He stopped.
"You'll know." He went to the front door.
He put his hand on it.
Behind him, the diner was very quiet. Even the buzzing of the overhead light seemed to have lowered itself by a degree the way sounds do when everyone in a room is holding their breath at exactly the same moment.
Millie said from behind the counter. Grim, he turned.
She was standing straight, the shotgun in the crook of her arm, and her face had the look it had when she was saying something she'd already decided to say regardless of consequences. You come back inside, she said.
You hear me? Whatever happens out there, you come back inside.
He looked at her for a moment. Then he opened the door and walked out.
The cold hit him first, then the light, or the lack of it. The parking lot's single working lamp throwing a circle of yellow that didn't reach the trucks at the far end.
He could see them shapes and shadows and the occasional cold red of a cigarette. He counted the vehicles again himself.
Four trucks, one cruiser, and then as his eyes adjusted, the figure leaning against the cruiser with his arms crossed, a man in uniform, medium height, the posture of someone trying very hard to look casual and failing at it in the specific way guilty people fail. Grim walked toward him.
He walked at a normal pace, not slow. Slow would read as hesitation, and hesitation was a language men like these translated as weakness.
Not fast. Fast would read as aggression and aggression at this particular moment would collapse the window he was trying to open.
He walked at the pace of a man who has somewhere to be and has decided this is on the way. He stopped 6 feet from the deputy.
The deputy's name, which he knew from Jesse, was Gary Holt.
14 years on the force, two commendations, a wife named Linda, a son in middle school, a second mortgage on a house he probably couldn't actually afford.
"Deputy Holt," Grim said. The man's jaw tightened.
"You know my name." "I know a lot of things," Grim said.
He kept his hands visible loose at his sides.
"I know your badge number. I know the account number that Clay uses to make deposits to your account on the 14th of every month.
I know the routing number of the bank." He paused, letting each piece land.
"I know about the Bullhead City girl and the six others." The deputy said nothing, but his breathing had changed.
I also know, Grim continued, that 2 hours ago, I gave a USB drive containing all of that information to a federal contact in Phoenix, and that contact has been awake ever since going through what's on it. He tilted his head slightly.
So, here's where you are right now, deputy. You're standing in a parking lot next to a man who is about to be the center of a federal investigation that is going to take apart everything he built and everyone who helped him build it.
You're 14 years into a career you probably once cared about and you have a kid in middle school. Holt's hands had come off his arms.
They were at his sides now and one of them was trembling slightly. Not fear of Grim, fear of the thing Grim had just described, the weight of it, the velocity of it, the train that was already moving down the track and didn't care about the parking lot or the trucks or any of what Clay had arranged out here tonight.