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“Coming right up.”
I drum my fingers on the table while she trots off.
My watch buzzes with another call, this time from Patton, but I ignore his annoying ass.
My worst suspicions were just validated.
The question now iswhatand how the hell do I prove it without getting caught?
My coffee arrives a minute later, iced and blissfully unsweetened.
I get a touch of brain freeze as I gulp it down quickly and leave a tip on the table, walking outside just as the afternoon traffic picks up in the restaurant.
It’s been half an hour since the delivery, and I half expect to find it gone, vanished into the ether.
But no, it’s still parked next to the loading dock when I round the back. The two boys are nowhere to be seen. Maybe the golf club is the dessert’s final destination after all, but that doesn’t explain anything.
I’ve only stopped for a minute when a truck pulls up with big red coolers inside. The two kids who picked up the desserts reappear from the back, helping the new crew carry them inside through an open door into a storeroom. That’s probably my way in, but it’s way too crowded.
I find a side door.
Locked.
Fuck, everything here is. I also can’t just sneak in through the restaurant with how busy it’s gotten.
The longer I hang around, the more suspicious I look.
A cook wearing white stands by another door, propped open by his foot. A cigarette dangles from his fingers and he turns his face up, exhaling a long plume of smoke.
From the way his shoulders slump, this looks like a well-needed break.
It also looks like my way inside.
Once he’s done smoking, he throws the heavy door open and heads through. I catch it just before it clicks shut.
There’s no window, so I can’t see what’s going on, but distant shouting and the scent of sizzling food wafts through the air.
I slip through, heading inside the kitchen, careful to stay out of view.
The noise instantly threatens to overwhelm me, but I plow through the narrow corridors, eyeing a storeroom.
To my left is the restaurant, judging by the staff that come and go.
Luckily for me, the cooks are too busy to worry about a stranger in a suit heading through.
Then I’m through the last door to the storeroom.
The delivery guys are shutting the large outside doors. I pat the wall until I feel a light switch. A dull buzz hums through the air as the lights flick on.
This place is enormous.
And there, on a table, stacked like an afterthought, are Junie’s pink boxes. A few are bent and crumpled like no one cares about the food inside.
There’s cream smeared against the outside on the front of one. Junie wouldn’t leave it like that.
She might be chaotic and overworked, but she’s not careless.
These guys are fucking animals.
