He's a financial investigator who found something big enough to scare himself and he gave the only copy to his 72-year-old grandmother and told her to drive across Montana with it. He paused. Track. Evelyn was still for a moment. Then she set her fork down carefully.
She said it doesn't. So there's another copy. She looked at him steadily. I don't know. She said he didn't tell me.
And before you ask, I genuinely don't know. Which means my confusion on the subject. If anyone asks me will be entirely authentic earns a beat. I think and this is only what I think is that the drive I'm carrying is the original and that Nathan is smart enough and careful enough to have made it look like the only copy so that whoever is chasing it is chasing me, not anyone else. The air between them shifted.
Cole sat back. He sent them after you on purpose, he said. After me, Evelyn said quietly. He sent them after the drive. It just I happened to be carrying it.
She looked down at her lap where the plastic bag drive sat in her coat pocket. I think he needed time. Time to get to Patricia Dolan. Time to make sure the information reached the right people through a channel that couldn't be intercepted. Time that somebody had to buy him.
She paused. He chose me because they would never expect him to choose me. Cole stared at her. He used me. She said earners without bitterness in it.
Or rather with a bitterness so long processed it had become something else, something clear and unscentimental. He used me because I was the best option he had. I am the person they would spend the most time underestimating. Cole was quiet for several seconds. Your grandson, he said finally.
I know she's smart, he said. I know that, too. A pause. I'm still furious with him. And for the first time since she'd sat down, something in Evelyn's face shifted a cracked, not quite a smile, not quite tears, something living and complicated that was both of those things at the same time.
And Cole recognized it as the expression of someone who loves someone too much to stop loving them, even when they have earned every bit of the anger being directed at them. He gave her a moment with it. Cole, Dex's voice from the entrance of the diner. Loud, not alarmed, just his name, delivered with a particular weight that meant we have a situation. Cole looked up.
Dex was standing just inside the door. His face was casual, the professional casual of a man who had long ago learned that panic was a liability, but his eyes were doing something different. He gave the smallest tilt of his head toward the parking lot. Cole looked at Evelyn. Give me 30 seconds.
He was up and at the door before she could answer. Outside standing close enough to the building that they weren't visible from the road. Dex spoke quietly and fast. Sedan came back. Different parking lot hardware store two blocks down.
Tommy spotted it when he rode the block. He paused. A pickup dark blue Montana plates, but the numbers were covered with mud. Tommy checked the angle. Too deliberate to be accidental.
To cross the street facing this direction. How long? Cole asked. Sedan's been there at least 20 minutes. Pickup showed up about 10 minutes ago, so they pulled back to regroup, Cole said, and called for backup.
Deck said this over quickly. They hadn't left. They'd reorganized, which meant they'd assessed the situation. 8 Hell's Angels, public location, too much visibility, and decided the direct approach was no longer viable, which meant they were waiting for something. Either a better moment or more people or I'm going to wait us out.
Cole said, "That's what I think. " Dex said, "We leave, they follow. She leaves alone. They grab her before she hits the county line. How many in the pickup? " Tommy counted two. Sedan probably two.
A pause. Four plus whoever they can call. Cole looked at the parking lot. He thought about Evelyn sitting at the table inside with her hands around her coffee and her bad hip and her six days of running and the small plastic bag drive in her coat pocket and the 72 years of life she'd built that were now entirely secondary to the question of what happened to that drive. He thought about Nathan Carter, 29 years old, brilliantly terrified, who had put his grandmother in the middle of this because she was the best option he had and who had gone silent 8 days ago and who Evelyn had not allowed herself to believe out loud was anything other than in hiding.
Cole could see in her face every time his name came up that the fear living beneath the fury was not fear about the drive or the men in suits or the next 100 miles of Montana Highway. Who's closest to Helena right now? Cole asked. Dex blinked. Question he'd expected.
What of our people? Who's closest to Helena? Dex thought for a second. Probably two hours out, maybe less. He was heading up that way for the weekend.
Can you reach him? Yeah. Don't call, Cole said. Text only. Clean phone.
He paused. And I need you to find something for me. She looked at him. Patricia Dolan, Cole said. Federal financial crimes, field office, Helena.
I need to know if she's real, and I need to know if she's reachable. The look on Dex's face went through several phases. Surprise assessment and then the particular expressions of a man who has known another man for almost 30 years and has learned not to bother with the questions that are going to get answered in the doing. Give me 15 minutes, Deck said. Cole went back inside.
Evelyn had not moved. She had both hands around the coffee mug and she was looking at the table with the focused expression of someone thinking hard. When Cole sat back down, she looked up at him and did not ask what had happened outside because she could read the answer in the way he sat. The particular way a man sits when the situation has changed and he is already three moves into figuring out what to do about it. Still out there, she said.
Yes. How many? Four that we know of. She absorbed this. They're waiting.
Yes. For what? Either for us to leave or for more of their own people to arrive. Cole said probably both. They're buying time the same way you've been buying time.
Evelyn was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "So, what do we do? " Cole looked at her and then he said something that he would later think was probably the most important decision he made that night. Not the step forward in the parking lot, which was instinct, and not the questions he'd asked the men in coats, which was experience. But this, he told her the truth about what he was thinking. Instead of telling her a version of the truth designed to make her feel better.
I don't know yet, he said. But I'm working on it, Evelyn looked at him for a moment. Then she said, "Good for honest to reassuring. " "I've noticed," Cole said. Something almost like warmth crossed her face. Brief and small and gone quickly.
But there she picked up her coffee again. Then while you're working on it, she said, "Let me tell you the rest. " "More? There's always more," she said. Nathan mentioned three names in connection with the Meridian Group. Not on the drive, he told me verbally.