He was offering a lever.
"You want leverage," I said. "Over the compound. If you own the diner, you own the place where every important decision in this story gets made."
Holt looked at me.
He didn't deny it.
"That's a component," he said. "Not the only one. But yes."
Bekah stood up from her stool.
She was not a large woman. She'd never needed to be, in all the time I'd known her — her authority came from somewhere else entirely, the specific weight of someone who had survived enough that very little left in the world frightened her.
"Mr. Mallen," she said. "I've owned this diner for longer than you've been making decisions about other people's lives. I bought this property with money I earned standing on my feet eighteen hours a day for years, in a town that didn't think a woman wh
