My Sister Is the Warlord Queen novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Out by Noon

Roisin tears up Thayer's check in front of her customers, Carina's slap is caught, and Thayer learns his ships are stranded off Djibouti; Cal asks Shea who she works for.

Thayer got there at eleven-forty, because men like Thayer think being early is a threat.

Roisin had been up since four.

She'd baked anyway.

Soda bread, two trays of morning buns, the cardamom twists the old men from the parish came in for.

"If he takes it," she'd said at five, punching dough, "he's not taking it empty."

By eleven the place was full.

The parish men at the window table, two nurses from Carney Hospital, a mother with a stroller, a kid from the high school buying a muffin with quarters.

The bell over the door rang and the room went quiet.

Thayer came in first in a camel coat.

Carina came in behind him with her phone already up.

A locksmith with a toolbox came in last and wished he hadn't.

Thayer smiled at the customers.

"Morning, everyone," he said. "Last day. Grab what you can."

Roisin set down a tray of buns very carefully.

"Get out of my shop."

"Your shop." He laughed. "Babe, my company guaranteed every dollar of this lease. I pulled the guarantee this morning. That makes it nobody's shop."

He took an envelope out of his coat and laid it on the counter.

"Before the lawyers get ugly, there's this."

Roisin didn't touch it.

He slid it toward her with one finger.

"Fifty thousand," he said, loud enough for the window table. "For the procedure, and for keeping your mouth shut after."

One of the old parish men put his cup down.

The mother with the stroller turned around.

Roisin picked up the envelope.

She opened it and looked at the check.

Then she tore it in half, and in half again, and dropped the pieces into the tip jar.

"You don't get a say in what I keep," she said. "Not the baby. Not the shop. Not one thing."

The room didn't clap, but it wanted to.

Thayer's smile thinned.

"Fine." He jerked his head at the locksmith. "Change the back lock."

"Leave that lock alone."

The voice came from the stairwell door.

It was the old landlady who owned the building.

She was eighty if she was a day, in a housecoat and slippers, with her reading glasses on a chain.

"Lease is in her name," she said. "You were the guarantor. You pull your money, she finds another. She doesn't go anywhere."

"Ma'am, with respect..."

"With respect, get off my floor."

The locksmith picked up his toolbox and walked out.

I liked her immediately.

Carina stepped up beside Thayer and swung her phone toward me.

"Here she is," she said to whoever was watching. "The janitor who assaulted my fiance last night."

"I let him go," I said. "He fell into the ice."

"He has a sprained wrist!"

"He has two."

Carina turned to Roisin.

"You know what you are?" she said. "You're a girl who got pregnant on purpose to trap a rich man, and now you're crying about it to a room full of..." She looked at the parish men. "Whoever these people are."

"Get out," Roisin said again.

Carina slapped her.

It was fast and loud.

Roisin's head turned with it.

Carina's hand came back up for a second one, and I caught her wrist halfway there.

I didn't twist it.

I just held it.

She tried to pull free and couldn't, and I watched her understand that she couldn't.

"Let go of me!" She shoved her phone close to my face. "Everybody see this? She's attacking me!"

"Everybody saw you hit a pregnant woman," said one of the nurses.

Carina stopped yelling.

I let her go.

She stumbled back into Thayer, and Thayer's phone started ringing in his coat.

He pulled it out to silence it and saw the name on the screen.

He answered.

"What?"

I watched his face while he listened.

It's the part of my job I like best.

"What do you mean they turned back?" he said. "All three?"

He walked to the corner by the bread racks.

"Who pulled them? On whose order? Nobody pulls an escort mid-route!"

He listened again.

"Djibouti. They're sitting at Djibouti. What about the two in port?"

He put a hand over his eyes.

"No, I don't want to talk to the insurer! Call Ironwatch back! Get me whoever runs it!"

He listened a long time.

"What do you mean, she doesn't take calls?"

He hung up.

He stood there a second with the phone against his chest.

Then he looked around my sister's bakery like he'd forgotten why he was in it.

"Thayer?" Carina said. "Babe? What happened?"

"Get in the car."

"We're not done here."

"Get in the car!"

They went out together, Carina still filming, and the bell rang over their heads.

The kid with the quarters started laughing first.

Then one of the parish men.

Then the whole room.

Roisin sat down hard on the flour bin and put her hand on her red cheek.

"Did that just happen?" she said.

"It happened."

"What turned back? What ships?"

"Something at his job." I got a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and put it in her hand. "Sounds like a bad day for him."

She looked at me.

I looked at the peas.

When I turned around, the man from the gate was leaning in the open doorway.

Cal Ellery, in a canvas work coat now, with a coffee in his hand.

He'd seen all of it.

He waited until the customers were busy laughing.

Then he stepped close enough that only I could hear.

"My brother's escorts were pulled an hour after you drove your sister home last night," he said. "I'd like to know who you work for."

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