Near midnight, Brian Walsh arrived and spoke with the county investigators at the edge of the property. He examined neither the wreckage nor the men through the lens of a movie scene. He asked about the sequence of events, the witnesses, the recovered weapons, and the evidence already collected from the motorcycle. Sarah recognized the same methodical patience he had shown at her counter.
When he finally approached her, he noticed the cut on her forearm where the bunker handrail had scraped her skin during the rush uphill. He asked if she needed medical attention. She looked at the bandage Noel had wrapped around it and shook her head, but agreed to let the arriving paramedic check everybody before anyone went home.
"You're going to be hearing from us again," Walsh said.
"I figured."
"You did more than you should have had to do."
"Maybe. But I'm not the only person who made a choice tonight."
Walsh followed her gaze toward Wyatt, who was speaking to an attorney by telephone beside a patrol car. The agent regarded him with a face that gave nothing away. Whatever Wyatt had done to help prevent the final violence would not erase his involvement in earlier crimes, and Sarah knew that now.
At one in the morning, the deputies finally allowed her back into the diner. She stepped over glass and picked up the CLOSED sign, which lay face down beneath an overturned chair. Her father's old photograph had fallen from the wall behind the register, but the glass had remained intact. She set it upright and looked into the familiar face for a long time.
Martin was smiling beside a rebuilt motorcycle, one hand on the handlebar and the other resting on Sarah's shoulder. She had been seventeen when the picture was taken, with a terrible haircut and a stubborn expression. Her father looked proud enough that she could remember being embarrassed by it.
Sarah wiped dust from the frame with the corner of her shirt. Then she found a broom that had survived the wreckage and began sweeping glass into a pile. Noel stopped her after a minute, took the broom from her hands, and pointed toward the nearest chair that was still upright.
"Sit down," he said.
"There's too much to do."
"There'll still be too much tomorrow."
Sarah sat. For the first time since seeing the blue wire, she allowed herself to tremble. It began in her hands and moved through her arms until she had to press her palms flat against her knees.
Noel did not comment. He brought her a mug of water and sat across from her while the desert outside grew quiet again. They stayed that way until dawn began lifting the black from the mountain ridge.
The morning after the siege, the Junction looked smaller than Sarah remembered. Broken glass glittered in the dust outside the diner, and black tire marks curved through the gravel where the county vehicles had come and gone. The kitchen door hung crookedly, and a window above the front booth had been boarded over by a deputy who said he had once worked construction. Sarah walked the perimeter with a clipboard and began listing damage, not because she believed a list could make it less painful, but because a list gave the damage a shape.