CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Liam
I was halfway through signing a supplier invoice when the office door opened.
Normally I would have finished what I was doing before looking up, but something about the silence made me raise my head almost immediately.
Nora stood just inside the doorway with one hand still resting on the handle.
She looked too calm, and I’d learned the hard way that her quiet moments worried me far more than the loud ones.
She closed the door behind her and walked toward my desk without saying anything.
I put my pen down. “I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t walk into my office like this unless something happened. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She reached into the pocket of her apron and carefully placed a neatly folded tissue on my desk.
“I need you to read this. I’ve been trying to convince myself all the way here that there’s another explanation for it, but I can’t think of one.
I think if I tried to explain it before you saw it, it wouldn’t make sense. ”
I looked from the tissue to her before unfolding it. There were only five words: He cannot protect you forever. For a long moment, I said nothing. Then I folded the tissue exactly the way I’d found it and placed it back on the desk before meeting Nora’s eyes again.
“Start at the beginning and tell me everything, exactly the way it happened. Don’t leave out anything, no matter how small or unimportant it seems, because I’ve learned that the details people dismiss are usually the ones that matter most.”
She nodded slowly before taking a seat opposite me.
“It happened at the café this morning, during the quieter part of the shift. A man came in by himself and sat at one of my tables near the window. At first he seemed completely ordinary. He ordered a black coffee and a blueberry muffin, made a few jokes about the food, and talked about how much he liked quiet cafés. Nothing about him made me think he was dangerous, and if I’m being honest, I probably wouldn’t have remembered him at all if everything had ended there.
” She paused, searching her memory. “The longer we talked, the more personal his questions became. They still sounded polite, but he wanted to know how long I’d worked there, whether I enjoyed the job, and if I knew all the regular customers.
Then he mentioned that people seemed happy to have me back, and I remember thinking it was a strange thing for someone to notice after sitting in the café for less than an hour.
I brushed the feeling aside because I thought I was letting everything that happened get into my head. ”
She looked down at the folded tissue. “When he finished his coffee, he paid the bill, thanked me for looking after him, and walked out like every other customer. I cleared his table a little while later and found that tissue folded underneath his coffee cup. It had been placed there so carefully that I couldn’t ignore it.
Something made me open it, and when I read what was inside...
” She drew in a slow breath. “I realized that conversation had never been ordinary.”
I listened without interrupting her once. When she finished speaking, I picked up the tissue again and looked at the message a second time.
Someone had walked into the café, sat across from Nora for almost an hour, studied her, left a message that was meant as much for me as it was for her, and then walked back out again without attracting the attention of a single person working for me.
That thought settled over me like ice. I pressed the intercom button on my desk.
“Paddy, I need you to come to my office straight away. Bring Diggs and Michael with you. We have a situation that can’t wait, and I want all three of you here before we discuss what happens next.”
I released the button and leaned back in my chair.
Nora watched me quietly. “You’re angry.”
“I am,” I admitted. “Not because you came back to work. I’m angry because somebody managed to get close enough to you to make a point, and then he walked away. That’s a mistake I don’t intend to let him make twice.”
Less than a minute later, there was a knock at the office door before Paddy stepped inside with Diggs and Michael close behind him. Paddy looked from me to Nora and immediately realized something was wrong.
“We were checking tonight’s reservations when your message came through. Judging by the look on your faces, I don’t imagine this is about suppliers or staffing. Tell me what happened.”
Without saying a word, I slid the folded tissue across the desk toward him.
Paddy slowly unfolded it. The room was silent while his eyes moved across the words on the tissue.
Diggs and Michael waited beside Paddy without saying a word, watching his face before they looked at the tissue themselves.
When Paddy finally passed the tissue to them, each man studied it carefully.
By the time it was back on my desk, their relaxed expressions were gone.
