Chapter 2 - The Performance and the Escape
The man at the counter turned.
His eyes found Claire.
The stranger smiled suddenly.
It transformed his face.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he said loudly.
“Your mother will kill me if I make you late again.”
Claire understood.
The performance had begun.
She forced irritation into her face.
“Dad, I’m working.”
The word felt ridiculous.
The stranger relaxed half an inch.
“That’s why I told you to ask Dean if you could leave early.”
Claire’s manager looked up from the register.
Dean Mercer had spent three years treating Claire like she was simultaneously his most dependable employee and the person he least wanted photographed near the front window.
Whenever a local blogger came in, he somehow found a reason to move Claire to the rear section.
Claire was a size twenty.
Dean never insulted her directly.
He was too careful for that.
He simply praised the “clean visual” of younger, thinner servers while asking Claire to cover twice as many tables.
Today, however, Dean was staring at the stranger as if he recognized him.
His face had gone colorless.
Claire noticed that too.
“Sir,” Dean said.
The stranger looked over.
“Morning.”
Dean swallowed.
Claire had never seen her manager swallow an entire argument before speaking.
“Everything all right?”
“Perfect.”
The stranger reached into his coat and placed two hundred dollar bills beside Claire’s order pad.
“Family issue.”
Dean nodded immediately.
“Claire, go.”
She almost refused out of principle.
Then she saw one of the gray suited men place his coffee down untouched.
His right hand disappeared inside his jacket.
The stranger noticed.
“So did I,” he whispered.
Claire’s pulse kicked.
“What do I do?”
“Walk to the kitchen.”
“There’s no rear public exit.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“I studied the building.”
That answer was worse than no answer.
“Who are you?”
His eyes returned to the silver key.
“Someone who promised your father you would never need to know my name.”
Claire stopped breathing for one startled second.
“My father left before I was born.”
“No.”
The stranger looked at her with something that resembled regret.
“He died before you were born.”
The man in gray began walking toward them.
“Move, Claire.”
She moved.
Not because she trusted the stranger.
Because the man approaching them had just opened his jacket far enough for her to see the outline of a pistol.
Claire turned toward the kitchen.
“Dean, I’m taking ten.”
Dean said nothing.
She pushed through the swinging door.
Behind her, she heard the stranger address the approaching man.
“You picked the wrong diner.”
A second voice answered.
“We just want the girl.”
Claire reached the kitchen.
Marty, the cook, looked up.
“Everything okay?”
“No.”
She crossed the room.
The rear delivery door was chained because the frame had cracked two months earlier.
There was one other exit.
A narrow laundry window above the utility sink.
Claire looked at it.
Then at herself.
She almost laughed again.
Of course.
People had spent years assuming a plus size woman could not move quickly.
Claire had stopped correcting them.
She dragged a milk crate beneath the window, climbed up, shoved the pane open, and squeezed through with far more determination than grace.
Her apron caught on the latch.
She yanked until the fabric tore.
May you like
Cold morning air hit her face.
She dropped into the alley.
