16. Dannica #2
“Back off!” I snap, already swinging. He doesn’t let go. The canteen connects with a solid thunk against his arm. Hard enough to sting, hard enough that he jerks back a step. He doesn’t release the purse, so I jolt forward, my teeth rattling.
“Oh.” I blink. “Okay, you’re strong.”
“Let go, little lady,” he growls again.
His hand closes around the second strap before I can react, and suddenly we’re tugging. Just full-on, ridiculous, completely uncoordinated tug-of-war over my purse.
“Are you serious right now?” I demand, yanking it back toward me. “You’re mugging me, and this is the technique?”
He pulls again, harder this time, the force dragging me another step forward.
“Let. Go.”
“No,” I shoot back, digging my heels in. “You let go.”
It’s not even about the purse anymore, but the principle. And possibly spite. Definitely spite. Because damn it, I nearly fell off my bike for the second time in a month, and now I’m about to get mugged? Over my dead body.
We grapple, the strap stretched tight between us, his grip strong but not decisive. Not the quick grab-and-run I was expecting. It’s messy. Awkward. Almost like…
Wait.
I squint at him, something in my brain finally clicking through the chaos. The mask. That is a very specific little old lady. Really specific.
Recognition flickers.
“Luke?”
The name slips out before I can stop it.
He freezes. In that split second of hesitation, someone comes out of nowhere, a blur of movement from the side, and hits Luke straight across the face.
The impact lands with a loud, echoing crack.
His head snaps to the side, his grip loosening instantly as he stumbles back.
The purse jerks free in my hands, and I stagger with the sudden release.
I blink furiously, because that escalated fast.
Luke goes down hard. One second he’s there, looming and tugging on my purse, the next he’s flat on his back with someone on top of him. It takes my brain a second to catch up. Mystery Man. Mystery Man is on top of Luke.
“Whoa… hey…”
Everything starts happening at once.
“Stop! Stop! It’s a prank!” Mary bursts out from behind Grandma’s car like she’s been waiting for her cue in the worst play ever written, her hands flapping wildly as she runs toward us.
“A prank!” she repeats, slightly out of breath. “It’s just a prank!”
Luke, still on the ground, looking significantly less intimidating and significantly more like a man who just got his ass handed to him by a fist, throws his hands up.
“Prank!” he echoes quickly. “It’s a prank!”
I stare at them. Then I look at Mystery Man, who does not immediately look convinced. There’s a beat where everything hangs, Mystery Man still braced, Luke still pinned, Mary hovering like a panicked stage manager.
Luke rubs his jaw where Mystery Man clocked him and looks at Mary. “I thought you were going to be the hero.”
I flick my gaze to Mary who shrugs sheepishly. “I’m sorry.”
Slowly, Mystery Man’s grip loosens. Not all the way, but enough to stop the assault. Not enough to say he trusts literally anything about this situation.
Luke takes the opportunity to very carefully not move, his hands still up like surrender is the only sensible option here. My heart is still pounding, adrenaline nowhere near done with me yet, my brain trying to catch up to the fact that I was just mugged. No, fake mugged.
“This was a prank?” I manage, my voice coming out somewhere between incredulous and mildly hysterical.
“Surprise?” Mary offers weakly.
I open my mouth. Close it. Reopen it. Because I have several questions, and none of them are polite. And that’s when someone clears their throat. It’s delicate. Polite. Completely out of place. We all look up.
Standing a few feet away, like she’s just wandered into the wrong scene entirely, is a well-dressed, middle-aged woman with perfectly styled ginger hair and the kind of posture that says she irons her napkins for fun. She’s holding a piece of paper.
“Sorry,” she says, her tone pleasant but edged with confusion, “is there some sort of queue for this?” She holds up the paper, which I now see is a coupon.
Silence. Complete, and utter silence. My brain finally gives up. At that exact moment, the back doors to the diner slam open.
“Wait, I didn’t think anyone besides Mystery Man lived in those apartments.” Quadri’s voice carries before she’s even fully outside, her words tumbling over each other as she steps into the scene, then stops.
Because, objectively? This is a scene.
Her eyes flick from Mystery Man half-crouched over Luke, to Luke still on the ground with his hands up, to Mary hovering like she’s about to confess to several crimes, to me gripping my purse and trying very hard not to lose what’s left of my sanity.
Quadri straightens slightly, like she’s decided to simply accept none of this.
