“I…” Indecision wavered in his hazel eyes.
“You're hungry? Well, you came to the right place. Let me get your orders.” Holding her pen at the ready, she turned toward the other guy. “What can I get you?”
After writing down their orders, Josie hurried back to the counter and cornered Arlene.
“Can you take table fifteen for me?”
“Thought you needed the tips?”
“Yeah, well, I'd rather gnaw off my own big toe than take any money from him.”
Arlene smacked her wad of pale-pink gum. “Sure, I'll take 'em.”
Anxious energy burned a hole through Josie's stomach as she marched past the order pick-up station and into the break room. The door's resounding thwack as she let it slam shut did little to relieve her aggression.
“I knew it. I just knew something was wrong. What happened?” Cy leaned against the opposite wall, his hands stuffed in his jeans pockets, an invisible aura of tightly wound energy filling the room.
Relief seeped into her bones. She'd really started to worry something had happened even though her twin alarm hadn't gone off. All the emotions of the past few days surged to the surface and she couldn't repress the tears making her blink or the sniffle that had her nose twitching. What was the point in hiding them? Cy always knew.
“Who is he? I have time to pay him a visit before leaving town.”
At six-foot-five-inches tall, with each inch covered in muscle, her little brother could put the hurt on a man. But this time he was up against someone who brought a bazooka to a knife fight.
“It's Snips.”
He made a gagging face. “Snips? That's disgusting. What were you thinking?”
Men. Of course that's where his brain went first.
“I didn't fuck him, Mr. All Brawn No Brains. He's forcing forty thousand dollars out of me that he says you owe him—money I don't have, by the way. So why don't you tell me what in the hell you were thinking?”
Cy shoved his fingers through his platinum hair, still cut short from his time in a hush-hush Marine unit. “Shit. I was hoping it wouldn't come to this.”
“Come to what?”
He grabbed her backpack from its hook and strutted over, dropping the bag at her feet. “You have to leave town. Now.”
“Hey, I would be if I didn't have Snips hounding me to pay your debt or he'll get the cash from Mom and Dad. You know they don't have any money.”
“Mom and Dad are safe. I moved them to Lake Havasu last ni
ght. A buddy worked it so Dad got hired on with a plumbing crew there. Mom's a block away from a dialysis-care unit.”
The twin-thing went on full alert and a jolt of electricity charged down her spine. “Cy, you better tell me what's going on. Now.”
He crossed his arms over his wide chest and hit her with his best menacing glare, but said nothing.
“Look, I know you supposedly can kill me with only your thumb, but stop trying to scare me into shutting up. It won't work.” Josie jabbed her finger into the middle of his hard chest. “Spill it.”
He ground his teeth. “Snips is working his way up the chain of command and thinks that bringing me to the Callandriello capos will get him promoted even faster.”
“No offense, Cy, 'cuz you know I love you, but how does you owing forty K give him more influence?”
“I don't owe Snips a penny. The bastard is trying to flush me out and using you to do it. The Callandriellos want me because they have a hit out on the governor's daughter and I'm the one keeping her alive. You didn't really think I left the Corps to do odd jobs, did you?”
Little incongruities suddenly made sense. The travel. Cy being out of touch so much. The standoffish way he treated her whenever she asked what was going on in his life. “Thank God, I was worried you were gambling again. So who do you work for?”
“That's not important.”