Chapter 5: The Man Garrett Sent
The thin biker's name was Cole.
That was what Rex called him — not a surname, just Cole — and the way he said it carried the particular weight of a man realizing he had trusted someone he had never actually known.
Cole was on his feet, phone in hand, eyes moving toward the door.
One of the suited men stepped through the diner entrance before Cole reached the third booth.
He didn't touch Cole.
He simply stood in the doorway, hands at his sides, and Cole stopped walking the way a man stops when he understands that the door is no longer a door.
"Sit back down, Cole," Rex said.
His voice was flat and controlled, but his hands were on the table.
Cole didn't move.
He looked at the suited man, then back at Rex, then at Mr.
Hale.
"I don't know what he told you," Cole said, addressing Mr.
Hale directly.
His voice was younger than his face.
"I don't know anything about Millhaven or Garrett's business.
He just said to send a location if the old man ever showed up on this route."
"And you've been doing that for how long?" Mr.
Hale said.
Cole's jaw tightened.
"Four months."
Rex turned and looked at Cole with the slow, deliberate attention of a man cataloguing a betrayal.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
"Sit down, Cole," Mr.
Hale said.
Not unkindly.
"You're not in the worst trouble in this room."
Cole sat down.
Mr.
Hale picked up his phone from the table and read the screen again.
Then he set it face-down and looked at the window.
The suited man nearest the SUVs had moved to the driver's side of the lead vehicle.
The engine was running.
It hadn't been running before.
"He's already moving," Mr.
Hale said, more to himself than to Rex.
"Garrett?" Rex said.
"He'll want to be somewhere else before whatever he thinks is about to happen actually happens." Mr.
Hale looked at Rex.
"Does he know what you told me?"
"Cole only sent a location.
That's all the message was."
"Then Garrett knows I'm here.
He doesn't know what you've given me." Mr.
Hale was quiet for a moment.
"That's a narrow window."
He stood up from Booth Seven.
It was the first time he had risen from that seat in the entire encounter, and the room felt it.
He was taller than he appeared sitting down — not imposing the way Rex was imposing, not built for physical force, but carrying himself with the particular straightness of a man who has never once in his life needed to make himself look larger than he was.
He picked up his cane from the table where Rex had placed it.
He didn't lean on it heavily.
He held it the way a man holds something he has carried for a long time.
"Rex," he said.
"You're going to give my associate outside every phone number, every meeting point, and every physical description you have for Garrett.
Everything.
Not the edited version.
Everything."
Rex looked at him.
"And then what happens to me?"
"That depends entirely on whether everything you give us is accurate." Mr.
Hale buttoned his jacket with one hand.
"You came into this diner this afternoon looking for something easy.
You found something complicated instead.
That's not my problem.
But if you cooperate fully, your name stays out of what comes next."
"You can guarantee that?"
Mr.
Hale looked at him steadily.
"I don't make guarantees, Rex.
I make decisions.
And the decision I'm offering you right now is the better of the two available."
Rex was quiet for a moment.
Then he nodded once.
"Cole," Mr.
Hale said, turning slightly.
"The phone you used.
Give it to the man by the door."
Cole looked at Rex.
Rex nodded again.
Cole held the phone out and the suited man took it without a word.
Mr.
Hale moved toward the exit.
He stopped once, beside the counter, where the waitress had been standing motionless for the better part of an hour.
She was somewhere in her fifties, grey-streaked hair pulled back, a name tag that read DONNA in faded plastic letters.
He reached into his jacket and placed several folded bills on the counter beside the coffee pot.
"I'm sorry for the disruption, Donna," he said.
She looked at the bills.
She looked at him.
She didn't say anything.
He walked out into the grey afternoon.
The lead SUV's rear door was already open.
He got in without breaking stride.
The door closed.
The three vehicles pulled out of the lot in the same synchronized order they had arrived, and within thirty seconds the only evidence they had been there at all was the faint smell of hot rubber on the asphalt and a set of parallel tyre marks in the gravel.
Inside the diner, Rex sat very still in the booth.
Danny Pruitt said, quietly, "Rex.
Who was that?"
Rex looked at the table.
At the folded napkin Mr.
Hale had left behind, perfectly creased, sitting beside the cold coffee cup.
"I don't know," Rex said.
"But Garrett does."
May you like
He picked up his own phone and stared at the screen for a long moment.
Then he put it face-down on the table and didn't touch it again.
