You don't leave anything out. And if Clay's people come here," Grim looked at Millie, who was standing in the doorway behind Jesse with the same shotgun from the night before and the same expression she'd had when she said, "Don't."
"They won't," Grim said.
But if they do, he looked at Millie. You've been managing difficult men in this diner for 30 years.
"Thirty-one," she said. "Thirty-one," he agreed.
And then he rode. The distance from Kingman to Laughlin is roughly 60 miles under normal conditions.
Grim and Danny covered it in 44 minutes, which required a sustained commitment to speed that should not be examined too closely by anyone interested in posted limits. They didn't talk on the ride.
There was nothing to say that the riding itself wasn't already saying. They came into Laughlin from the south, away from the main road, the back approach that Marco had used to bring Sarah in the night before.
Grim's phone rang when they were eight minutes out. It was his federal contact.
"We have people 20 minutes behind you," the contact said.
Arizona field office, Nevada coordination. They're moving fast.
"Clay Mercer is 10 to 15 minutes from the location." Grim spoke with the phone pressed to his helmet.
"He has a head start." A pause.
"Do not engage him directly." "I hear you," Grim said.
"Hayes." The contact's voice was very specific.
"I mean it. You've done your part.
You got us what we needed. Let us do ours."
"Twenty minutes," Grim said and hung up. Danny pulled alongside him.
"Feds are 20 minutes out." "Yes."
"And Clay is 15 minutes out." "Yes."
A pause. "So there's a five-minute window," Danny said.
Grim confirmed it.
They didn't say anything else. They pulled up two streets from Linda's house and stopped.
Marco came around the corner on foot 30 seconds later, breathing hard, and said, "They're at Carol's, all three of them. Carol put them in the back bedroom, and she is," he paused, and something like admiration crossed his face.
"She is a remarkably calm woman." "Where's Clay?"
Grim said. "I saw his truck two blocks east about 4 minutes ago.
He's circling. He doesn't know exactly which house."