“This morning, Ben, one of the sous-chefs, told Lucy that they’d come back. He said she was ‘nervous as a chicken who saw a fox in the hen house.’ His words, not mine. He also said she tried hard to hide it.”
“Anything else?”
“Yep. A little later, Ben said he saw her looking something up on her phone. He sneaked a peek and said she was looking at the public defender profiles.”
My eyes met Grinder’s. Since it was Saturday night, Rebel would be working through the dinner hour. If these assholes came back, I wanted to be ready.
“We’re gonna need more backup,” he said as though he’d read my mind.
I agreed.
“I’ll see who’s close.”
“Hey, Grind—preferably Jagger and Rage.”
“Right. Rebel doesn’t know either of them.”
By sundown, Grinder and I were both in position, surveilling the perimeter outside the restaurant; Jagger and Rage were on their way inside.
“Something’s about to go down,” I said through the mouthpiece on my headset. “I can feel it.”
“I can feel it too,” Grinder answered.
Two hours later, it did.
42
Rebel
“You okay?” asked Christy when she came to pick up the desserts I’d just plated for her table.
“Yeah, just busy.”
She raised a brow.
We were busy. It was a Saturday night, and every seat had been full all night long. I’d lost track, but I heard someone say the tables had already turned three times and there was still a crowd waiting to be seated.
I’d been jumpy all day, and as hard as I tried to hide it, it was obvious my coworkers noticed. At least some of them.
“Are the two guys from last night what’s worrying you?” she asked. Neither of us had time for this conversation, but if I didn’t admit my fear to someone, I was going to break down.
“I think I might’ve recognized one of them,” I said, making sure no one could hear us. Both men wore hats pulled down far enough that it had been hard to see their faces, but there was something familiar about the way one of them carried himself. I’d gone online earlier when Susan was on the phone, and pulled up the Hays County public defender page. One of the men who had been here the night before could very well have been John Lynch.
That alone was enough to make me lose my shit, but the fact that I hadn’t told Edge about it, worried me even more.
“Lucy, a little help,” one of the chefs hollered over to me and pointed to two bags of trash. The busboys and dishwashers were all busy, frantically trying to keep up. I was the next lowest on the “totem pole.”
Christy squeezed my hand. “We’ll talk later, but everyone out front is on the lookout for them.”
I grabbed the bags and walked out the back door. The minute I did, every nerve ending on my body fired up. “You’re getting yourself worked up about nothing,” I muttered as I ran over to the dumpster and threw the trash bags in. My eyes surveyed the parking lot as I raced back to the door.
Just as I grabbed the handle to open it, I felt a hand go over my mouth.
“Make a sound, and I’ll kill you right here and throw you in with the rest of the garbage.” Something was poking me in the side, but it didn’t feel like a gun. Maybe it was a knife, although it didn’t feel like that either. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to risk trying to get away.
A split second later, I heard the distinct sound of a gun being cocked. When I squeezed my eyes closed, my first thought was of Edge and how I was about to die and I hadn’t gotten the nerve to tell him I loved him.
“Let her go, arsehole, or I’ll blow your brains out!” I heard an English-accented voice shout. It didn’t sound like Edge. Who was it?