He looked at Evelyn. There's something you should know, he said. About the federal agents who came into the parking lot earlier, the ones with the credentials. She tensed, barely visible, but there. My brother checked the badge numbers they flashed, Cole said.
He runs a background search service legal before you ask. The badge numbers they showed belong to real agents. He paused. Two real agents who are currently on assignment in Wyoming. Rain hit the window.
The diner kept going around them. Evelyn Carter sat very still and understood what this meant. That the men who had come into that parking lot with real looking badges had not just been bluffing. They had been using real identities, stolen credentials, which meant they had access to real federal systems, which meant Roy Carver, if he existed, Nathan's fear had been justified. Not some peripheral figure in this with enough reach inside the apparatus to pull names from personnel records and hand them to men in parking lots which meant Nathan's silence was not probably because he was hiding Cole Evelyn said and her voice was different now broken Evelyn Carter was not going to break in a diner in front of a stranger but thinner the voice of someone holding something very heavy by pure will I need you to tell me something okay he said Tell me the truth, she said.
Not the kind truth. Truth. He looked at her for a moment. Your grandson, he said, took an enormous risk putting this in motion. He knew the risk.
He was smart enough to know it. He paused. That means he also built something in some mechanism, some safety. People who are scared and smart don't set things in motion without a fail safe. He held her eyes.
I don't think Nathan is finished. I think he's waiting. I think whatever he's waiting for is connected to this drive reaching the right people. He paused one more time and I think he chose you because he knew you'd get it there. Evelyn looked at him for a long, long moment.
Then she reached into her coat pocket. She pulled out the small plastic sealed drive and set it on the table between them. "Then let's get it there," she said. The pot roast came out in about 8 minutes. Evelyn hadn't realized how hungry she was until the smell hit her something warm and deeply familiar.
The kind of smell that belongs to Sunday afternoons and people you love. And her hands started shaking again, but differently this time. Not from fear. From the particular weakness that comes when your body has been running on adrenaline for 6 days and something finally tells it that it's allowed to stop. She ate three bites before she said another word.
Cole let her. He poured his coffee, wrapped both hands around the mug, and waited. He was She was already learning. A man who understood the value of silence in a way that most people didn't. He didn't fill it with small talk.
He didn't check his phone. He didn't look around the diner like he was somewhere he'd rather not be. He just sat earned and waited and let her eat. Watched the door with the particular peripheral awareness of someone who has spent a long time in situations where watching the door was not optional. Dex came in about 4 minutes after they sat down.
He didn't join the table. He took a stool at the far end of the counter, ordered coffee, and opened a laminated menu he clearly had no intention of reading. Two other Hell's Angels filtered in separately after that, taking a booth near the window, talking quietly between themselves. If Evelyn hadn't been paying attention, she might have thought it was coincidence. She was paying attention.
Your friends, she said between bites. Not coming in to eat. No. Cole agreed. They're watching the parking lot and the road.
Cole said without any particular drama about it. The fact of it, stated plainly. Evelyn sat down her fort. Why are you doing this? Cole looked at her over the rim of his coffee mug.
And what this? She gestured slightly. All of this? You don't know me. You don't know I'm carrying or who's after me or whether I'm telling you the truth.
You stepped in front of those men without knowing any of it. And now your people are watching the exits. She folded her hands on the table. Her voice was steady, but the question underneath it wasn't. The question underneath it was the kind that matters, the kind you ask when you've been burned before.
And you need to understand the rules of the new situation before you go any further into it. He want an exchange. Cole set the mug down. She looked at him. I mean that he said not nothing complicated, just nothing.
He asked for help. Helping? People don't do that, Evelyn said quietly. Not in my experience. Not without wanting something back.
Some people do, Cole said. And there was something in the way he said it. Not defensive. Not trying to convince her just certain. The way you're certain about something you've tested against the world and found to be true.
Evelyn picked up her fork again. She ate two more bites. She thought about Nathan about the last time she'd seen him in person 3 weeks before the call that changed everything when he'd come to Sunday dinner and eaten two bowls of her soup and told her she was the best cook he'd ever known. And she'd told him he was biased and he'd said absolutely 100% and proud of it. She pressed her lips together hard.
"Tell me about your grandson," Cole said, quiet. She looked up. "Why? " "Because you've been carrying it alone for 6 days," he said. "And because you need to tell someone who's listening. " "There it was. " There was the thing she hadn't been able to names. The thing that had been sitting on top of everything else like a stone, not the fear, not the exhaustion, not even the weight of the drive in her coat, the aloneeness of it.
Six days of not being able to say his name out loud to another human being. Nathan, she said just the name first. Nathan James Carter, 31 years old. She paused. He was I don't know.
Her jaw tightened. He is 31 years old. Graduated from the University of Montana with an accounting degree. And then he went and got a second degree in financial forensics because he said regular accounting was too boring and forensic accounting was like being a detective except the weapon was math. A sound escaped her that was almost a laugh.
He always said that a detective with math as a weapon. Cole nodded said nothing. He worked for a private investigative firm for 4 years. Evelyn continued then he went independent. He told me he had a client.
He couldn't say who. He was very careful about that. Who had asked him to look into a company called Meridian Group. He said it was a real estate investment firm. Very large.
A lot of money moving through it. She wrapped her hands around her own coffee cup. He called me about 6 weeks ago and he sounded different. Scared. Exactly.
Focused like he'd found something so big he had to keep reminding himself to speak slowly. She looked at Cole. Some companies launder money. You know what that means? She gave a short flat nod.
I watch television. I know what it means. He said this wasn't just laundering money for one organization. He said Meridian Group was a hub like a wheel with a 100 spokes and on the end of every spoke was someone an official, a judge, a city council member, a law enforcement officer, someone who was being paid, someone who was supposed to be protecting people and instead was being bought. She stopped.