Not a truck door, the diner door. Danny stepped out and stood behind Grim, not saying anything, just present.
And then the trucker, the big man from the counter, who had been drinking coffee for 3 hours and had never once said he was staying for any reason other than more coffee, stepped out and stood on the other side. Three men in the light, the trucks idled.
Then one by one they turned around. Not fast, not dramatically, just the slow grinding turns of large vehicles in a small space, the backing and pulling forward, the eventual pointing toward the road.
And then they drove away, all four of them. Down Route 66 in the opposite direction from the deputy's cruiser, tail lights shrinking and then gone.
The three men stood in the parking lot and nobody said a word. Then the trucker, his name was Bill.
It turned out Bill Garrett from Flagstaff, 22 years of long haul driving, said, "Well, I'm going to need more coffee." Grim let out a breath that was not quite a laugh and not quite anything else, but was something real.
They went back inside.
Millie was standing exactly where she'd been. The shotgun was still in the crook of her arm.
She looked at Grim's face and she read something in it and her shoulders came down by about half an inch, which was the most visible relief she was going to display in front of a room full of people. "Well," she said.
"They left," Grim said. She closed her eyes for exactly one second, "Then sit down.
I'm going to make eggs. Everybody's getting eggs."
Frank helped Dolores up from behind the booth.
The college kids got off the floor. Bill resumed his stool at the counter and Jesse Tarant, who had been standing in the hallway near the restrooms with his back flat against the wall for the last 20 minutes, walked slowly back into the main room and sat down heavily in the nearest chair and put his face in both hands.
Grim sat at the counter. He looked at the second plate, which was still there at the corner booth, pushed to the edge of the table where he'd left it, untouched, as it always was, as it had been every Friday for more than 20 years.
Danny sat beside him. Millie began cracking eggs.
Danny said, "It's not over." It wasn't a question.
"No," Grim said.
"Clay's going to regroup. He's going to try to find where Sarah is.
He's going to look for Jesse. He's going to try to find out what's on the drive and how much damage it does."
He was quiet for a moment, but the feds are moving, and Clay doesn't know how much is on that drive.
He knows Jesse had access to things, but he doesn't know what Jesse actually took. He looked down at the counter.
That uncertainty is going to eat at him. And men who are being eaten by uncertainty make mistakes.
And while he's making mistakes, Danny said, while he's making mistakes, Grim said, "The people who know what they're doing take him apart piece by piece." Danny nodded slowly.
He turned his coffee cup on the counter, mirroring without realizing it the same habit Grim had.
And Sarah, the kids, they're in Laughlin. They're safe tonight.
He paused. Tomorrow is a different problem.