“Hey.”
I wiped sour cream off my chin and lifted an eyebrow at him.
“What’s up?”
“Were you planning on meeting someone here tonight?”
I frowned and pulled my phone out of my bra, where I stashed it looking to see if Dovie had sent me a message about Race. There was nothing, just a message from Karsen asking me to bring her home some ice cream.
“No. Why?”
He lifted his elegantly groomed eyebrows and clicked his tongue at me. “There was this guy at the bar. He kept looking around and looking around. I asked him like five hundred times if I could help him with anything but he just ordered a soda and sat at the bar. I saw you come out of the kitchen with an order and so did he. I watched him watch you for a minute then he got up and left. I thought maybe it was a friend or something.”
I felt my jaw drop and I blinked at him like an idiot. “What did he look like?”
Considering Ramon liked the fellas way more than I did right now, I figured he would have a spot-on description for me, but he shrugged.
“Nothing special. In fact, it was weird, like he was trying to blend in. He had on glasses and a hat, like he was trying to look different. He didn’t say anything to anyone either.”
I felt a chill race up my spine and suddenly my taco tasted like dirt in my mouth. Sure, there were creepy guys that came in and tried to hit on me and gave me the lurking looks, but a weirdo who didn’t say anything, combined with that strange text message, had me totally freaked out.
“That’s weird.”
Ramon nodded. “It was very odd.”
“If you see him again can you let me know?”
“Sure thing. Maybe you need to wait and have someone walk out with you.”
I shivered again and numbly agreed. My phone went off and I groaned when I saw Dovie’s message.
He’ll be there at close. Wait for him.
Could life hand me anything else difficult and covered in thorns to work my way through? I was starting to doubt it.
I texted back that that was fine and went to work the later crowd that filtered in right before we closed the kitchen down every night. I was hypervigilant, my eyes shifting all across the restaurant. I didn’t like the idea of some lurker hanging around watching me, liked it even less with the weird text messages still floating around in the back of my mind. I tended to think I could take care of myself, I was smart and considered myself savvy, but I had never actually had to put that theory to the test. It was a frightening thought.
By the time my last table finished and I was done doing the side work and my cash out for the night, I was tired and stressed out. I was ready to change back into my normal clothes, get my sister some ice cream, and go home . . . well, not so much the last part, but still.
I twisted my hair up out of my face in the front, changed back into my jeans, and shoved my uniform into my purse to take it home to wash. Ramon still had a straggler at the bar and all the guys in the kitchen were busy cleaning or just ignoring me, so it looked like I was walking out to the car to grab my computer by myself. I really wished the idea didn’t have the hair on the back of my neck standing on end, and I was secretly disappointed that Race wasn’t already here to accompany me on the trek.
I pushed out into the night and let my gaze skim across the parking lot. Things were generally mellow here, but we had encountered more than one rowdy drunk on occasion. The last time it happened, Bax had shown up just in the nick of time, and ever since then things had been quiet. Dovie’s boyfriend had a reputation that reached far and wide, but she didn’t work here anymore, so now the degenerates were popping back up.
I always parked under the single flickering light that sat in parking lot and almost groaned out loud when I saw that tonight was the night it had decided to give up the ghost and burn out. The parking lot was dark and the walk to my car looked like it was a thousand miles instead of a few steps. My tummy started to churn and goose bumps broke out over my exposed skin. Taking a deep breath, I shored up the reserves and practically sprinted to where the BMW was parked. I put a hand on the door handle with a sigh and shrieked bloody murder when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder from behind.
Without stopping to think, I screamed at the top of my lungs, threw my head back until I felt it connect with something hard, and whirled around with my knee already rising into position to do the most damage. My assailant slapped a heavy hand across my mouth, clamped a rock-hard arm across my chest as I turned, and shoved me into the side of the car. I was still screaming behind the hand and my chest was heaving, but when familiar green eyes glared down at me, some of my panic started to subside. I wrapped my hands around the wrist of the arm that was covering my mouth and slumped against the car.