Chapter 2
A uniform he knew appeared in the footage. Not one of the faces he’d seen before. They’d sent someone new.
She was short. She kept her head down, so the picture gave him nothing.
But at the door she had glanced up, once, and in that fraction of a second the camera caught the shape of her — and the irritation of being woken drained out of him, and was replaced by something else.
He wanted to see her properly.
He enlarged the frame.
In high definition the face came clear.
A Latina, features soft over strong bones, her skin a warm honey color that the daylight liked.
That color really was extraordinary.
Not the near-translucent pallor of white skin. Not the deliberate polished tan people paid for. Something warm and lit from underneath, with real color in her cheeks, the whole face full of health, full of blood, full of life.
Like bread just out of the oven. Something a person would want to taste.
Ethan hit pause and rested his chin on his hand and studied the frozen face.
His fingertips tapped the desk twice while he searched for the right word.
Appetite.
There it was.
Yes. The Latina girl’s face produced appetite.
He felt a faint itch begin at the roots of his teeth.
Lily came back into the restaurant with the fifty in her pocket.
The lunch rush had cleared out and the place had gone slow. Jenny was draped against the register, and the second Lily came through the door she straightened up and waved her over.
“Well? Did you see him?”
Understandable enough. The employee who’d seen him had talked about him like he’d dropped straight out of heaven, and Jenny had been dying of curiosity ever since. She’d taken the run twice herself just to get a look.
Both times, nothing.
And once the only employee who’d actually seen his face quit, the appearance of Bridgeside’s most loyal customer became a question with no one left to answer it.
Lily spread her hands. “No. There’s nobody in that house.”
Jenny deflated and slumped back against the counter.
“You don’t think he’s famous or something? All this mystery.”
She contradicted herself before Lily could answer. “No, that doesn’t work. He’s been ordering from us almost a year. Not every day, but every few days. A famous person doesn’t have that kind of time to sit at home.”
Lily didn’t care much about Jenny’s theories. She cared about something else. “He tipped fifty dollars.”
Jenny nodded. “Some of them spend.”
That only made it worse. “If the tip’s that good, why doesn’t anyone want the run?”
Jenny’s tone went flat. “You think they’re all like that? There aren’t many customers over there to begin with, and some of them are impossible. You go all that way and there’s no tip at the end of it, and if you’re four minutes late you get yelled at, and then they call and complain about you.”
“Which is why I don’t get it. You’ve got a good thing here. Why are you volunteering for that? You’re going to be the death of me.”
Lily didn’t want the run either.
If it had been up to her she’d have stayed inside that restaurant all day and never gone anywhere at all.
But this job had not been easy to come by, and she had none of what the others had. No standing to be selective with. No standing to refuse anything.
She smiled at Jenny. “Boss says I’m getting a raise next month.”
Jenny’s face softened. “Well. That’s more like it.”
They talked for a while, and the conversation found its way back to the man across the river the way it always did.
Jenny pulled her closer and dropped her voice. “If you do see what he looks like — if you get the chance — take a picture. Quietly. I’m dying here.”
Lily paused, and when she answered she meant it. “Honestly? I’d let it go. He tips well. He’s also strange.”
“Didn’t you notice there’s nothing alive in that house? It’s empty. Everything’s white. It makes your skin crawl.”
Jenny shrugged, unbothered. “This part of the world is full of strange people. Rich ones especially. You have no idea what they get up to.”
Lily shook her head. “Either way. Don’t be so curious. Curiosity isn’t good for people like us. You know that.”
Jenny glanced at her, amused. “I want to see his face. That’s not exactly a character flaw.” She flicked the ticket in her hand. “There’s a run to Willow Creek Lane in a minute. In and out.”
The warning did nothing.
After that, every time Lily came back from across the river, Jenny came over to interrogate her.
Every time, Lily shook her head.
Three months went by that way. Three months of that one house.
She learned his tastes and nothing else.
He had a preference for sweet. Almost everything he ordered over those months came out of the sweeter half of the menu, and every single order included the house crème brûlée.
The intervals were irregular — a few days sometimes, a week or two others — but the delivery window never moved. Two thirty in the afternoon.
The orders themselves came in at three or four in the morning.
Which told her something about his hours. Two thirty, she guessed, was when he woke up.
By her count she’d been to that house close to twenty times, and she had never once gotten used to the feeling of it.
And the discomfort was getting worse, not better.
At first there had been nothing in particular to point at. Then, every time she stepped through that door, she started to feel eyes on her.
Not one pair. A great many. The sensation had real presence to it, coming at her from every direction at once, wrapping around her like a net she couldn’t see.
Whichever corner of that house she moved into, it didn’t let go of her.
She had checked, and checked carefully. Never mind obvious monitoring equipment — there wasn’t a single camera anywhere she could find. Not a lens, not a housing, nothing.
And those rooms were far too bare to conceal a person in. Nobody was standing in a shadow watching her, because the place didn’t have shadows to stand in.
Perhaps she simply hadn’t been sleeping enough.
But the body notices before the eyes do. The feeling had weight and temperature — damp, cool, clinging — like something soft-bodied had attached itself to her skin, and she could not talk herself out of it.
