"You've been watching me too. We've established this."
The air between us changes. The charge, the pull, the gravitational distortion that I've been fighting for days and can't fight anymore because fighting it is making me worse at everything — worse at sleeping, worse at thinking, worse at being the person this pride needs me to be.
"Maybe," I say. "After you have your data. If you want to talk about what you found. I might be able to help."
It's an offer. Not a confession — I'm not showing him my spreadsheet, not yet. But a door, cracked open, the width of a possibility. If Nicholas walks through it, I'll know something. If he doesn't, I'll know something else.
"Maybe," he says. And then, so quietly I almost miss it: "Thank you."
He goes back to his laptop. I go back to mine.
The wall is cracked. Not open. Not demolished. But cracked in a place that I can see through, and on the other side is a man who found something in the data that changed his face.
* * *
The afternoon has a different texture. Not warm — not yet. But less cold. The quality of light in a room where two people have acknowledged something without naming it.
Nicholas works. I work. The parallel hum resumes, but it's different now — not two people ignoring each other, but two people aware of each other in a way that has weight and intention. Every keystroke is a communication. Every silence is a conversation.
At three-fifteen, Nicholas gets up from his booth and walks to the bar. Not for a drink — he has a full glass he hasn't touched. He stands at the counter and looks at me and I see the calculation happen in real time — the weighing, the risk assessment, the decision tree branching.
"Can I ask you something?" he says.
"Sure."
"The properties around here. The businesses on this road, in this area. Do you know who owns them?"
My hands go still on the keyboard.
He's asking about the neighbors. The other properties, the other businesses. He's building the same map I'm building — the one that connects rural, isolated, commercially unviable properties to each other and to Coldwell's off-profile acquisitions.
He's pulling the same thread.
"Some of them," I say. Carefully. Not lying, not volunteering. Walking the line between the wall and the door. "Why?"
"I'm being thorough." The ghost of a smile. Self-aware. He knows that's not a real answer, and he knows I know, and the knowing is its own kind of honesty.
I make a decision. Not a big one — or maybe it is. Hard to tell with decisions that feel like opening a door you can't close.
"You know Delgado?" I ask. Casual. Watching his face.
Nicholas doesn't flinch. Doesn't freeze. He just nods, the same way he nods at data — acknowledging, processing.
"The shooting range east of here," he says. "I visited his property before I came to yours."
Before. Not after. He went to Delgado's first and then came here. The thorough, professional approach of an agent who does his homework. I already knew this — Delgado told me. But Nicholas just confirmed it without flinching, without hedging, without the careful non-answer of a man who's hiding something.
"He came by," I say. "Warned us about you. About your company."
"Before or after I took up residence in that booth?"
I almost smile. Almost. "Both."
Nicholas nods. Not defensive, not alarmed. The nod of a man who expected this and is relieved it's on the table.
"His property is like yours," he says. "Neither makes sense."
"For your boss, you mean."
