Chapter 13
Ezra
It's been two days since Delgado. Two days of reinforced walls and deliberate distance and the grinding misery of watching a man you want become a man you can't trust. My lion is furious about the wall — not growling, not anymore.
Something worse. Silent. The cold, offended silence of an animal that has been overruled and is not forgiving me for it.
Jason notices. Jason always notices.
"You look terrible," he says, mid-morning, before Nicholas arrives.
"Thanks."
"When did you sleep last night?"
"Two. Maybe."
"And the night before?"
"Same."
Jason sets a plate in front of me. Eggs, toast, the kind of meal he makes when he's worried about someone and expressing it through protein. "Eat. And stop whatever you're doing to yourself."
"I'm being cautious."
"You're being miserable. There's a difference." He leans on the counter. "Silas told me about the exit sweeps starting again. Knox told me Delgado came by. I can add."
"Then you know why I'm being cautious."
"I know why you think you're being cautious. I also know that you've been researching Coldwell for a week and the guy in the booth doesn't know about it, and that feels like a kind of dishonesty you're not comfortable with."
I look at Jason. He's right — that's the part that's eating me.
Not just the suspicion, not just the wall.
The hypocrisy. I'm researching Coldwell in secret while judging Nicholas for potentially doing something I'm afraid of.
I'm building a case while he's building a case and neither of us knows the other one is looking.
"What am I supposed to do?" I ask. "Show him my spreadsheet? 'Hey, I've been investigating your employer since you walked in, want to compare notes?'"
"I mean, yeah. That's actually exactly what I'd do."
"You'd trust a corporate agent with evidence that his company is targeting shifters."
"I'd trust the guy who told his date to leave for being a bigot. I'd trust the guy who tips thirty percent and writes notes about Robin's lemon bars. I'd trust the guy whose cat chose him." Jason picks up the empty plate. "But that's me. I trust people. It's my tragic flaw."
"It's not a flaw."
"Tell that to my exes." He goes back to the kitchen. Conversation over.
* * *
Nicholas arrives at eleven-forty-five. Earlier again. The trendline continues its relentless march toward dawn.
He goes straight to his booth. No hesitation at the door today, no pause at the bar.
Laptop out, open, working within thirty seconds.
Whatever he found yesterday, he's still chasing it.
His typing has the staccato urgency of a man cross-referencing data — fast bursts, then pauses, then fast bursts again.
Search, read, input. Search, read, input.
I watch from the bar. I've given up pretending I'm not watching — Silas already caught me, Jason already called me on it, and my lion is maintaining its cold silence in a way that makes pretending pointless.
I watch Nicholas work and I try to read the shape of what he's doing from the rhythm of his keystrokes.
He's in a database. I can tell by the pattern — the typing is search queries, not document composition.
He's pulling records, comparing, building something.
A spreadsheet, probably. Nicholas builds spreadsheets the way other people build arguments — brick by brick, data point by data point, the architecture of evidence.
At one o'clock, he stops typing. Sits back. Stares at his screen.
The expression on his face is one I recognize, because I've worn it. The look of someone who found the pattern and wishes they hadn't. The moment when the data stops being abstract and becomes personal.
He closes his eyes. Opens them. Picks up his phone. Steps outside.
I watch him through the window. He's in the parking lot, phone to his ear, pacing.
Short, tight steps — the movement of a man whose body needs to process something his brain is struggling with.
The call is brief — three minutes, maybe four.
He comes back inside looking like he swallowed something sharp.
I should leave him alone. The wall is there for a reason. The distance is there for a reason. Delgado's voice is in my head: They send the nice ones first.
But Jason's voice is in my head too: I'd trust the guy whose cat chose him.
And my lion, silent for two days, stirs.
"You okay?" I ask.
Nicholas looks up from his booth. Startled — not by the question, but by me asking it. Three days of distance and I just broke it with two words, and we both know what that means.
"Fine," he says. The automatic response. The word people use when they're not fine and don't have the energy to construct a better lie.
"You don't look fine."
"I'm processing something."
"Work something?"
He hesitates. I can see the calculation — how much to share, how much to hold back, the professional instinct to keep proprietary information locked down.
But there's something else in his expression too.
The weariness of a man who's been carrying something alone and is reaching the limit of what he can hold.
"I found something in my company's files that doesn't make sense," he says. Carefully. Each word measured. "A pattern I wasn't looking for."
My heart rate spikes. I control it — years of practice, the discipline of a man who lives with shifters and knows that any physiological change is public information. But the spike happens before I can stop it, and Silas, in his corner, turns a page.
"What kind of pattern?" I ask. My voice is steady. My hands are steady. Everything is steady except the animal in my chest that just woke up and is paying very close attention.
Nicholas looks at me. Really looks — not the professional assessment, not the booth-to-bar glance.
He looks at me the way he looked at the bar top on day five, when he ran his hand along the wood and said whoever built this knew what they were doing.
Like he's trying to see the thing underneath the surface.
"I don't know yet," he says. "I need more data."
"That's very you."
"Is that a complaint?"
"It's an observation." I hold his gaze. The wall is cracking again — not because I'm letting it, but because the wall was never strong enough to hold against this.
Against him, in his booth, looking at me like I might be someone he can trust with whatever he found.
"If you need help with data, I'm — I do spreadsheets. "
It's the wrong thing to say. Or the right thing. Or both. Because Nicholas's expression shifts — surprise, then warmth, then the careful recalculation of a man adding a new variable to an equation he thought he'd solved.
