Profit Prophecy novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Four Hundred Thousand

By Thursday my account passed four hundred thousand dollars, and Dex quit the kitchen.

He did it in the middle of dinner service, which was the only way he knew how.

I stood in the alley behind the restaurant, because he'd told me to come.

I watched him walk out the back door with his apron over his shoulder.

The head chef followed him to the step.

"If you walk, you don't come back!" he shouted.

"That's the idea!" Dex shouted back.

He tossed his apron in the dumpster.

Then he turned to me, red in the face and grinning.

"I've never done that," he said. "My hands are shaking."

"You can get your job back."

"Zane, I'm twenty-seven and I've burned every finger on both hands."

"I'm not going back."

He put an arm around my neck.

"You need someone to keep your books, someone to make sure Veronica doesn't eat you alive, and someone to tell you when you're being a jerk."

"I'm applying."

"The pay is bad."

"You're paying me a salary, and I've looked up what a salary is."

We sat on upturned crates under a flickering light, and he opened the leftovers he'd stolen in a paper tray.

"It's weird," he said, chewing. "Two weeks ago we had one pan and a toaster."

"We still have a toaster."

"We left the motel on Baum Boulevard for a hotel suite on Monday, so now we have a toaster and a suite." He looked at me sideways. "You okay? Since the thing with the engagement?"

"I'm fine."

"You've been pacing the carpet in our suite at two in the morning."

"I think about the way she held her bag."

"Her bag."

"There's a paper in it that makes a red number flicker. I've never seen one flicker."

Dex stopped chewing.

"Zane," he said. "That's the most cursed sentence I've ever heard."

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