Diggs was the first to speak. “The person who wrote this note knew what they were doing. This note wasn’t just to scare Miss Walsh. The message is for both of you. He wanted Miss Walsh to know someone was watching her, and he wanted you to know that he got close to her without being stopped.”
“Thank you for spelling it out like that, Diggs. I think that’s pretty obvious, don’t you?” Paddy said.
“Diggs is right, though,” I said. “He could have gone up to her anywhere if he just wanted to scare her. He chose the café, sat there for almost an hour, talked to her like a normal customer, and left without anyone noticing him. That tells me he was patient and confident that nobody would see what he was really doing.”
Paddy turned his chair to face Nora. “Miss Walsh, I know this is hard, but I need you to think about everything that happened. Start from when he walked into the café, and tell us everything. I would rather hear something that means nothing than miss the one thing that tells us who this man is.”
Nora took a breath before she started, and then she told them the story again.
“The strange thing was that he didn’t do what most people do.
Most people look at their phones while they wait for their orders.
He didn’t. Every time I went to his table, he talked to me.
The conversation was always about me. By the time he left he knew a lot about my life, but I didn’t know anything about him. ”
Diggs put his arms on his knees. “Did he tell you his name or where he was from? People usually say something about themselves without realizing it, even when they think they’re being careful.”
Nora slowly shook her head. “That’s what’s been bothering me since I found the note.
He never told me anything about himself.
Every answer he gave me made me talk about myself.
He wanted to know how long I worked at the café, if I liked my job, and if I knew the customers.
At the time it seemed like a conversation.
Now it seems like he was collecting information. ”
Michael crossed his arms. “That takes planning. Most people can’t have a conversation like that for an hour without saying something they shouldn’t. If he did it, then this wasn’t a chance meeting.”
I agreed. “Nobody spends that long talking to someone before leaving a message like this unless they had a reason. He went to the café to find Nora, and everything he did was on purpose.”
The room was silent again. I looked at Nora, who was staring at the tissue on my desk.
“There’s one more thing I want you to think about,” I said quietly. “Forget the conversation and picture the man. His face, his smile, his voice, the way he walked into the café. Sometimes you remember something before you know why it’s important.”
Nora closed her eyes for a moment. Nobody said a word. The room was still as Nora thought about the man. Then her eyes opened. She looked at me, and I could see she was starting to remember something.
“I know that face,” she said.
Everyone in the room turned to her. She swallowed before she continued.
“I didn’t recognize him at the café, but I’ve seen him before...and I don’t think it was just at the café.”
The words hung in the air for a moment. Paddy leaned forward first. His eyes were fixed on Nora.
“You know his face, Miss Walsh?” he asked. “Think carefully before you answer. Are you saying you recognized him from somewhere else, or are you saying you’ve seen him before this morning at the café?”
Nora looked from Paddy to me. Her expression was caught somewhere between confusion and certainty.
“I’ve seen him before,” she said slowly. “I just can’t place where. In the café he looked like any customer. He was polite, calm, and completely ordinary. But now that I’m thinking about his face properly, I know I’ve seen him somewhere else.”
I kept my voice steady. “Take your time, Nora. Don’t force the memory. Tell me the first thing that comes to you when you picture the man.”
She closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips lightly against her temple.
“I remember the man sitting down. That’s the first thing I can see clearly. The man was alone. He chose a place where he could look across the room without anyone paying attention to him. At the time I didn’t think anything of it, because people sit alone in bars all the time.”
My stomach tightened. “The bar,” I said quietly.
Her eyes opened. “Yes. I think it was the bar. It was a few days ago, when I’d just returned to work.
I remember walking past him while carrying drinks.
I remember thinking he looked familiar even then, but I couldn’t figure out why.
The man ordered something, stayed for a while, and left without speaking to anyone. ”
Diggs exchanged a look with Michael. “So the man was already inside the bar before he approached Nora at the café,” he said. “He was watching Nora’s routine, learning where she worked, and figuring out how close he could get without raising suspicion.”