Poison Promise

10

The next morning, I got up, drove downtown, and opened up the Pork Pit right on schedule, as though it were just another day and nothing noteworthy at all had happened last night.

And Catalina did the same.

She showed up a few minutes before eleven to work her shift, just as she’d told me she would. She gave me a grim smile when she stepped inside the restaurant, before quickly lowering her eyes, pushing through the double doors, and heading into the back. Several minutes later, she reappeared, wearing a blue work apron over her jeans and long-sleeved white T-shirt. She stopped at the opposite end of the counter from me and started rolling silverware and straws into napkins.

It was the same thing she always did when she first started her shift, but her movements were slow and clumsy today, her fingers fumbling with the napkins like they were made out of butter, instead of paper. Her shoulders slumped forward, and her soft, subtle makeup couldn’t hide the tired slant of her mouth and the faint pallor that dulled her bronze skin. Looked like I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.

A fork slipped out of her hand and clattered to the floor, breaking the quiet. Catalina let out a soft curse, stooped to pick it up, and tossed it into one of the plastic gray tubs we used for dirty dishes. Normally, she would glance in my direction, smile, and make some joke, but instead, she concentrated on the silverware and napkins again, hunching over the counter so that her black hair hung over her face like a curtain, hiding her tense, exhausted features from my sight.

In between us, Sophia stood at the counter, mixing up some macaroni salad. The silverstone hearts dangling off the purple collar around the Goth dwarf’s neck tinkled together like wind chimes as she stirred the pasta, carrots, and other veggies together.

Sophia looked at Catalina, then at me, raising her black eyebrows in a silent question. I’d filled Sophia in on everything that had happened, so she knew why the waitress was strangely silent. I shrugged back. I wasn’t going to push Catalina to talk about what had happened to Troy. I knew better than anyone else that there were some things you simply couldn’t talk about, no matter how much they haunted your soul.

Instead, I hopped off my stool, strolled over to the front door, and flipped the sign hanging on it over to Open. A few minutes later, the first customer walked inside, and Sophia, Catalina, and I started cooking and serving, with a few more of the waitstaff coming in to help out.

The lunch rush came and went with no problems. Still, in between cooking, wiping down tables, and cashing out customers, I kept one eye on the front door, waiting for Benson to send some of his men to try to eliminate Catalina.

Troy’s murder was all over the news, with Bria being quoted as saying that the po-po were pursuing all available leads. She didn’t mention having a witness, but sooner or later, she would have to tell one of the higher-ups in the police department about Catalina. Then it would be open season on the waitress, as far as Benson was concerned. I was glad Catalina had shown up for her shift, even if she didn’t want to talk to me. At least while she was at the restaurant, I could protect her.

But the minutes slipped by and turned into hours, and nothing happened.

No vamps, no threats, no action of any kind. No one even tried to murder me when I took the trash out back after the lunch rush. That only made me more suspicious that something sinister was brewing. Whether it was related to me or Catalina, well, only time would tell.

But the most troubling thing was the fact that I didn’t hear from Bria. Not so much as a text. No doubt, she was completely wrapped up in Troy’s murder and tightening a noose around Benson’s neck. At least that’s what I kept telling myself, instead of dwelling on the fact that Bria’s need for revenge was consuming her, the way it had consumed me in the past. Either way, her radio silence shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did.

Especially since she called Catalina instead.

I went into the back to get a jug of ketchup to refill the bottles on the tables and found Catalina standing beside one of the industrial-size refrigerators, clutching her phone to her ear. Startled, she sucked in a breath and froze, the proverbial deer-in-the-headlights look on her face. When she realized it was me, she relaxed—but only a little.

A low murmur echoed out of her phone, as though someone were asking her a question.

“I’m okay,” Catalina replied. “Someone just surprised me.”

She listened for a few seconds. “Yeah, she’s here right now. Do you want to talk to her?”

That’s when I knew that Bria was on the other end. So I stopped and waited.

Silence. Then another low murmur sounded.

“Oh, okay.” Catalina gave me an apologetic look and tiptoed a little closer to the back door, turning away from me. “So what’s the next step, then?”

Disgusted, I grabbed the ketchup off a metal rack, shoved one of the doors open, and stormed back out into the storefront.

Catalina eased into the front of the restaurant a few minutes later, tucking her phone back into her jeans pocket. She looked at me, then bit her lip, grabbed a pitcher of sweet iced tea, and started refilling glasses.

I stood at a cooking station along the back wall, chopping up carrots and celery for another batch of macaroni salad and being far more vicious and violent than I needed to be with the defenseless veggies. A few feet away, Sophia hefted a vat of Fletcher’s barbecue sauce off the hot burner and onto several oven mitts so it could cool down, the thick muscles in her arms rolling with the motion. She glanced at Catalina, then at me.

“Not her fault,” Sophia rasped, picking up on my anger and frustration. “Innocent.”

“I know,” I muttered, slicing my knife into another carrot. “And that is what makes this whole thing all the more tragic and ironic. But whose fault is it going to be when Benson kills her for trying to do the right thing?”

Sophia didn’t have an answer for that, and neither did I.

Thirty more minutes passed, and a few more customers came and went. I had just finished slicing the last of the celery when my own phone rang. I wiped my hands off, then pulled the device out of my pocket and stared at the number on the screen, hoping that it was Bria, finally checking in with me, finally letting me in, finally asking me to help her with this.

But it wasn’t.

Disappointment surged through me, but I recognized the number, so I took the call.

“Gin?” Roslyn Phillips’s low, sultry voice filled my ear.

“Hey, Roslyn. What’s going on? Kind of early for you to be calling.”

It was three in the afternoon, and Roslyn was something of a night owl, since she operated Northern Aggression, Ashland’s most decadent after-hours club. Most nights, the drinking and debauchery at the club didn’t kick into high gear until well past midnight.

“Oh, I came in early to do some inventory. It never ends.” She let out a laugh that sounded more brittle than genuine. “Anyway, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

I frowned. Roslyn had never once talked to me about inventory in all the years I’d known her. “What’s up?”

“I finally have that special bottle of gin you asked me to order for you.”

My hand tightened around the phone, and my danger radar pinged up into red-alert territory. I’d never asked Roslyn to order any booze for me. Something was wrong. Someone was there with her. Someone was using her to get to me.

“How many bottles are there?” I asked in a casual voice, in case anyone was listening on her end of the line. “I hope you got me more than just one. You know how much I love that stuff.”

“Oh, yeah,” Roslyn said, not missing a beat. “You’re right. I forgot that you had ordered three bottles.”

She knew what I was really asking: how many people were there with her. Three was more than manageable, and the idiots who’d strong-armed her into doing this were going to realize what a fatal mistake they’d made as soon as I got over there.

“Anyway, I thought that you might want to come and pick up the bottles this afternoon,” Roslyn chirped, her voice going a bit higher, as though someone was telling her to hurry up. “Before the club opens up for the night.”

My mind raced, trying to come up with a way to buy myself—and Roslyn—some more time. My gaze landed on the plastic tub full of dirty dishes that Catalina had set on the counter. I reached over, grabbed a fork out of the tub, and started scraping it against a plate that was sitting inside.

“Well, we’re a little slammed, as you can probably hear. I’ve got about ten customers waiting for food right now. But I can probably be there in an hour, ninety minutes tops. Okay? Or will that be too late for you?”

Roslyn let out a relieved breath. “Sure, an hour or so will be fine. See you then.”

“Oh, you can count on it.”