Chapter 3: Don't Talk to Anyone
I stared at my phone long after the manager hung up.
Harold was still standing on my front step, watching me.
"What did he say?" he asked.
"He told me not to talk to anyone."
Harold's jaw tightened.
"He said that to you?
After they fired you?"
"Five words.
That was it." I looked down at the prepaid phone still sitting in the box.
"Harold, why would he call me to say that unless he already knew something was wrong?"
Harold didn't answer right away.
He looked out toward the street, then back at me.
"Susie, I need to tell you something.
Something I should have said yesterday."
I waited.
"When management was reviewing that camera footage — I was in the back hallway.
I could hear everything.
The manager wasn't just looking at the footage of you clearing the table." Harold lowered his voice.
"He fast-forwarded through something.
Then he stopped it.
Then he deleted a section."
My stomach dropped.
"He deleted footage?"
"I can't prove it.
I only saw the screen for a second.
But he moved fast, Susie.
The kind of fast you move when you don't want anyone to see what you're doing."
I sat back down on the step.
My knees weren't steady.
"Harold.
That girl's mother called the cafe and threatened a scandal.
Within twenty minutes I was fired.
And now the manager is calling me telling me to keep quiet." I looked up at him.
"Does that sound like a coincidence to you?"
"No," he said quietly.
"It doesn't."
I picked up the prepaid phone again.
The cracked screen flickered.
There were more messages I hadn't read yet.
I scrolled up slowly.
Most were short.
Logistics.
Timing.
But one message, sent the night before the teenagers came into the cafe, stopped me cold.
It said: *"She works the lunch shift.
Table four is in her section.
Make sure Kayla sits there."*
My hand went still.
They had known my schedule.
They had known which table was mine.
Whoever sent these messages had planned this before those teenagers ever walked through the door.
"Harold," I said.
"Someone knew I worked the lunch shift.
Someone knew my section."
He read the message over my shoulder.
His face changed.
"Susie, that's not a teenager pulling a prank." He straightened up slowly.
"Someone told them to come to your table specifically."
I thought about the girl — Kayla, apparently — the way she had come rushing back in.
The performance of it.
The shouting across the cafe so everyone would hear.
The immediate phone call to her mother, who had a speech ready before anyone had even finished explaining the situation.
It wasn't panic.
It was a script.
"I need to find out who sent these messages," I said.
Harold nodded.
"You need someone who knows about phones.
Someone who can trace a number."
I thought for a moment.
Then I thought of my neighbor's son, Danny.
He was twenty-four, worked in IT, and had been kind to my grandchildren more times than I could count.
"I know someone," I said.
I stood up, box in hand, and that's when I saw it.
A car was parked across the street.
Dark blue.
Engine running.
May you like
It had been there since before Harold arrived.
And the driver was watching my front door.
