail

Wyatt is arrested while Cassidy leads Poppy away, and the bull's owner bails him out with a video that shows who opened the gate.

The deputy came across the dirt with his hand on his belt.

He was the sheriff's nephew, and everyone in the arena knew it.

"Put the girl down, Rawlins," he said. "Slowly."

"She's seven," I said. "She just watched a bull die at her feet."

"Put her down."

Poppy tightened her arms around my neck.

"Daddy, don't let them," she said into my collar.

I could have walked out with her.

There were eight thousand witnesses, one deputy and a dead bull, and I knew every exit in that building by heart.

But every road out ended with Poppy in a truck and police behind it.

So I kissed the top of her head.

"I'm coming right back," I told her. "I promise. Go with Mama."

Cassidy was already there with her arms out.

She took our daughter out of my hands without a word to me.

Poppy twisted around in her arms and reached for me.

"Daddy!" she cried. "Daddy, no!"

Cassidy carried her out of the arena toward Brody's black truck, and she did not look back once.

The deputy put the cuffs on me.

He put them on tight.

Over the loudspeaker the announcer said, "Folks, we apologize for the disturbance. Let's all keep our heads. The rodeo goes on, and the finals are still Saturday."

The crowd cheered.

I sat in the back of a patrol car with blood from somebody else's nose on my sleeve.

The big rider with the bad wrist went by on a stretcher, pointing at me.

Brody walked beside the stretcher with his hand on the man's shoulder, and people applauded him.

The county jail had three cells.

I got the one by the toilet.

At midnight a man in the next cell asked me what I was in for.

"A bull," I said.

He thought about that and did not ask again.

I sat on the metal bench with my back against the wall.

I had slept in worse.

I did not think about the war.

I thought about Cassidy's hand on Brody's thigh and the pen on our kitchen table.

I thought about the sign on that gate, and the whistle.

At two in the morning the door buzzed.

"Rawlins," the deputy said. "Somebody paid your bond."

I stood.

"Who?"

"Don't know why she bothered," he muttered.

They gave me back my wallet and my phone.

Poppy's school picture was still my lock screen, with a missing tooth and a grin.

There were a dozen missed calls from Cassidy's number and no messages.

I put the phone away without opening them.

She was waiting by the front desk in the same canvas jacket, with dried dirt on both knees and her braid half undone.

Her eyes were swollen, and she had clearly finished crying hours ago.

It was the woman from the arena.

She laid five thousand dollars in cash onto the desk and did not look at me once.

When the deputy had taken it and gone to find a form, she turned.

"My name is Carys Dunning," she said. "Ironside was mine."

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."

"You're not."

She said it flatly, without any heat.

"He was nine years old," she said. "My husband raised him from a calf. He never charged a person in his life."

"He charged my daughter."

"I know he did."

She walked outside, and I followed her.

The parking lot was empty, and the night was cold and clear.

She stopped at an old red truck and leaned on the hood.

"Here is what I know about you," she said. "You killed my bull with one shot from forty yards, in a crowd, with a child behind him."

"Thirty."

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to the shot," I said.

She stared at me.

"I pulled the whole night apart in my head," she said. "I wanted to hate you clean, and I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because I've been around bulls my whole life, Mr. Rawlins. I know when one has been set on somebody."

She did not soften when she said it.

"And I want to know who set mine."

Then she pulled out a phone.

"One of my hands was behind the chutes," she said. "He films everything. He's twenty and thinks he's going to be famous."

She held the phone out.

The screen was cracked.

It showed the back of the bull pens in jerky light.

I saw Brody's face.

I saw him whistle.

I saw the man at the pen swing the gate wide.

On the screen, Poppy was a small pink dot at the fence, waving at me.

I made myself keep watching.

The bull came out.

I heard the shot.

And under all of it, close to the phone, a woman spoke in a low voice.

I knew that voice better than my own.

"Open it now," Cassidy said. "He'll be the one who panics."

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