“They’re closing the restaurant,” she said. “This is my last shift.”
“Oh,” he said, and then, “Oh.”
She heard the bell ring from the kitchen. “One pesto thing with occasional prosciutto,” she said when she came back, setting the plate down in front of him. “Sorry, though. You didn’t get the prosciutto.”
“That’s a shame,” he said.
“They must have run out.”
“No,” he said, picking up his fork. “About your job.”
“It’s okay. I have another one.”
“She said grimly.”
That made her smile. “Well, I didn’t say it was a great job.”
“I’m surprised your parents let you have two jobs while you’re in school,” he said. “You must get spectacular grades.”
A thousand things were on the tip of Caro’s tongue but what came out was “I’m saving up to buy a car.”
“Still, two jobs? Is borrowing your mom’s car really so bad?”
“Walking is,” she said.
He blinked. “Walking. In this weather.”
Because the wind was biting and harsh even though it wasn’t yet November. Caro shrugged.
“None of your friends can give you a ride?”
She shrugged again. “I get off so late.”
“And your parents are okay with all of this.”
“Don’t make me keep shrugging,” she said.
He looked at her for a long moment and then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Life is complicated. Sure.”
He ate his pesto thing, said good night, and left the restaurant—presumably to go upstairs. He left her a big tip, but not big enough to make a difference. She fantasized briefly about being that lucky one-in-a-million waitress who got the lucky one-in-a-million tip: five hundred dollars, a thousand. Ten bucks was nice, though. She wouldn’t argue with ten bucks.
Finally, her shift was over. She walked out into the lobby, past the potted trees that nobody was supposed to notice were made of plastic. There was a twenty-four-hour coffee station set up near a small sitting area with a couch and a coffee table, but it was right in front of the door, so she couldn’t imagine why people would choose to sit there when they had an entire hotel room all to themselves upstairs. Someone was sitting there now, though. It was Turkey Club. He stood up when he saw her.
“I thought you might like a ride,” he said.
She felt her back go stiff and her guard go up. “No, thank you.”
“It’s thirty-eight degrees outside.”
“I like the cold.”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah. You’re probably right. You shouldn’t take rides from somebody you barely know. If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t want her to do it either. I just thought—it’s so cold and so late. I thought I’d offer, is all.”
“And I appreciate it,” she said briskly, “but no.” She was waiting for him to turn around and go away so she’d know he wasn’t going to follow her out to the parking lot. He wasn’t turning around or going away. He was standing by the couch, chewing his lip.
“Okay,” he said suddenly. “Here.” He walked over to the front desk. The woman working behind it was there almost every night when Caro left, but they’d never spoken, and Caro didn’t know the woman’s name. The man took out his wallet. “Here’s my driver’s license,” he said to the woman working the desk, laying the piece of plastic down on the high counter between them. “And here’s my business card. See? That’s me. Chris Mitchell. Matches my name on the room, right?”
“I guess so,” the woman said. She was much older than Caro. Her eyes flicked back and forth between Caro and the man, suspiciously.
“And you already have my license number and my credit card and everything, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
He looked at Caro. “So if something happens to you while you’re with me, they’ll know exactly who I am. Hell,” he added, turning to the clerk again, “if I’m not back in an hour, call the cops straight off, okay? Just to be on the safe side.”
Caro bit back a smile. He saw. She saw him seeing.
“Let me give you a ride,” he said. “That’s it. I promise.”
She thought about it for another second. “Fine,” she said.
The woman behind the desk shook her head.
It really was cold outside and Caro was shivering by the time he turned the engine on. His car was new, like his phone and his haircut. It smelled faintly of coconut and was very clean. There were a few coffee cups on the floor mats and a stack of CDs tucked into the console, but no fast-food wrappers, no dirty shirts balled up in the backseat. “The thing is,” he said, turning the heat up, “I wouldn’t want my daughter walking around this late at night in this weather either. Where do you live?”
“Why did you say an hour?” she said.
“Because I don’t know where you live,” he said patiently. “I mean, I’m assuming that if you walk, it’s relatively close. But I don’t know that. I’d like to help you out and all, but I don’t actually want to get picked up by the police on suspicion of kidnapping.”