A Night With A Stranger novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Table Nine

Jada pays for a hair test, pours Dennis's whiskey into his lap in front of the whole club, and Evan Brodsky walks in through the steel door.

I got home to my room over the laundromat at eleven that morning and sat on the floor with my back against the door.

The whole place smelled of hot lint and detergent, the same as every day.

Nothing about it was different, and I wanted to scream.

I opened the photograph again.

The corridor carpet was the same gold pattern I'd walked out over an hour ago.

The man carrying me had his face turned away from the camera.

Whoever took it had stood close enough to count my eyelashes.

I called Bree.

She picked up on the first ring. "Oh thank God. Where are you?"

"Home. Bree, did you put me in a cab?"

"Sure did. You were wobbling all over the sidewalk. I figured you'd had a rough night." She laughed softly. "You don't remember? Mar, you only had the one glass."

"That's what scares me."

"Come in tonight. Seriously. Dennis was asking where you went, and the owner's short a server anyway. We'll figure it out."

I didn't answer right away.

I had twenty-three dollars in my wallet, and I had just torn up fifty thousand.

"I'll be there at nine," I said.

First, I took the bus to the urgent care on Halsted and told the nurse I thought somebody had put something in my drink.

She asked how long ago, and I said maybe twelve hours.

She took blood and gave me a cup of water and a look I knew well.

"Most sedatives are out of your system by now," she said. "We can send it off, but it might come back clean. A hair test is better. It needs about a week to show anything."

"Then do the hair test."

"It's three hundred dollars and insurance won't cover it."

I paid it with the tip money I had rolled in my jacket pocket.

She cut a lock of hair from the back of my head and sealed it in a bag with my name on it.

The Cellar was the basement of a steakhouse that had closed two years ago.

You reached it through a steel door in the alley and a staircase that smelled like old smoke.

Nobody had ever asked for a license down there.

Bree met me at the bar with her blond ponytail swinging and wrapped both arms around me.

"You look awful," she said into my hair.

"Thanks."

"I mean it with love."

I held onto her a second longer than I needed to.

At eleven, Dennis Kroll took table nine.

He wore the same gold watch and the same soft smile, and he lifted two fingers to call me over.

I carried his usual whiskey across the room with my pulse in my ears.

"There she is," he said warmly. "I was worried, sweetheart."

"Were you."

"You left so suddenly last night." He turned his glass on the tablecloth. "I'd hate for anyone to see those pictures and think the wrong thing about you."

The men at the next table had gone quiet.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"One dinner," Dennis said. "Saturday. Just you and me, somewhere nice. Afterward I delete every one."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I send them to a few people who'd find them very interesting."

He said it gently, with a smile.

I looked at his gold watch, and his soft hands, and the half inch of whiskey still in the glass.

Then I lifted the glass off my tray and poured it slowly into his lap.

Nobody in the room moved.

Dennis looked down at his trousers.

Then he started to laugh, low and easy, and wiped his hands on a napkin.

"That's all right," he said. "That's fine. I like a girl with a temper. It makes the end that much sweeter."

Bree had her hand over her mouth behind the bar.

I couldn't tell if she was horrified or trying not to cry.

The steel door at the top of the stairs clanged open.

Every head in the room turned toward it.

A man came down the stairs in a charcoal suit, his tie knotted tight now, his eyes moving over every table until they found mine.

It was Evan Brodsky.

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