“You do that,” Clay said.
Then he hung up.
Millie set the receiver down and walked directly to Grim, who was near the back door.
Very quietly, she said, “He just called. He knows.”
Grim nodded once.
“How far out is she?”
“Marco left three minutes ago. The kids are with her.”
Grim thought for exactly two seconds.
“He’s going to the roadblock now. He’ll tell his deputy friend to expand the stop. Not just bikes. Everything.”
He looked at Millie.
“Call your sister. Tell her to expect them in roughly ninety minutes and not to answer the door for anyone who isn’t Marco or driving Frank’s car.”
Millie was already moving.
Grim pulled out the USB drive and looked at it for a moment.
Then he looked at Danny and Jesse, who were standing a few feet away.
Danny had his arms crossed.
Jesse was pale but steady, with the look of someone who had made an irreversible decision and made peace with it.
“The seven women,” Grim said to Jesse. “The files. Are there locations? Evidence of what happened to them?”
“Some. Not all. Two of them…”
Jesse stopped.
“There are coordinates in a spreadsheet. I didn’t… I couldn’t look at it too long.”
Grim’s jaw was very tight.
“Names?”
“Yes. All seven names.”
“Families?”
Jesse closed his eyes briefly.
“I don’t know. I didn’t dig that far.”
“Okay.”
Grim pocketed the drive.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to make a call. Not local, not state. Federal. I have a contact. I’m not going to explain what kind of contact or why he picks up when I call, but he picks up.”
He looked at both of them.
“When I make that call, everything changes. You understand what I mean by that? Once I make that call, Clay Mercer is not just my problem anymore. But he also might not be anyone’s problem for quite a while if the people he owns start folding.”
He looked directly at Jesse.
“And when that happens, you are going to need to be very visible and very accounted for, because a man like Clay cuts loose ends first.”
Jesse swallowed.
“I know.”
“Do you still want to do this?”
“I already did it,” Jesse said. “The minute I handed you that drive, I already did it.”
Grim looked at him for a moment with something that was not quite respect and not quite recognition but was in the neighborhood of both.
“Yeah,” he said. “You did.”
He went to the pay phone.
The call lasted four minutes.
Grim spoke in a low, even voice, and the person on the other end apparently did not ask many questions, which was either a function of trust or of the specific content of what was on that USB drive being described in just enough detail to make questions unnecessary.
When he hung up, his expression was the same as always.
Flat.
Controlled.
Unreadable.
But there was something different in the way he stood.
Something that had not been there before.
It took Millie, watching from across the room, a moment to identify it.
He looked lighter.
Not happy.
Not relieved.
Just lighter.
The way a person looks when they have been carrying something for a long time and have just handed it to someone strong enough to take it.
She brought him coffee without being asked.
He took it without a word.
They stood together at the counter for a moment, the two of them, in the particular comfortable silence of people who have known each other long enough not to need to fill every space.
Then Millie said, “Are they going to be okay? Sarah and the kids?”
“If the feds move fast,” Grim said, “which they will if they look at what’s on that drive.”
“And if Clay moves first?”
Grim drank his coffee.
“Then I move first.”
Millie studied his profile.
“You know, this isn’t going to be simple, even with federal involvement. Men like Clay have layers.”
“I know.”
“And you’re in the middle of it now. You personally.”
“I know that too.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Then, because she had earned the right to ask and they both knew it, she said, “Why, Grim? You could have fed those kids, called social services, and been home by nine. Why all of this?”
He turned his coffee cup slowly on the counter.
Once.
Twice.
A habit she recognized.
He did it when he was deciding how honest to be.
“Ethan said something to me,” he said finally. “Before I left tonight. He said his mother told them to keep running.”
He stopped.
“I had a kid once who ran, and I never went after him. I told myself it was because he needed to go. Because chasing him would have made it worse. Because…”
He stopped again and set down the cup.
“I had a lot of reasons. They all sounded right at the time.”
Millie did not say anything.
“Tonight, I had the chance to be someone who goes,” Grim said, “instead of someone who stays behind with a second plate and a reason.”
The diner was very quiet.
Outside, the rain had stopped entirely, and the parking lot was wet and empty under the one buzzing light.
Somewhere out on Route 93, a roadblock was going up for a car that had already passed.
Somewhere in a house in Laughlin, a woman named Sandra was putting clean sheets on a spare bed.
Somewhere in a federal building in Phoenix, a man was looking at a phone number on a piece of paper and picking up his own phone.