I'm in the middle of teaching myself not to care when Delgado walks in.
It's been days since the Troy date. Days since my lion decided. Days of walls and distance and the bone-deep exhaustion of pretending you don't want something while your own biology argues against you. I've been doing better. I've been thawing the wall by degrees. Not open, not warm, but not frozen. Room temperature. The emotional equivalent of a polite nod.
Nicholas noticed the thaw immediately, because Nicholas notices everything. He's been responding in kind — not pushing, not asking for more, just existing in the booth with his nachos and his laptop and the steady, patient presence of a man who understands that trust is rebuilt in increments. Yesterday, Mango sat with him. I watched him discover what it feels like when a living thing chooses you, and I almost broke.
Almost. I held.
Now it's evening. Nicholas left at four-thirty — same time, always the same time, the man is a clock — and I'm alone at the bar with my spreadsheet and my tea and the Coldwell tab I keep open like a wound I can't stop touching.
The SEC filings. Seven acquisitions that don't fit their portfolio. Rural parcels, low-density areas, properties that make no commercial sense. I've been adding to the spreadsheet all week, filling in the PREVIOUS OWNER column, and the picture isn't getting clearer. It's getting worse. Two of the properties were owned by businesses that match the same rural-isolationpattern as Knox's bar. Small operations in the middle of nowhere. The kind of places that don't show up on maps.
The kind of places shifters build when they want to be left alone.
I don't have proof. Not yet. Just a shape in the data — a shadow that might be a pattern or might be paranoia fueled by a lion that's making me emotional about a man I should be investigating.
The front door opens.
Delgado.
I know who it is before I see him. The truck's rumble, the heavy footsteps, the lion scent that's not ours.
He fills the doorway. His eyes scan the bar the way they always do — exits, occupants, threat level. Old habit. Old lion.
"Ezra." He takes a stool. "That kid still sniffing around?"
Right to it. No preamble, no coffee, no catching up. Delgado didn't drive over here to ask about the weather.
"He's still here," I say.
"Every day."
"Every day."
Delgado looks at the empty booth. The window seat, the one that smells like Nicholas now — IPA and leather notebook and the faint chemical precision of a man who irons his chinos. Delgado's nostrils flare. He can smell it too.
"And you're all just...what? Letting him sit there? Building a file on you?"
"He's not building a file."
"You know that for a fact?"
"I know he's been here every day and hasn't made a move. He hasn't approached Knox since the first day. Hasn't asked about the property. Hasn't mentioned acquisition or development or any of the words you'd expect from a guy who's here to buy us out." I keep my voice level. Data. Facts. The things I'm good at. "He drinks beer. He eats nachos. He tips thirty percent. He types on his computer."
"And that's enough for you."
"It's enough to not make a move until he does something that warrants one."
Delgado is quiet. He has a way of being quiet that feels like pressure — the silence of a man who's been around long enough to know that the most dangerous things look harmless until they don't.
"You wouldn't be this patient if he wasn't attractive," Delgado says.
I don't answer. Not because they're cruel — because they're accurate in a way I'm not prepared to defend against. Delgado is old-school. Blunt. The kind of man who sees what's in front of him and says it out loud because dancing around it is a waste of everyone's time.
"That's got nothing to do with it."
"Sure it doesn't." He's not smiling. He's not mocking. He's just looking at me with the flat, steady gaze of a man who's been alive long enough to recognize when someone is lying to themselves. "Your eyes do the thing every time I mention him. Gold around the edges. Your lion's got an opinion."
"My lion's opinion is not the basis for security decisions."
