"I need you and Dolores on the floor behind the far booth where the windows don't reach. I need the students to stay with you. That's the best help anyone in this room can give me." Frank considered the answer, then nodded. He took his wife's hand and guided her away from the window.
Heather and Ben had already moved behind the jukebox, where their college backpacks lay forgotten beside the wall. Danielle crouched near the kitchen doorway with the cordless phone in her hand. Bill Garrett remained at the counter until Grim pointed toward the serving pass.
"I don't have a reason to fight those men," Bill said, almost apologetically. "You don't need one," Grim replied. "You have a reason to go home tomorrow. Use that."
Jesse pressed his back against the wall near the restrooms. His face had the stunned quality of a man discovering that the decision to do the right thing did not immediately make the world safe. "They'll come inside," he whispered. "Clay won't let this go."
Grim looked at the trucks again. "Maybe," he said. "But he hasn't come this far to guess what I have. He's waiting for someone to make the first move."
"The deputy," Jesse said. He took two uncertain steps toward the counter. "Clay needs the deputy. He always puts someone official near whatever he's doing. That way if anything turns into a report, he gets to decide how the report starts."
Danny kept watching the glass. "What happens if Holt walks away?" he asked. Jesse was quiet for a moment. "Clay loses the part that makes it look legitimate. He doesn't like situations that can't be made to look legitimate."
Grim considered that. Deputy Gary Holt had been a familiar sight around Kingman for years, a broad-shouldered man with a careful mustache and the eager posture of someone who understood that the uniform brought respect he could not always earn without it. He had served fourteen years, been commended twice, and lived with a wife and school-aged son in a house whose new truck and expensive additions seemed out of proportion to an ordinary deputy's pay. None of those facts was proof of corruption. But Jesse claimed to have bank records that could give the pattern a meaning.
"I'll talk to him," Grim said. Danny turned away from the window. "You walk outside alone, those trucks can surround you before you cross half the lot."
"I'm not going out to teach anybody a lesson," Grim answered. "I'm going to offer that deputy a chance to recognize where he is." Danny shook his head. "I don't like it."
"Neither do I." Grim looked back at the people on the floor. "But if Clay comes through that door with eight men, everybody in here is part of whatever follows. I can take one conversation into the parking lot before I let that happen."
He paused. "If the deputy doesn't listen, we retreat and let the outside authorities handle it. No one inside moves toward the trucks. That's not negotiable."
Danny met his gaze for several seconds. They had ridden through enough difficult situations together to know the difference between Grim asking permission and Grim explaining a decision already made. "I'll stay by the door," Danny said at last.