"You did." He went to the pay phone.
The call lasted 4 minutes.
Grim spoke in a low, even voice, and the person on the other end apparently didn't ask many questions, which was either a function of trust or of the specific content of what was on that USB drive being described in just enough detail to make questions unnecessary. When he hung up, his expression was the same as always, flat, controlled, unreadable.
But there was something different in the way he stood. Something that hadn't been there before.
It took Millie watching from across the room a moment to identify it. He looked lighter.
Not happy, not relieved, just lighter. The way a person looks when they've been carrying something for a long time and they've just handed it to someone strong enough to take it.
She brought him coffee without being asked. He took it without a word.
They stood together at the counter for a moment, the two of them, in the particular comfortable silence of people who have known each other long enough not to need to fill every space. Then Millie said, "Are they going to be okay, Sarah and the kids?"
"If the feds move fast," Grim said.
"Which they will if they look at what's on that drive." Millie studied his profile, then spoke to him.
"And if Clay moves first?" Grim drank his coffee.
"Then I move first." Millie studied his profile, then spoke to him.
You know, this isn't going to be simple, even with federal involvement.
Men like Clay have layers. I know.
And you're in the middle of it now. You personally, I know that, too.
She was quiet for a moment. Then, because she had earned the right to ask, and they both knew it.
Why, Grim, you could have fed those kids and called social services and been home by 9:00. Why all of this?
He turned his coffee cup slowly on the counter. Once, twice, a habit she recognized.
He did it when he was deciding how honest to be. Ethan said something to me, he said finally.
Before I left tonight, he said his mother told them to keep running. He stopped.
I had a kid once who ran and I never went after him. I told myself it was because he needed to go because chasing him would have made it worse because he stopped again, set down the cup.
I had a lot of reasons. They all sounded right at the time.
Millie didn't say anything. Tonight, I had the chance to be someone who goes," Grim said, instead of someone who stays behind with a second plate and a reason."
The diner was very quiet.
Outside, the rain had stopped entirely, and the parking lot was wet and empty, and still under the one buzzing light, and somewhere out on Route 93, a roadblock was going up for a car that had already passed. And somewhere in a house in Laughlin, a woman named Linda was putting clean sheets on a spare bed.
And somewhere in a federal building in Phoenix, a man was looking at a phone number on a piece of paper and picking up his own phone. And in Millie's diner at the counter, the most feared man in the Arizona Hell's Angels sat with both hands wrapped around a coffee cup.