Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Alex
The school receptionist picks up on the second ring, and I’m already moving for the door. I grab my jacket off the hook before she finishes saying her greeting.
“This is Alex Riggs,” I say. “Evie’s mother. I need you to pull her from class, I want her to wait for me in the office. I’m on my way to pick her up right now.”
It takes effort to keep my voice level while my anxiety skyrockets. “Do not let her leave with anyone else. Not a teacher, not another relative, no one who says they know me or knows her. She stays inside the building until I am there. Do you understand me?”
There’s a pause on the other end as she recalibrates. “Of course, Ms. Riggs. I’ll let her teacher know immediately.”
“Thank you,” I say, as I hang up before she can ask any questions that I don’t have time to answer.
When I swing the door open, Victor is waiting for me in the hallway. He is leaning against the wall across from my door with his phone in one hand, his jacket on, and a set of keys in the other hand.
“I’ll drive,” he says, pushing off the wall.
I don’t argue. Pulling the door shut, flipping both the locks before moving toward the staircase.
He falls into step beside me, and we go down without speaking.
His car is parked a short distance down the street.
I don’t ask where his driver is; it seems completely irrelevant at the moment as I get in the passenger seat. My focus solely on getting to Evie.
Victor pulls into traffic, and the city moves past the window. I hold my phone in my lap and breathe through the panic. Evie is at school. The receptionist knows I’m on my way. Victor is here. Everything should be ok.
Should be.
“Tell me what happened at the café,” he says. His voice calm, but serious enough that I hear the strain in it.
Everything that happened this morning feels so far away from this car, from this moment, what was hours ago feels like days with the dread that sits in my chest. And I suddenly am struck with awe that so many days like that seem to be happening recently. First at the club, and now at the café.
“It was a quiet morning, normal honestly,” I began.
It had started like any other Tuesday morning.
Rosa had already arrived, the coffee station set up and restocked, which was a sure signal that she was in a good mood.
Which had been fairly consistent for the past few weeks.
Marco on the cash register, playing some low, happy tune on the radio beside it.
The morning light reflecting through the front windows.
“You’re three minutes late,” Rosa said, handing me my apron with a wink before restocking the pastry case.
I’d glanced at the clock on my phone, “I’m two minutes early according to this.”
“Well tell your phone it needs to learn to tell time,” she’d looked at me then, reading my face, eyes narrowing slightly. “You look different, there’s a glow to you.”
“No there isn’t,” I countered, tying the apron.
“Uh-huh, you look like you're actually sleeping these days,” she said. “Or are you not sleeping, but for good reason now?” she asked, eyebrows moving as she leaned on the counter. “Which is it?”
“It’s too early in the morning for this conversation, Rosa.” I laughed. “It’s only eight in the morning.”
“That wasn’t a denial.” She was already smiling as she moved to load more pastry. “Marco said he saw you getting out of a very nice car last week outside your building. Want to tell me who’s?”
“Marco should mind his own business.”
“Maybe, but he won’t, and neither will I. Those are the facts.” She pinned me with a knowing look. “Alex. Are you seeing someone?”
“What I am is starting on tables,” I said, evading the question with as much grace as I could muster.
“That’s a yes,” she called after me. “That is one hundred percent a yes, you don’t walk away from a question like that if it’s a no!”
I took the front section, Marco had the bar, and Rosa took the back section.
It was good, ordinary, smooth sailing until just after nine-thirty.
During a brief lull between the early rush and the mid-morning crowd, March had appeared at my elbow with an odd expression I’d never seen him with before.
“Hey,” he said. “I need to talk to you about something.”
Marco is twenty-two, effortlessly social, and not scared of anything as far as I could tell. Which was what made the expression he was wearing so alarming.
“If it’s about whose car—”
“No, it’s not about the car,” he cut me off.
Glancing toward the front window, toward the street.
“So this guy came in about an hour ago,” he paused, thinking longer than he usually would.
“He had this weird feeling about him, one that sets the hair on the back of your neck on end and you instinctively know — don’t make this guy unhappy. ”
I looked at him, feeling my eyes widen. “What did he look like?”
