“Good job. Those talking ladies. Are they moving or standing still?”
Baxter gives an exaggerated bob of his shoulders. “I don’t know. Want me to go look?”
I nod, hold up a finger. “But this time, I want you to stay there. Tell me everybody who’s out front, and then when they’re all gone and nobody else is coming, I want to know that, too. When you tell us the coast is clear, we’ll meet you at the stairs. Got it?”
“Got it.” He whirls around and takes off.
I look up and Jade is staring at me. Back straight, cheeks red, perspiration shining up her perfect skin. Silent but for the steady dragon breaths firing up and out her nose. I’m going to need to watch her, too. First chance she gets, this woman is going to come at me.
“The ladies are still talking,” Baxter hollers from the front door. “They’re laughing and talking and this is gonna take forever.”
“Tell me when they start to move, okay? And if anybody else comes by, I want to know.” I heave my backpack onto a shoulder, stepping to Jade’s side of the counter. “Get ready. When Baxter gives us the all clear, I need you two to move.”
From the other room, an update: “One of the ladies is turning around. Oh wait, now she’s going the other way.”
I gesture for Jade and Beatrix to get off their chairs, then nudge them with the gun until they’re flush against the edge of the dividing wall. One more step and they’ll be standing in the living room, for the ladies and the biker and the big brown truck to see.
“The ladies are crossing the street now,” Baxter announces, “but they’re walking real slow.”
“Are they gone?”
“Almost. Allllmost. Yep, now they’re gone. Everybody’s gone.”
I jam my gun into Jade’s spine and hustle them to the stairs.
C A M
3:41 p.m.
Last I knew, George lived in a brick-front town house, one of the overpriced ones that ballooned like mushrooms around a Whole Foods in a busy northern suburb. I don’t remember the exact address—after Flavio sent George packing, I blocked his number and deleted every trace of him from my phone—but I’ll recognize the place when I see it.
Waze detours me around the perimeter’s bumper-to-bumper traffic and dumps me onto Roswell Road, where I run up against a sea of brake lights in Sandy Springs proper. Nothing but gridlock, wall-to-wall cars in both directions.
My blood pressure, already flirting with the danger zone, spikes into dizzying territory. Especially once the light up ahead flips to green, but not a single tire moves because there’s nowhere for any of us to go. How the hell do people live in this town?
I stew in the gridlock, while George’s last words play on repeat in my mind, hurled over his shoulder on his way out the door.
You’ll pay for this, asshole. When you least expect it, I’m going to make you pay.
This was back in the spring, when the weather finally warmed up enough for us to haul the extra tables out of storage and line them up on the terrace—and thank God because the investor notes for two of my shops were coming due, and these are the type of people who don’t like to wait. I needed to fill every table and turn it multiple times because I was still plugging the hole from the last note and the ones before that, pulling profits from one shop to pay the debts on another like a demented game of Whac-a-Mole. Seventy-two cents of every dollar that I earn goes to my investors, which means （a） I’m an idiot; （b） at any given time, I don’t have more than a couple thousand bucks in the bank; and （c） I’m a damn idiot.
So there it is, ladies and gentlemen, the truth. Cam Lasky is broke. Despite five booming restaurants, despite the big Buckhead mansion and the custom cars and the hot wife dripping in diamonds, Atlanta’s Steak King is in hock up to his rent-a-crown. Lasky Steak is a house of cards. My success is a sham. I am literally and figuratively drowning in debt.
And no. I don’t miss the irony. Celebrity chef known for feeding Atlanta’s wealthiest bellies can barely feed his own family.
So back in March, when the evenings finally turned balmy, I couldn’t afford for George to throw a fit so epic it became known in Lasky kitchens as “pulling a George.” I couldn’t afford for him to break all those plates and glasses or destroy three crates of hundred-dollar wine, pitching bottle after bottle onto the concrete floor. And I definitely couldn’t afford for him to leave in the middle of the dinner rush and take three of the line cooks with him. After I deducted all the damages, his last paycheck was -$1.23.