Grim took that in.
Clay was close, but not there. Not yet.
Which meant the 5-minute window was actually a little more flexible than he'd calculated because Clay was working from partial information. He knew Laughlin.
He might have known Linda's address, but he didn't know. Clay didn't know Carol, the woman two streets over who had been friends with Linda since 1978 and had put three frightened people in her back bedroom without asking a single question.
The unknowns were buying time, but not enough. Grim said, "I'm going to walk out to the main street."
Marco stared at him.
"Grim, he's looking for Sarah." "I know," Grim said.
"He's driving around trying to find which house."
If he sees me on the street, he stops looking at houses. He looked at both of them.
He knows who I am. He knows I'm connected to this.
If I'm standing on a street corner in Laughlin, his entire attention comes to me. "And then what?"
Danny said. "Then I keep his attention for five minutes until the federal people get here.
The silence that followed was the kind that happens when nobody can find the flaw in a plan they really want to find a flaw in.
"You're using yourself as bait," Danny said finally. "I'm redirecting his focus," Grim said.
There's a difference. "The difference being, I'm choosing it," Grim said and walked out to the main street.
He stood on the sidewalk in the morning light with his hands in his jacket pockets and he waited. He didn't have to wait long.
Clay Mercer's truck came around the corner 40 seconds later moving slowly and Grim watched it come and he did not move and he did not look away. The truck stopped.
Clay got out. Grim had never seen Clay Mercer in person before last night.
And last night he had only seen him through a window. Now he saw him clearly.
A big man, early 50s, the kind of large that comes from spending 20 years doing whatever he wanted and having nobody stop him. He had two men behind him, not the eight from the parking lot, two, which meant the parking lot crowd had already started thinning, either from the account freeze or from word getting out about the federal movement or both.
The network was already dissolving. Clay looked at Grim across the width of the street and then he smiled.
It was the smile of a man who has always believed at a fundamental level that he cannot be stopped. That smile had probably worked for a long time.
It had probably opened doors and closed mouths and convinced a lot of people to look away. "You're a long way from your diner," Clay said.
"So are you," Grim said. Clay took a few steps closer.
His two men moved with him. "You know what you've done," Clay said.