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Anna cleared her throat. “Changing directions now. We’ll be there.”
She ended the call and blew out a breath.
“We don’t have to go,” Stella offered. “If you want to go home, it’s cool.”
“I bought a present,” Anna declared. “I’m going. I’m a grown woman, and I can drop it off and leave if things are uncomfortable.”
“Good,” Stella beamed. “I’m proud of you.”
“I mean, it’s a baby shower,” Anna shrugged. “What could possibly go wrong?”
*************************
Lizzie
The digital clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen still registered in the a.m., but Lizzie had been on her feet since four, and she was exhausted.
“See you, Hal,” she called to the cook, as she grabbed her coat and bag from the hook with her name on it.
Hal’s was the diner with the best onion rings between Savannah and Charleston, but Hal was not known for upgrades in employee work spaces.
So the girls didn’t have a locker room or dressing area.
They had a public restroom and hooks with name tags by the back door.
“Monday, right?” Hal asked, voice raised over the exhaust fan.
“Yep,” Lizzie agreed. “I’m gonna sleep all day tomorrow.”
“Don’t blame you,” Hal said, flipping a burger.
Lizzie shouldered her way through the swinging door that led from the kitchen to the space behind the counter. “Bye, Monica,” she said to the older red head who was serving a slice of pie behind the counter.
“Be careful,” Monica answered.
“I will,” Lizzie said.
Studiously avoiding eye contact with a trucker who’d been eyeing her for the past hour made the few feet around the counter and out the front door seem like a football field. His denim was baggy, his tee shirt was stained with grease, and he’d been watching her like a hawk.
Creepy, Lizzie could handle. But psycho creepy was a different thing altogether.
She’d made it about three steps into the parking lot when she heard the chime of the door behind her.
“Where you goin’?” a male voice drawled.
Lizzie glanced over her shoulder, moving faster, “My shift is over.”
Rough fingers clutched at her elbow and spun her around. “I been watchin’ you.”
The man stepped in close, and Lizzie recoiled from the fetid breath that clouded her face.
“We got a problem here, Liz?” Maker’s voice dripped venom as he grabbed the man by the throat and lifted him off the ground, plastering his body against the side of the diner.
The trucker squirmed like a bug pinned to a display board in a middle school science project.
“I didn’t hear your Harley,” Lizzie said, her hand clutching Maker’s leather belt while she peered around his massive shoulder.
“Parked over there,” Maker said, gesturing to a stand of trees beside a neighboring parking lot. “Been waiting for you to get off work.”