"I know you do spreadsheets," he says. "I've been watching you do spreadsheets for over a week."
"You've been watching me."
"You've been watching me too. We've established this."
The air between us changes. The charge, the pull, the gravitational distortion that I've been fighting for days and can't fight anymore because fighting it is making me worse at everything — worse at sleeping, worse at thinking, worse at being the person this pride needs me to be.
"Maybe," I say. "After you have your data. If you want to talk about what you found. I might be able to help."
It's an offer. Not a confession — I'm not showing him my spreadsheet, not yet. But a door, cracked open, the width of a possibility. If Nicholas walks through it, I'll know something. If he doesn't, I'll know something else.
"Maybe," he says. And then, so quietly I almost miss it: "Thank you."
He goes back to his laptop. I go back to mine.
The wall is cracked. Not open. Not demolished. But cracked in a place that I can see through, and on the other side is a man who found something in the data that changed his face.
* * *
The afternoon has a different texture. Not warm — not yet. But less cold. The quality of light in a room where two people have acknowledged something without naming it.
Nicholas works. I work. The parallel hum resumes, but it's different now — not two people ignoring each other, but two people aware of each other in a way that has weight and intention. Every keystroke is a communication. Every silence is a conversation.
At three-fifteen, Nicholas gets up from his booth and walks to the bar. Not for a drink — he has a full glass he hasn't touched. He stands at the counter and looks at me and I see the calculation happen in real time — the weighing, the risk assessment, the decision tree branching.
"Can I ask you something?" he says.
"Sure."
"The properties around here. The businesses on this road, in this area. Do you know who owns them?"
My hands go still on the keyboard.
He's asking about the neighbors. The other properties, the other businesses. He's building the same map I'm building — the one that connects rural, isolated, commercially unviable properties to each other and to Coldwell's off-profile acquisitions.
He's pulling the same thread.
"Some of them," I say. Carefully. Not lying, not volunteering. Walking the line between the wall and the door. "Why?"
"I'm being thorough." The ghost of a smile. Self-aware. He knows that's not a real answer, and he knows I know, and the knowing is its own kind of honesty.
I make a decision. Not a big one — or maybe it is. Hard to tell with decisions that feel like opening a door you can't close.
"You know Delgado?" I ask. Casual. Watching his face.
Nicholas doesn't flinch. Doesn't freeze. He just nods, the same way he nods at data — acknowledging, processing.
"The shooting range east of here," he says. "I visited his property before I came to yours."
Before. Not after. He went to Delgado's first and then came here.
The thorough, professional approach of an agent who does his homework.
I already knew this — Delgado told me. But Nicholas just confirmed it without flinching, without hedging, without the careful non-answer of a man who's hiding something.
"He came by," I say. "Warned us about you. About your company."
"Before or after I took up residence in that booth?"
I almost smile. Almost. "Both."
Nicholas nods. Not defensive, not alarmed. The nod of a man who expected this and is relieved it's on the table.
"His property is like yours," he says. "Neither makes sense."
"For your boss, you mean."
"For any commercial developer. A shooting range on forty acres in the middle of nowhere.
A bar and garage on a back road. These aren't acquisition targets.
They're not profitable, they're not scalable, they're not located near anything that would justify development.
" He's looking at me now with the full weight of that attention — the same focus he brings to the spreadsheets, directed at the question underneath the question. "So why is my company flagging them?"
I hold his gaze. He's asking me. Not rhetorically — actually asking, like he thinks I might have an answer he doesn't.
"That's the question," I say. And I don't give him more than that. Not yet. Not because I don't want to. Because I need to see what he does with the question on his own.
He holds my gaze for a beat longer than comfortable. Then he nods again — slower this time, like he's filing something away — and goes back to his booth.
Silas turns a page. Doesn't look at me. Doesn't need to.
"I know," I say quietly.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking it."
"I was thinking that he just told you the truth about Delgado's range without being asked." A page turn. "I was also thinking that trust has to start somewhere."
"What if I'm wrong?"
"Then you're wrong. But the alternative is being right and alone, which isn't better."
Silas and his books. Silas and his devastating, quiet observations that land like stones in still water. He's going to say something someday that destroys me, and I won't see it coming, and it'll probably be a quote from a novel I should have read.
* * *
Four-thirty. Nicholas packs up. The routine.
But today he pauses at the bar on his way out. Doesn't sit --- just stands there, laptop bag over his shoulder, and looks at me.
"When I understand the pattern," he says. Not if. When. "I'd like to take you up on your offer. The spreadsheet help."
"I'll be here."
"You're always here."
"That's the job."
"Is it?" He looks at me. Not the professional look --- the other one. The one that asks questions his mouth won't say. "I don't think this is just a job for you. I don't think any of this is just a job."
He leaves before I can answer. The door closes. His footsteps on the gravel, the rental car starting, the engine fading.
He's right. None of this is just a job. Not the bar, not the books, not the spreadsheet I've been building in secret. Not him.
I open my laptop. Pull up my Coldwell spreadsheet. The one with seven SEC filing acquisitions and Delgado's five confirmed properties.
I add a new column: NICHOLAS'S THREAD.
I don't fill it in yet. I don't know what he's found. But the column is there, waiting, the blank space where his data will go when he's ready to show me.
Trust has to start somewhere.
I close the laptop. Lock up the bar. Go upstairs.
My lion is no longer silent. It's purring — low, steady, the deep vibration that means patience. Not the urgent purr of desire. The quiet one. The one that says he's coming. Give him time. He's coming.
For the first time in three days, I sleep before midnight.