But a strange tingle went up my arm.
I clenched my left hand a few times, watching the lines. Nothing. Which was good for a day at the Freeze, but not so good if any bad guys came around. What triggered it? And how did it work with my gaming glove?
I didn’t have time to experiment—and I didn’t want to blow up the Freeze right before my boss showed up—so I pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves. When Shirleen arrived, I was industriously prepping for the morning rush.
She came around back, pulled her dyed blond hair into a ponytail, and got to work beside me. We chopped in silence for a minute.
“I am really sorry,” I said.
She sighed. “Me too, sweetie.”
The quaver in her voice made my knife skitter across the board. “Thanks for giving me another chance.”
“Imogen…”
I stiffened, my heart starting to pound.
“Sweetie, I know when we talked yesterday—”
“You can’t fire me,” I blurted out. “You can’t.”
“I don’twantto,” she said.
With shock reverberating in my ears like a gunshot, I almost didn’t hear the rest of what she said. “…Complaints…” blah blah blah “…Health inspector said…” blah blah blah “Out of my hands…”
“Wait, what inspector?” I was the manager; I was supposed to know about all health inspections.
She frowned at my interruption. “I didn’t get his name. But he came to my condo last night and said that sort of violation could get me shut down and that I needed to let you go.”
For kissing a guy behind the counter? Suspicion had me clenching my fists again. “Was he a tall guy, dark hair, expensive suit, kind of an asshole?”
“Imogen, no cursing,” she said, but it was a reflexive order, and I could tell she was thinking. “Yes, he wasn’t very nice about it.”
Dane. He hadn’t gotten back to me last night because he was too busy sabotaging my life.
A simmering anger lit in my gut. Or maybe that was the quad-caff really kicking in.
Shirleen was talking again. “—I’m sorry, sweetie, but I really can’t risk it.”
Yeah, and I couldn’t ask her to.
And really…I didn’t even know why I’d come in today with all the shit that was happening. The Freeze was nothing compared to the bullet hole I’d seen in Brayden’s forehead—except that maybe I’d wanted to hold on to the broken pieces of my life. Something normal, even if I’d hated my job. Not to mention, I needed the paycheck. Dane threatening Shirleen was bad enough. But someone else could come after me too, just like they’d gone after Brayden. I loathed my coworkers but did I want to see more of them, like their brains all over the chopping boards?
Rhetorical question, but no, I did not. I put down my knife, pulled off my apron, ditched my hairnet.
It felt like I was being stripped of everything I had left.
I guess I kind ofwasstripping, and every item I put down drained some of the anger, leaving me cold.
I pulled off the nitrile gloves last, with a snap.
The purple X glinted.
“Imogen…” Shirleen’s plaintive voice stopped me.
“It’s not your fault,” I told her. It was out of her hands. And into mine, just as I’d thought.
She fumbled in her pocket, and I tensed. What was she going for…?
