Page 25 of Undertow

“Yes, ma’am. I… love coffee.”

Julia shoots me an exasperated look, and I return a helpless shrug. I’m still playing naïve, hapless artist. They need to think I’ll be easy to manipulate and control.

“He just got fired from The Palmetto Grande,” she explains.

This gets the older woman’s attention, and her dark eyes probe me in the silence.

There’s something cold and menacing in her stare. It’s not the soulless composure of Montgomery McArthur, but stormy and distrusting, like she’s looking for a reason to explode on me. Funny how they both make my skin crawl for opposite reasons.

“Did he now,” she says coolly. It’s not a question, and somehow I sense she already knew all of that.

With the slightest tick of her head toward the open chair across from her, she issues her command. Julia squeezes my arm, urging me to obey. Once I’m seated, the woman resumes cracking, and I shudder at the violence with which she wields that tool. It could just as easily be a knuckle or toe in the metal grip, and her demeanor probably wouldn’t change.

“What’d you do for them?” she asks without looking up.

“Bartender.”

“How long you work there?”

“At The Palmetto Grande? Only four months.”

She looks up, her gaze sweeping past me to Julia and Adrian. There’s no question they had a conversation about me prior to this meeting. This introduction is staged.

“You ever work at any of their other properties?” she asks, returning to her cracking.

“Several.”

Right answer.

“For how long?”

“In total? About three years.”

She reaches for another handful from the bucket. “You got people, Shaw?”

“No, ma’am. My parents died when I was seventeen.”

Died.

I clench my jaw against the sting of the truth about my parents. Telling this lie is second nature, so why is it causing problems now?

“You been on your own for a while then, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

First real truth of the evening.

Her hand stalls on the nutcracker as she studies me. “So you probably know how to take care of yourself.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The second truth.

The woman’s eyes lock on mine for a beat. I feel Julia’s stare as well but don’t acknowledge it.

“Why’d you get fired, son?”

Julia issues a silent warning beside me.No more games. You need to confess.

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