By nine, it's just me.
I like the bar at night. The quiet hum of the refrigerators, the neon signs casting colored light across the bottles, the tick of the building settling into its bones. This is when I do my best thinking. No interruptions, no ears listening, just me and my laptop and the kind of silence that lets patterns emerge.
I'm deep into Coldwell's acquisition history when the front door opens.
I know who it is before I see him. The engine — a bike, not a car, a well-maintained cruiser with a low rumble. The footsteps — heavier than any of ours, the gait of a man who carries more weight and doesn't rush. The smell — lion, but different. Not pride. Not ours. A courtesy scent, the olfactory equivalent of knocking.
Delgado fills the doorway the way big men do, not because they're trying but because doorways weren't designed for people built like that. Sixties, graying hair pulled back in a ponytail, a face that looks like it was carved from the same rock as the mountains outside. He's wearing a leather jacket that's older than I am and boots that have seen more road than most people's cars.
"Ezra." He nods. Not a greeting — more like a confirmation. Yes, you're the one I need to talk to. "Knox around?"
"Upstairs. What's going on?"
"Came to give you a heads up." He comes in, lets the door close behind him. Takes a stool at the bar — the same one Nicholas sat on this morning, which is a coincidence I don't need to think about. His hands land on the bar top, enormous, scarred, the hands of a man who's worked with them for fifty years. "You know a company called Coldwell Development?"
"Yeah," I say. "I know Coldwell."
"They first came at me about eight months back. Letters, then a phone call, then a lawyer suggesting my zoning permits might need review when I told them to get lost. I thought that was the end of it." Delgado's jaw tightens. "Then last week some kid in a suit shows up at my range. Polite, professional, card from Coldwell. Wants to discuss a 'business opportunity.'" He makes the air quotes with hands big enough to crush a beer can. "I told him where he could put his opportunity. Been stewing on it since, then I heard through the network that Knox's place got hit too. Wanted to come see for myself."
"Yeah," I say. "We got hit."
"This kid — rental car, laptop bag, leather notebook. Looked like a college boy playing businessman. He still sniffing around?"
I pinch the bridge of my nose. "Delgado, that kid has been sitting in that booth every day for a week." I gesture toward the window booth. "Orders an IPA and the nachos. Sets up his laptop. Works for about four hours. Tips thirty percent and leaves."
Delgado looks at the booth. Looks at me. Looks at the booth again.
"The same kid who came to my range is sitting in your bar," Delgado says slowly. "Every day."
"Same booth. Same order."
"And Knox lets him?"
"Knox said he's a customer."
"He's not a customer. He's a scout. He was doing the same thing at my place — looking around, taking notes, assessing the property. He scoped out my range before he ever came here. These people don't just make offers and walk away. They don't send someone to eat nachos for a week because he likes the Wi-Fi. He's building a file on you."
"Maybe." I close my laptop halfway. "Or maybe he's a guy who was sent here to do a job, figured out the job doesn't make sense, and told his boss he needs more time to figure out why his company flagged a commercially unviable property in the middle of nowhere."
"You believe that?"
"I believe he told his boss the property doesn't make commercial sense. I heard him say it to Toby on day two."
"And you believe him."
I think about Nicholas in his booth. His thirty percent tips and his leather notebook and the way he grimaced at the dating app notification. The sister who called. The napkin note about Robin's lemon bars. The way he sat at the bar this morning and asked about the wood.
"I think he's figuring out he was sent here to do something he doesn't want to do," I say. "I think he's smart enough to see the pattern once someone shows it to him."
Delgado is quiet for a long moment. He doesn't look convinced, but he doesn't argue. Professional courtesy — this is Knox's territory, Knox's call. He's here to share information, not give orders.
"Then let me tell you what the pattern looks like," he says. "Because I've been digging since they came after my range."
He settles onto the stool. I pour him a coffee he didn't ask for. He takes it without comment.
"Five properties in the last two years," he says. "All shifter-owned. All in areas like this — rural, low-density, off the main corridors. A wolf pack's repair shop in Montana. A bear clan's camping outfitter in northern Idaho. Couple of lone operators — a bobcat who runs a feed store, a coyote with a salvage yard."
I turn my laptop back toward him. "That matches what I found in their SEC filings. Rural acquisitions that don't fit their development profile."
