Page 17 of Shadow Strike
That’s what I thought.She handed him the bar towel and pointed him at the glasses.
Lucy, meanwhile, took her normal place in the kitchen, prepping for the lunch crowd.The smell of coffee filled the bar a few minutes later, and Regan got herself and CB a cup.He smiled when she handed it to him, and her pulse spiked.
She tapped it down and asked her mom to write the day’s special on the chalkboard.
Regan could track her mother’s emotional state by what she cooked, and today’s special—ham salad on fresh bread with the good potato salad on the side—said Lucy Hill was shaken and intended to feed everyone in the county until she felt better about it.
Regan thought about telling her not to worry.Decided against it.Some things you just had to let people do.
She was restocking the bourbon shelf when CB said from somewhere behind her, “I have some ideas about the extortion situation.Ways to make them back off before you go public.”
“Mm.”She moved a bottle three inches to the left.
“There are approaches that don’t require the podcast to drop first.We could?—”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
A pause.“When’s later?”
“Later is when I’m not opening a bar.”She picked up the next bottle.“You’re on the bar.The lunch crowd starts at eleven-thirty.”
She could feel him deciding whether to push it.He didn’t.She gave him a point for that.
She wrote her rules out on a yellow legal pad, tore the page off, and pinned it to the bulletin board in the back room between the delivery schedule and the emergency contact list.
She’d been running this bar alone long enough to know that clear expectations prevented most problems.That was true for distributors, and for the occasional part-timer she brought in during the tourist season.It was, she was fairly certain, true for ex-Army Rangers who made espresso martinis and thought they knew better.
Hill’s Tavern — House Rules for CB
1.The bar is my domain.You take direction from me on all bar and customer matters.
2.Lucy is queen of the grill.Don’t touch.
3.No business conversations in front of customers.
4.You are a bartender.Act like one.
5.I run the books, the schedule, the vendors, and the floor.You run security.We don’t cross streams unless I say so.
6.If you think something is a threat, you tell me first.I decide what we do about it.
7.My closing routine is mine.You don’t interfere with it.
She capped the pen and began cutting lemons at the prep station.
CB came in and grabbed a rack of clean glasses, the action taking him right past the board.He stopped.Silence followed.
She didn’t turn around.
More silence.
She glanced over her shoulder.He was reading the list with no expression on his face.He set the glasses aside, reached over, and grabbed the pen on the shelf below the board.
He wrote something at the bottom.Recapped the pen.Set it back.Walked out.
She crossed to the board.
His handwriting was neat and blocky.
