"We're customers," Marcus said. "We ordered, and we paid. I don't see a reason to leave before we're finished."
"There's always a law to fit the occasion," Knox said. "Loitering, trespassing, vagrancy. I can find one you won't like."
Elias put down his fork. "Which one applies to two people eating a meal they bought?"
The sergeant's face changed. For eleven years in Pell Hollow, Knox had answered challenges with his badge, and most people had learned not to challenge him. He could see that Elias was older, steady, and unwilling to provide the frightened reaction he preferred. The combination irritated him enough that he abandoned even the appearance of courtesy.
"You know what your problem is?" Knox asked. "You think a man has to explain himself to you just because you're sitting at a restaurant table."
"No," Elias said. "I think a police officer should explain a threat of arrest."
Knox reached for Marcus's coffee. The cup was almost full, recently refreshed by Odessa, and its heat was obvious from the steam rising above the rim. Without warning, he tipped it into Marcus's lap. The dark liquid spread across the denim, and Marcus recoiled with a sharp breath before setting both hands flat against the table to keep himself from responding in anger.
"Clumsy me," Knox said. "Guess you ought to find a place to wash up. Somewhere outside my county would be best."
Elias saw the muscles in Marcus's jaw work, and he gave the smallest shake of his head. Their professional training mattered in this moment, but so did the years they had spent learning how to trust one another in dangerous rooms. Marcus took one slow breath, then another, while the coffee cooled against his clothing. Across the diner, Odessa reached for a clean towel and stopped when Knox glanced in her direction.
"That was deliberate," Marcus said. His voice remained low, but every word was distinct. "You know it, and everybody here knows it."
Knox's smile turned hard. "Careful, boy. People who accuse officers of things they can't prove tend to spend a long weekend in a cell."
"Then I expect you'll want to explain it on the record," Elias said.
Knox seized Elias by the collar and pulled him halfway out of the booth. The table shifted, plates rattled, and the older agent's knee struck the underside of the wood. Elias kept his hands visible and did not fight the grip, though the fabric tightened painfully against his neck. A chair scraped somewhere behind them, and Nolan appeared in the kitchen window holding his phone upright.
"Let go of him," Odessa said, very quietly.
Knox did not look at her. "In my town, you ask permission before you make trouble. You ask permission before you sit where people don't want you. You ask permission before you breathe."
Elias felt a familiar, terrible echo of another police officer standing behind a counter in another year. He held onto the present by naming details to himself: the clock above the pie case, the gravy on the plate, Marcus's hands still resting on the table. These were not memories, and the law outside this room was not the law of thirty-one years ago. He made himself remember that.
From the kitchen, Nolan spoke. "Sergeant, I'm recording this. You need to stop."
Knox turned so abruptly that he nearly knocked over the table. "Put that phone away. Delete whatever you took."