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“Call me anyway.”
I stared in awe at the man who was standing six feet away from me. He was so utterly different from Collin. Even though we hadn’t known each other long, I could tell he was a man of character—a man who stood by his word. “I’m more worried about you, but you should be okay during the day. For now. Eventually they’ll be strong enough to go out in the daylight, but today you should be safe.”
“I’ll promise to call you if you’ll promise to call me.”
“Deal.”
He turned to leave, but then stopped as if he’d forgotten something and spun around. “Will you have dinner with me tonight?”
It was my turn to be shocked. “Um…”
“So we can discuss my decision. I think it warrants more than a phone call.”
“Oh…yeah.”
He playfully cocked an eyebrow. “See you tonight. Seven?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll pick you up at your apartment if that’s okay. Think of someplace that serves good seafood.”
He smiled and his face lit up, making him look even more gorgeous than usual. If I were the swooning type of girl, I would have been in a heap on the floor. As it was, my stomach fluttered with anticipation.
“Have a good day, Ellie.”
“You too.” I watched him leave, wondering how he’d gotten the upper hand.
After working on the main rooms at the inn, I walked back to my apartment to get my car then left for my shift at Darrell’s.
When I got there, I reviewed the daily specials and headed to the dining room to check on the flatware, hoping for an uneventful second day.
Carly was standing behind the cash register counting money in the drawer, but she glanced up when I walked by. “Oh, Ellie. I forgot. I came in to work part of the dinner shift last night and a couple of guys were in here asking about you.”
I froze in my tracks and tried to act nonchalant. “Really? What did they say?”
She thumbed through a stack of bills, then put it in the drawer. “They asked if I knew a redheaded woman named Ellie.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“I asked if they knew you from the New Moon? I figured they were regulars of yours there.”
“And…?”
Carly scrunched her nose and shrugged. “I told them you were working the lunch shift today.”
Carly was right. They could have been regulars from the New Moon. I was probably overreacting. “What did they look like?”
“A couple of beefy guys.”
So much for my cockeyed optimism.
Carly unlocked the doors and the sight of a police car pulling into the parking lot actually gave me comfort. Talk about a 180-degree change.
A few customers trickled in, and I kept a close watch on the door. Tom and his deputy friend weren’t there, and though Collin showed up, he was seated in a different section. I caught him watching me, but I did my best to ignore him. I considered telling him about Wapi’s visit and his information about Ukinim but decided to keep that to myself for now. Collin knew that animals were being killed. Did it really matter to him whether or not these particular deaths were sanctioned by Okeus?
The usual swarm of worries and fears was still swirling through my head, with the added worry that Marino’s men had found me, so I was thankful I could concentrate on the lunch crowd and forget them for a while. I was starting to feel okay again when Tom came into the dining room wearing his police uniform. He looked like he was a man looking for something other than the seafood platter. Sure enough, his eyes searched the room and landed on me.
Oh, shit.