“Also,” she adds, brushing her hands down her apron like we’re not in the middle of whatever this is, “I’m so sorry the restaurant isn’t empty yet, we got absolutely slammed from three, and I’m still catching up.”
Mary leans toward me and whispers, “Oops. My fault.” She clears her throat. “If you’ll wait around the front, I’ll…um…sort everything out.”
“Oh shucks,” the woman says. “I saw the commotion and thought we were all lining up here.”
Mary looks at her. “If you’ll just follow me.”
I’m so shocked by all of this that I also follow her. We’re all a little shocked, so everyone follows suit. Luke struggles to his feet slowly as if any sudden movement might set Mystery Man off again.
The moment we get to the front, the doors open and a small wave of customers begins filtering out, all of them laughing, chatting, clearly having had the best time of their lives while I was being fake-mugged in the back lot. Sure, they couldn’t see me but still…
Shelly’s voice carries from inside, bright and warm. “Bye! See you again soon!”
Then she steps out. Her gaze sweeps over the group, then locks in. She takes in Mystery Man, Luke, Mary, and Quadri.
“Where are the bikes?”
I blink. “What do you mean?”
“Where’s the tandem bike?”
There’s a split second where no one answers.
Then Mystery Man, still a little keyed up, still not entirely relaxed, deadpans, “It broke in two.”
Shelly blinks.
“Aww, man,” Luke says. “I worked so hard on that.”
Quadri comes to the front. “You guys can come in now.”
Something in me finally snaps. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just clean, sharp, done.
“Inside,” I say.
The word cuts through the chatter, the confusion, Luke mourning his mechanical masterpiece, Mary’s lingering “oops” energy, Mystery Guy’s barely contained readiness to throw another punch if necessary.
No one moves, so I take a step forward and point toward the diner door with an authority I did not know I possessed five minutes ago.
“Inside,” I repeat, slower this time. “All of you. I want answers. And I want them now!”
My gaze sweeps the group one by one.
Mystery Man thumbs in the general direction of the grocery store parking lot. “I should probably get the bike and go.”
“No,” I snap, then immediately regret it. He’s a victim in this, too. “I mean, please join us. And bring the bike. We need the evidence.”
He nods, and everyone else looks anywhere but at me.
Then, like I’ve just activated some kind of deeply ingrained survival instinct, they start moving.
Mary first, because guilt. Luke next because he knows he’s in trouble.
Quadri gestures vaguely at the ginger-haired woman, who is still holding her coupon and now looks like she’s accidentally joined a field trip.
“You too,” I say, already turning toward the door. “If you’re here for food, you’re going to get a show first.”
She hesitates, then follows. I’ve just gone off like a shit beetle, so she probably isn’t taking any chances. I touch her shoulder as she passes me. “Your meal is on the house.”
She smiles gratefully and follows the line of troublemakers. I head to the back to grab my bike. Even though it betrayed me, it’s still mine. As I haul it into the back room, the broken chain gives one last pathetic scrape against the pavement.
It dawns on me that Mystery Man will have to drag two bikes over here, so I set the bike just inside the door and jog after him.
I fall into step next to him. “Hey, I figured you’d need a hand.”
He smiles. “Thanks.”
When we reach the broken bike—or should I say bikes—I stare down at them, hands on my hips. “Oh wow, yours are way more messed up than mine.”
“Yeah, I don’t think you’re supposed to attach two separate bikes to each other.”
I hold back a growl. Those guys have a lot of explaining to do. I bend and grab half of the bike as Mystery Man does the same.
“Hey, thanks for coming to my rescue back there.”
“No problem.”
We don’t say much else. I’m too busy trying to figure out exactly what got into my friends, and I’m sure he’s equally confused.
When we arrive back at the diner, I shove the door open with my hip and step inside, the familiar warmth of the diner wrapping around us as the last few stragglers filter out, still laughing, still completely unaware of the chaos that just unfolded outside.
I lean my half of the bike against the counter and turn back to face the group, planting myself squarely in the middle of the floor. I cross my arms and lift my chin.
“We are going to start,” I say, my voice deceptively calm, “with someone explaining to me why I was just fake-mugged behind my own damn diner.”
There’s a pause. A breath.
“And I swear,” I add, narrowing my eyes slightly, “if the answer is for fun, I am flipping a table.”
A heavier silence settles over the room, tense and anticipatory and just a little bit terrified.
Good.
They should be.