“Big. Well dressed, but not friendly. Not trying to look approachable.” He laughed slightly, uncomfortable as he thought back on the encounter.
“I was actually a little intimidated by the guy if I’m being honest. Like genuinely, and I don’t get intimidated often.
He was perfectly polite and everything but I didn't know there was something off about him…”
My hands had gone numb on the coffee cup I was holding. “What did he want?”
“He was looking for someone,” he said. “He asked if there was a girl working here named Yarina.” The name came out awkwardly on his tongue.
“When he described her… well he described you, Alex. I told him I didn’t know anyone by that name and he just — looked at me for a really long time.
Like he didn’t believe me.” He paused. “Then he said thank you and left. Stood outside for about twenty minutes. I watched him, but he just stood there on his phone, not really doing anything. It was just — strange. I think he’s still out there, Alex.
I thought I saw him across the street just now. ”
I was no longer looking at Marco. I was looking out the front window at the parking lot, the street, and the alley. My heart racing at a thousand miles per hour.
Yarina.
“Alex?” Marco said, drawing my attention once more. “Do you know who he is looking for? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“No,” I lied. Swallowing harshly. “Listen– I just remembered I have an appointment,” I paused, glancing at my watch for show, “in thirty minutes. I completely forgot about it. Can you cover my tables for a little bit?”
He blinked. “Yeah, sure, of course—”
“Thank you.” I was already moving toward the back, pulling my apron off, and tossing it on the counter as I grabbed my jacket and bag from the hook inside the kitchen door.
I was out the back door before Rosa could ask where I was going.
I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. I know what was waiting for me. ”
Victor was quiet while I retold the story. Driving and listening, waiting for me to finish. Taking in every piece of relevant information.
“I panicked,” I admit. “Marco was scared. He talks to everyone, and gets along with them. But I could tell he was scared.”
“He was right to be,” he agrees.
I look at my hands in my lap, thankful they are not shaking. “I keep thinking about the timing of it though. He said he came in about an hour before I got there. Which means they’ve been watching the café.”
“They’ve been establishing a pattern, yes,” Victor says. Which doesn’t settle my anxiety at all. “They weren’t ready to move yet, though, still gathering information. Until now.”
“What changed?”
He was quiet for a long time, watching the street light, waiting for the red to turn green. We are only two blocks from the school. I count them as we go.
“I don’t know.” He admits.
He pulls up in front of the school, and I am out of the car before it fully stops, anxious to get to Evie, to see that she is safe with my own eyes.
The front office is warm against the cold outside, and the receptionist looks up when I come through the door, but I don’t stop.
Evie is already standing from the chair she’d been in, braid slightly loose on the left side, backpack on, her eyes searching mine for answers already.
“What?” she asks. “What’s wrong?”
I put my arms around her, needing the four seconds of comfort. She gives them to me despite all the questions swirling. Then she pulls back and looks up at me, reading my face the way she has every day since we ran.
“What happened?” she asks, quietly enough that the receptionist doesn’t hear.
“I’ll explain on the way home,” I tell her. “Come on.”
Turning toward the doors, she follows me out, and when she sees Victor leaning against his car at the curb, she pauses for a moment. Looking at me inquisitively once more.
“Hi,” she says to him.
“Hi,” he says with a smile. “How was school?”
“It was fine, until the receptionist made me sit in the corner under the air conditioning vent,” she protests. “Who runs the air conditioning in the middle of winter anyways?”
He laughs at that, opening the back door for her. I wait until she’s inside, the door closed, and Victor is making his way back to the driver's side before I get in. And even then, I take a minute to take in our surroundings. Checking to see if I see anyone watching us.
Victor looks at me with knowing eyes and just nods. A silent exchange that says we need to move, and I slide into the passenger seat, pressing the door lock as soon as it shuts behind me.
“Victor?” Evie says, without looking away from the rearview mirror.
“Yes?”
“Are we going to be okay?” She asks in the smallest voice I’ve ever heard from her.
The car is quiet for a moment. I watch him take the question seriously as his eyes meet mine.
“Yes,” he says with absolute conviction. And I know by the look in his eyes that he means it.