"Don't let those pages get cold," she told him. "My catfish doesn't hold a grudge if you pay attention to it first."
Marcus smiled. "I appreciate the warning. I know from experience that people don't always like having their arguments set aside."
"Neither does my cook," Norah said, and returned to the counter.
She liked him immediately, not because he wore an expensive suit, but because he had looked at her face while ordering and remembered to thank her after she refilled his tea. Most strangers treated the diner as a stop between more important places. This man seemed capable of being present wherever he was. Norah saw the woman at the counter glance toward him twice, take out her phone, and turn away to make a call.
At first Norah hoped the call had nothing to do with her customer. Then the sheriff's cruiser pulled into the gravel and the woman put her phone away so quickly that Norah felt something settle coldly in her stomach. She watched Harlon stride in without looking at the menu and saw Deputy Evan Mercer follow at a distance. Evan caught her eye for an instant, and she recognized an apology he was already too frightened to say.
Evan had joined the sheriff's department fourteen months earlier. He was twenty-eight, a former Army reservist who had returned home to help his mother after her surgery, and he had wanted a steady job close enough to visit her every evening. The academy had taught him how to document a stop, describe reasonable suspicion, and protect the civil rights of the people he encountered. Oak Haven had taught him how often the sheriff preferred those lessons to remain theoretical.
During his first month, Harlon had told him that law enforcement was mostly a matter of instinct. During his fourth, he had watched the sheriff stop a delivery driver because the man's rental van had plates from another state. By the time he had been on the job eight months, Evan had noticed that certain vehicles disappeared into the county impound lot and certain property receipts carried unusually vague descriptions. He told himself he was new, that he did not understand every procedure, and that he would ask questions once he had earned the right.
The right never seemed to arrive. Now he stood behind Harlon at a diner table and watched a man who had committed no visible offense ask the sheriff to explain the reason for the encounter. Evan could have intervened immediately. Instead he watched, and that failure would stay with him long after the rest of the day had ended.
"What's your business in this town?" Harlon demanded again.
"Lunch," Marcus answered. "I don't believe the purpose of my visit requires a more elaborate explanation."
"You came here in a Fulton County vehicle, two hundred miles from home, reading legal papers in a suit that probably costs more than my deputy makes in a month. You expect me to believe you're just hungry?"
"I expect you to believe that being hungry is not a suspicious activity," Marcus said. "People travel. Sometimes they eat. That is usually the extent of it."
A customer near the door put down his fork. The sheriff's face sharpened, and Marcus could see him making a choice that had little to do with evidence. The question was no longer who the stranger was or whether anything unlawful had happened. It was whether Wade Harlon could permit anyone in his town to answer him without submission.
"Identification," Harlon said, extending his hand.
Marcus did not reach for his wallet. "Am I free to leave?"
"You're not going anywhere until I know who you are."
"Then you're detaining me. On what grounds?"
"The authority of this badge. That's all you need to concern yourself with."