At that point, she was more concerned about making it through her shift in the hot, pungent diner without throwing up or fainting.
She’d almost made it to the end of her shift, when Maria, a hunched over, much older waitress, came up to her.
“Got a guy at table three says he wants you to be his waitress.”
“I’ve only got five more minutes on my shift. Can you handle it?” she asked.
But Maria shook her head. “Sorry, girlie, but the customer’s always right. I told you when you first started here to cut that friendly shit out. That’s how you end up getting customers outside your section requesting you specifically.”
Immediately, her father’s voice popped into her head, “You too friendly—”
Yes, yes, I know, she answered, cutting off the ghostly memory before he could finish his chastisement. Despite everything that had happened to her, she still loved to talk to people and had already garnered a contingent of senior citizen customers who put in requests for her. Santa Fe boasted a huge over fifty-five population. People came here from all over the United States to retire, so she got these kinds of requests at least once a day.
As she approached table three, she vowed to keep her answers short and succinct no matter how much the customer wanted to talk. She was on the run again, she reminded herself. It was time to learn how to be a bitch for her own good.
“What can I get you?’ she asked, her eyes resolutely on her order pad, trying to make her voice as uninviting as possible.
“Sit down.”
“Sir, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” She glanced up to pin a firm, no-nonsense gaze on the customer, but instead of the little old man she’d been expecting, she met Suro’s black eyes, his face a study in stone cold fury.
“Sit down,” he repeated.
She swallowed. “I’m not allowed to—”
“Sit,” he said again, this time in a tone that promised dire consequences if she kept on trying to argue with him.
Lacey scanned the restaurant to make sure Nestor, who also served as the cook, wasn’t looking. When she saw his back was turned she quickly dropped into the booth across from Suro.
“Unless you buy this place, too, I don’t have much time to talk.” Her voice came out sounding more peevish than she’d intended.
But his eyes just flickered to her badge. “You’re Leslie now.”
She shrugged, “Yeah, I guess I am.”
She eyed him warily. This wasn’t the Suro she’d reluctantly left behind in Chicago. This Suro practically radiated with tightly controlled anger and put her in mind of the bodyguards who used to accompany Hector Jr. to public events, dead-eyed men who would just as soon kill a man as speak to him.
“How did you find me?” she asked him, her curiosity overriding her fear.
He steepled his hands and spoke in a quiet monotone. “I’m not here to make small talk with you.”
“Then why are you here,” she asked. “And again, how did you find me?”
His eyes ran over her, as if he were surveying a bug he wanted to crush beneath his foot. “I never did tell you my specialty, did I? Just that I was in security.”
“That’s okay,” she said, suddenly even more nervous than before. “There was a lot I didn’t tell you either. Maybe we should call it even?”
The look he gave her made her wonder if the smiling version of him had been something she’d made up in her head. This Suro didn’t seem capable of smiling, much less professing his love for her as he had the last time they spoke.
“I’m a hit man,” he said. “I get paid to hunt people down and finish them.”
She couldn’t have stopped her body from trembling, even if she wanted to. “You kill people for a living?”
Suddenly she understood how he managed to radiate so much danger, even when he was sitting still. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked, whispered really, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.
“Because I’ve been contracted by Hector Mendez, Sr. to kill you.”
She gasped, a hand flying up to her throat and her eyes immediately went to the exit. If she ran fast enough, maybe she could—
But his next words interrupted her escape plan. “I put a GPS tracker in the base of your suitcase. That’s how I found you. And I’ve been staking you out for a week now. I know where you live, I’ve been inside your apartment, and you have no idea what I might have stuck a tracker to. If you try to run again with anything but the clothes on your back, I will easily find you.” He slid a business card across the table with heavily embossed writing on it. “Meet me at my hotel after your shift.”
Then he stood and walked out of the restaurant without another word.
She scrambled out of the booth almost as soon as he turned his back, her mind racing. Her first thought was to run anyway, get new papers, do whatever it took. But the stuff he had said about easily being able to track her down had seemed less like a threat and more like a promise.
She picked up the card off the table and fingered the name of the Cliffrose Inn, with her thumb. It was a luxury resort located about halfway between where she worked and her apartment. She passed it everyday on her way to the restaurant. A cold chill shot through her as she wondered if Suro had been watching her walk past every day.
“What’d you say to make that guy leave?”
She looked up to find Nestor now standing behind her, his face drawn into its usual frown.
“Nothing,” she answered. “He just decided he didn’t want to eat here.”
“That’s it,” Nestor said. “I know a dud when I see one. You’re fired.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but Nestor cut her off. “No more excuses. Just get out of my restaurant.” And he turned and walked away.
What was this? Say Something Crazy to Lacey and Then Walk Away Day?
“Screw you, Nestor!” she said to his back.
He turned around and glared at her. “What did you just say to me?”
“You heard me,” she said. “Screw you. You’re mean, you’re greedy, and you’re a small, small man who enjoys taking advantage of people with your low-quality to food and the way you treat your works because you know they don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Everyone in the restaurant, including Maria, was staring at her with their mouths wide open now, but she kept going. “You know what you are? You’re a parasite who don’t nothing but take, take, take,” she told Nestor, her Jersey accent coming back in full effect. “And you don’t have to fire me, because I quit.”