Delgado glances at the screen. His eyebrows go up — he wasn't expecting me to have data already.
"Because they're not developing them," he says. "The wolf pack's shop? Bought, leveled, sitting empty. The bear clan's property? Same. The bobcat sold voluntarily — offered enough to relocate, took it. The coyote fought it for a year, then the county found code violations nobody had cared about for twenty years. He sold."
I let that settle. Five properties. All shifter-owned. All acquired and either leveled or left empty.
"They're not buying land," I say. "They're buying shifters out."
"Or pushing them out." Delgado's voice is flat. "The ones who sell voluntarily get fair money. The ones who fightget zoning reviews, code enforcement, permit audits. Nothing illegal. Just pressure."
"Why? What's the play?"
"That's what I can't figure out." He shakes his head. "There's no development plan that makes sense. You don't buy a feed store in rural Montana and a salvage yard in Idaho for a shopping mall. The properties are too scattered, too small, too far from infrastructure."
"Unless the play isn't the properties. Unless it's the displacement."
Delgado looks at me sharply. "Explain."
"I don't have it yet. Just a shape." I show him the spreadsheet I've been building. "Seven acquisitions in their SEC filings that don't match their core business. You're telling me at least five of those are shifter properties. I need to check the other two."
"Check them." He pushes back from the bar but doesn't stand yet. "And Ezra — your guy in the booth. The nachos kid."
"He's not my guy."
"Whatever he is. You said he's smart enough to see the pattern. That means he's also smart enough to be running one." He stands. "I've seen these corporate types before. They send the nice ones first. Polite, professional, tips well, asks about the history of the building. Makes you feel like he sees you as a person instead of a property value. And maybe he does. Or maybe that's just how the good ones operate."
I don't have an answer for that. The uncomfortable truth is that both things could be true at the same time.
"My range isn't going anywhere," Delgado says. "Your bar isn't going anywhere. But somebody at Coldwell doesn't knowthat yet, and the longer they don't know it, the more people like us they're going to squeeze." He heads for the door. "Find the pattern, Ezra. You're the one who reads spreadsheets."
"I'm aware."
The door closes behind him. His bike starts — the rumble of it fading down the road until it's just the night and the neon and the hum of the refrigerators.
I turn back to my laptop.
PREVIOUS OWNER. I start filling in the column, cross-referencing public records with the names Delgado gave me. Wolf pack in Montana. Bear clan in Idaho. Bobcat feed store. Coyote salvage yard.
It takes an hour. By the end of it, I have five confirmed shifter-owned properties and two I haven't identified yet. The two unknowns are in Washington state — a small parcel outside Spokane and a larger one near the Oregon border.
I add a note to the spreadsheet:Check Spokane property. Previous owner — shifter?
It's almost midnight. The bar is dark except for my laptop screen and the blue glow of the sign behind me. Tomorrow Nicholas will walk in, same booth, same IPA, same nachos. He'll sit in his routine and work on his assessment and not know what I know now.
I could tell him. Show him the spreadsheet. Watch his face when he realizes what his company's been doing.
But I don't know him yet. Not really. I know his tipping percentage and the way his shoulders drop two degrees when Jason brings him water. That's not enough to trust someone with the safety of my pride.
So I'll wait. I'll watch. I'll keep filling in the spreadsheet.
And I'll figure out whether Nicholas is someone who sees the pattern and walks away — or someone who sees it and stays.
I close my laptop and go upstairs. The bar settles into its nighttime sounds. Oak and neon and sixty years of shifters calling this place home.
Nobody's buying it. Not Coldwell, not anyone.
I just have to prove why they're trying.
Chapter 6
