Page 75 of The Reaper
It should have sounded suffocating. It didn’t. It sounded like air.
Dean nodded, some of the bite leaving his mouth. “Put me on the walk list. I’m not sleeping, anyway.”
“You’re on a date,” I said. “A mini-vaca.”
“Both can be true,” he said. “I’ll walk with the very beautiful woman I married.”
Trish smiled. “I do love The Battery.”
Finn leaned a hip against the chair. “We can also reassign tasks without making it obvious. Hostess welcomes at a side angle so they’re never alone at the stand. Bussers do table water refills in pairs on the last turn. I’ll stand at the pass for ten minutes every half hour and face the room.”
“You hate facing the room,” I said.
“In this situation,” he said, “the room can face me.”
Caleb’s phone buzzed once. He glanced, eyes flicking narrow, then relaxed again. “System ping—camera four saw a shadow near the alley, but it was wind through the crepe myrtle.”
Dean’s attention sharpened. “You sure?”
“Replayed it twice. We’ll keep an eye.”
“And the police?” Trish asked, tentative. “Do we loop them in?”
I felt my throat close. “A report puts it on paper. Paper leaks. Paper turns into whispers that the chef at Promenade is paranoid or unstable or unsafe. We’re trying to get the right attention. Not that.”
Dean held my gaze. “You don’t owe a story to anyone.”
“I know,” I said. “But this industry runs on stories. The wrong one spreads like grease fire.”
Caleb nodded, conceding the point. “We can wait a night. Collect more. If we get a face, we take it in, make it clean. Right now, we’ve got elegant threats and a sense of theater.”
“Whoever it is understands you,” Trish said, eyes on me. “Or thinks he does.”
“That’s what I hate,” I said, a laugh curling out sharp. “The presumption of it. I already have a voice in my head second-guessing my salt. I don’t need a stranger adding commentary.”
“Then take it back,” Dean said. “Tonight. In front of them.”
“How?” I asked.
He glanced at my chalkboard menu, then at the hostess stand. “Act like the room is full of people who love you. When dinner service is done, you stand at that host stand and you talk too long to your guests for anyone to get close.”
Finn snapped his fingers. “We do the Meggie move.”
I blinked. “The what?”
“You told me your mom would stand in the doorway at closing and hug every single person like they’d loaned her money she didn’t deserve,” he said. “Do that. Make the doorway a stage. No one can sneak a note onto a stage.”
My chest tightened, sudden and painful. “She did do that.”
“Then we borrow her,” Finn said gently.
Trish’s eyes glossed, just for a second. “She’d like that.”
Caleb’s hand found mine under the table, warm and solid. “We’ll be right there,” he said.
Dean saw the touch. Something unclenched in his face I hadn’t realized was locked tight.
“Okay,” he said, settling back. “We’ve got a plan. It’s not perfect, but it’s something. You work your side. We’ll work ours.” He pointed at Caleb, an old coach giving the ball to a new player. “And you—if you see something that feels like more than theater, you don’t ask permission. You move her.”
