Toby blinks. He wasn't expecting honesty. Neither was the pastry guy, who stops wiping the counter and looks at me directly for the first time today.
"What do you mean, it doesn't make sense?" the pastry guy asks.
"Your location is commercially unviable for the kind of development Coldwell does. Low traffic, no infrastructure pipeline, wrong zoning density. On paper, this property isn't worth the acquisition cost."
"Then why are you here?" the pastry guy says.
"That's what I'm trying to figure out."
Silence. Toby and the pastry guy exchange a look — the kind of look that means they'll be talking about this later, privately, at length.
I take my IPA to yesterday's booth. Same seat. Same angle. Open my laptop. The nachos arrive a few minutes later — the kid from behind the bar brings them, the young shifter with the eager eyes. He sets them down without a word but lingers forhalf a second, like he wants to say something and decides against it.
The mechanic comes in from the garage, sees me, and stops. Looks at the pastry guy.
"He came back," the pastry guy says again. It's becoming a refrain.
The mechanic looks at me the way he looked at me yesterday. Then he takes something from the pastry tray, takes a coffee, and goes back to the garage without a word.
The quiet one is already in his corner. Same book, same absolute stillness. He doesn't acknowledge me. I don't acknowledge him. We have an understanding already, which is efficient.
The one with the spreadsheet comes down the stairs from what I assume are apartments above the bar. Jeans and a henley, hair still damp. He looks different than yesterday. Less guarded.
He sees me in the booth and stops. Not startled — more like recalculating.
"You're back."
"I'm back."
"Same booth."
"It has good Wi-Fi."
He almost smiles. Barely a thing — a twitch at the corner of his mouth, gone before it lands. He pours himself something from behind the bar — not coffee, some kind of tea — and settles onto a stool with a laptop of his own. We work in parallel silence for twenty minutes. Him on his spreadsheet. Me on mine.
It's oddly comfortable.
I open a new tab on my spreadsheet and label it LANGFORD - WHY THIS PROPERTY.
I'm going to figure out what Coldwell actually wants with five acres of commercially unviable land owned by shifters who aren't selling.
Three days. That's what I told Daniel.
I look around the bar from my booth — my booth already — at the quiet hum of people working around me. The pastry guy who didn't offer me anything from his tray and was right not to. The book guy who introduced himself anyway. The mechanic who looked through me. The quiet one who didn't need to look at all. The kid who brought my nachos without being asked. And the one with the spreadsheet, on his stool, working his own numbers, occasionally glancing my way with an expression I can't quite read.
Three days might not be enough.
Chapter 3
Ezra
Day three. He's back.
Same booth. Same IPA. Same nachos. Same laptop, same leather notebook, same precise arrangement of his workspace — charger on the left, notebook on the right, phone facedown between them. He's wearing chinos and a sweater today, sleeves pushed to his elbows. No suit since the first day.
I've started noticing things. That's a problem.
He writes left-handed. He doesn't touch his phone while he works — it stays facedown until he's closed the laptop, like there's a protocol. He eats the nachos in a specific order: edges first, working toward the center where the cheese is thickest. He tips exactly thirty percent regardless of the total. He drinks his IPA slowly, one beer over two to three hours, never orders a second.
