Tom set down his fork. He wiped his mouth with his napkin, slowly, and folded it, and put it beside his plate. Then he looked up at Curtis, and he let his face go flat and still, the face he had not used since he was a staff sergeant in a motor pool in Baghdad, the face that had once made a nineteen-year-old private from Alabama put down a wrench and stand at attention without being told.
"I changed my mind," he said.
Curtis's smile went away.
For a moment, nobody moved. Darrell set his Coke down on the counter, very carefully. Curtis took a step toward the booth. His eyes went to the mug, and Tom saw him make the decision in the same instant Tom made his own, and they both reached for it.
Tom was faster. He had been expecting it. His hand closed around the mug a half second before Curtis's did, and he pulled it toward himself across the table, slopping cold coffee over the steak and the gravy and his own fingers, and held on.
"I think I'll keep this," Tom said quietly.
Curtis's hand was still out, open, in midair. His face had gone a dull red. Behind him, Darrell had stood up off his stool.
And in the long mirror behind the counter, beyond Darrell's shoulder, through the dirty glass of the front windows, Tom saw what none of the rest of them had seen yet: a white SUV with a light bar on the roof and EUREKA COUNTY SHERIFF lettered in green down its side turning off Highway 50 into the gravel lot, and close behind it, a black-and-silver Nevada Highway Patrol cruiser, its lights already turning, red and blue, red and blue, against the hard white desert afternoon.
Darrell saw it a second later. He said a word Tom had not heard since the motor pool, and turned for the door, and stopped, because the trooper was already out of the cruiser and standing beside the gray pickup with one hand on his belt, and the deputy was coming up the steps.
Curtis looked at the door. Then he looked at the end of the counter, where Wren was standing absolutely still with a fistful of forks in each hand. And something passed across his face, something ugly and knowing, and he took one step toward her.
Tom was out of the booth before he had decided to move. He did not touch Curtis. He did not need to. He simply stepped into the narrow aisle between them, the coffee mug still in his hand, and stood there, a gray-bearded man with a bad knee and a gravy-stained shirt, and did not move.
"No," he said.
The bell over the door jingled, and the deputy came in.