Page 30 of Beauty and Kaos

Natalie huffs in exasperation. “Everyone else at the table is already done. They’re just waiting on her now.”

“Not my problem. You see these people?” He motions to the tickets hanging. “Right now, all these people are also waiting on her.” Zaden plucks the ticket out of her hand, and puts it at the end of the list. “She’s going to stay right here until I get a straight answer.”

Natalie’s mouth drops, then she turns on her heel and walks off. I bite back the smile creeping at my lips. My sick, toxic heart has such a soft spot for assholes.

“Okay, no pink at all,” Natalie adds, approaching the window again.

“That’s well done,” Zaden replies dryly.

“Yeah. She doesn’t want it to be too tough, though.”

Zaden shakes his head in disbelief, pulling the ribeye off the customer’s plate and plopping it onto a side plate. He fixes Natalie with a resolute glare, and shoves the plate right into the microwave.

“It’s grilling. Come back in three.”

She starts to open her mouth to say something, then gives up and walks back into the dining room. I glance over at Zaden, and our eyes meet. The frustration on his face gets me, and I bust out laughing. He rolls his eyes and turns back to the grill.

My attention lingers on his back, thinking about last night. The image of him wet and shirtless in the moonlight, in an ocean of exploding stars. The way his hands felt on my skin, warm and calloused from work. Water streaming down his shaggy dark hair, cascading to his jawline. I had no idea it was that long beneath the backward ballcap he wears on the line.

He makes me want to forget why I’m here, and I can’t do that. I have to survive in this darkness until I find the way out.

In the crowded dining room, I see Evan weaving through the tables heading for the bar. He shouts something toward Nick, then reaches into his pocket. Change. Nick asked him for change.

It’s go time.

Carefully, I wrap my arms around the teetering tower of rolled silverware and wander in his direction. I wait for him to open the door to the cash room, then look distracted and run slap into him. I make a startled yelp, dump about forty rolls of silverware onto the floor at his feet, and fall into his arms. A careful and calculated slide of my shoe moves one of the rolls into the crack of the closing door, and it sticks.

Success.

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry,” I say as his arms wrap around me, steadying me. I press my hands against his chest and look up into his eyes. “I can’t believe I just did that.” He smells likeaftershave and wintergreen breath mints, his starched shirt crisp and smooth beneath my hands.

He smiles, “It’s fine. Are you okay?”

I nod. “Yeah, I’ve got this,” I say, kneeling before him to gather the silverware off the floor. My shoulder brushes against his thigh, and I glance up at him with wide, dick-sucking eyes and smile. “Sorry to put you in this position.”

“I’m okay with that, too,” he says, watching me carefully. I laugh.

“The silverware,” I explain. “Ryan said you’re almost out. I’ve got to send these back to dish.”

He nods slowly in understanding. “Don’t worry about it. We’re almost caught back up.”

“Oh,” I exclaim. “Did Giana find you? She just told me there’s a woman up front with the Gazette. Something about a headline in the Events section this weekend?”

Evan’s eyes narrow, and his gaze jerks toward the hostess station. “Marjorie Wilkins? Short blonde hair?” He asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m just passing along a message.”

Evan glances over at Nick and gets his attention. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll grab that for you. I’ll be right back.”

Nick nods, then returns to his conversation with several patrons at the bar. Evan excuses himself and goes on a futile search that will hopefully take him somewhere in the realm of five to seven minutes. Giana’s on break, sitting in her car in the overflow lot across the street, talking to her boyfriend. It’s going to take him a while to locate her.

Once Evan is out of sight and I make sure Nick is distracted, I open the cash room door. I kick the roll of silverware inside and close the door quickly and quietly.

The office is small and dimly lit, reeking of cigarettes and folding money. I walk over to the filing cabinet and start rifling through the drawers. Employee files. Financial documents. Inspection forms. Recipes. Daily logs. I stop and concentrate on the drawer, flipping through dates, looking for June. It’s all the way at the end, and when I reach it, I pull it out. I grab June twenty-third and scan over the sheet. It’s a section chart. It says who was working, where they worked, and when they were cut. Perfect. I fold it up, stuffing it into my pocket as I slide the drawer closed.

I turn to the computer, staring at the familiar login screen. I put in the number I memorized yesterday, and it opens to the home screen. Score. I scan through the files, seeing what’s available. When I reach the files for the security system, I open it and scroll through the folders. The surveillance runs continuously, and uploads files every two hours. I click on the one for the night of the incident, and my eyes narrow in confusion.

“What the fuck…”

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