Chapter 2: Don't Leave the City
Mara didn't answer right away.
She set the four drinks on the bar tray and kept her hands steady.
"I noticed he hadn't ordered," she said.
"And his chair was at the wrong angle."
Julian Cross looked at her the way people look at something they weren't expecting to find.
"You've done this before," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"No," she said.
"I just pay attention."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he said: "Who else did you tell?"
"No one."
"Who else saw you walk to that table?"
She thought about it honestly.
"The hostess, maybe.
I don't know."
Something shifted in his expression.
Not fear — something more controlled than fear.
A recalculation.
He said: "I need you to finish your shift as if nothing happened.
Can you do that?"
"I've been doing that for the last twenty minutes," she said.
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Then his phone lit up on the bar between them.
He glanced at it.
The name on the screen was two words she couldn't read from her angle — but she saw his jaw tighten.
He looked back at her.
"What's your name?"
"Mara."
"Mara." He said it once, like he was filing it somewhere.
"Don't leave the city this week."
Then he was gone.
She stood at the bar with four untouched drinks and the feeling that her deliberately unremarkable life had just ended.
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May you like
What Mara found out the next morning — about Julian Cross, about the man at Table Nine, and about why *she* was the one being watched — changes everything.
Click the link below to read the full story.
