Chapter 9 - The Candlelight Witness
I told myself I could finish his table and get away clean if I just kept moving. I stacked the extra bread plate on top of the salad plate and reached for his water glass, trying to keep my face turned toward the windows and out of the candlelight.
He didn't stop me. He just watched, and that was worse.
"Leave the wine," he said. "Sit for ten seconds, Harper."
"I can't sit on shift," I said. My voice sounded thin even to me. The candle in the glass holder sputtered when the busboy passed with a tray, and the flame leaned sideways and then straightened. For a second the warm light washed right across my left cheek.
He looked at it. Not like the other tables that glanced and looked away. He studied it.
"That swelling's fresh," he said quietly. "That purple around your eye, the red underneath. That's tonight or last night. That's not an old trip."
My hand tightened on the edge of the plate. I wanted to tell him he wasn't a doctor, he didn't know, but my throat closed. The candle made everything too clear — the heat on my skin, the ache pulsing under the makeup I'd patted on in the locker room.
"It looks worse in this light," I said.
"No," he said. "It looks true in this light."
I shifted my weight and my apron brushed against my leg. I felt the hard rectangle in the pocket. I'd put my phone on silent after the second buzz during appetizers, shoved it deep so I wouldn't feel it. Just thinking about it made my fingers move. I pressed my palm flat over the pocket through the apron, like I could hold it down.
He saw that too. His eyes dropped to my hand and back up.
"You keep checking for it," he said.
"I'm not—" I started, and right then it happened.
A low buzz against my thigh. Once, then again. Even on silent I felt it through the fabric. My whole body locked. I stopped breathing with the dirty plates still in my hands, my palm pressed hard over the pocket.
The vibration stopped. The dining room kept going around us — ice clinking, someone laughing too loud near the bar — but my ears rang like the room had gone empty.
"Harper," he said.
I forced myself to lift my hand off the pocket and adjust my grip on the plates. I didn't pull the phone out. I didn't look. I couldn't look, not with him watching and the tables watching and the light right on my face.
"It's nothing," I said.
He leaned forward a little, elbows on the white cloth, the candle between us. The flame threw his tattoos into shadow and light.
"Your face changed," he said. "You weren't just nervous before. You're scared now."
I shook my head before he'd even finished. "It's the dinner rush. My manager—"
"Don't," he said, not loud. He glanced at the pocket where my hand had been. "You didn't even read it and your hands are shaking."
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I looked down and hated that he was right. The rim of the plate rattled faint against the other plate. I set them down harder than I meant to on the edge of his table, next to the menu folder, to make it stop.
The candle flickered again. I felt the warmth crawl up my bruised cheek and I turned my head just enough to get out of it, but it was too late. He'd already seen everything the light had to show.
