Her ID chip. Wrapped in cheesecloth spotted red from her blood and left like a tiny package on the kitchen counter.
The detective said that’s what people did when they ran away and didn’t want to be found—they cut out their ID chips. He’d said it like he’d just solved the mystery, but Scarlet figured most kidnappers probably knew that trick too.
Two
Scarlet spotted Gilles behind the hot top, ladling béchamel sauce on top of a ham sandwich. She walked around to the other side, yelling to get his attention, and was met with annoyance.
“I’m done,” she said, returning the scowl. “Come sign off on the delivery.”
Gilles shoveled a stack of frites beside the sandwich and slid the plate across the steel counter to her. “Run that out to the first booth and I’ll have it ready when you get back.”
Scarlet bristled. “I don’t work for you, Gilles.”
“Just be grateful I’m not sending you out to the alley with a scrub brush.” He turned his back on her, his white shirt yellowed from years of sweat.
Scarlet’s fingers twitched with the fantasy of chucking the sandwich at the back of his head and seeing how it compared to the tomatoes, but her grandma’s stern face just as quickly infiltrated the dream. How disappointed she would be to come back home only to find that Scarlet had lost one of their most loyal clients in a fit of temper.
Grabbing the plate, Scarlet stormed out of the kitchen and was nearly bowled over by a waiter as soon as the kitchen door swung shut behind her. The Rieux Tavern was not a nice place—the floors were sticky, the furniture was a mismatch of cheap tables and chairs, and the air was saturated with grease. But in a town where drinking and gossiping were the favorite pastimes, it was always busy, especially on Sundays when the local farmhands ignored their crops for a full twenty-four hours.
While she waited for a path to clear through the crowd, Scarlet’s attention landed on the netscreens behind the bar. All three were broadcasting the same news footage that had filled up the net since the night before. Everyone was talking about the Eastern Commonwealth’s annual ball, where the Lunar queen was a guest of honor and where a cyborg girl had infiltrated the party, blown up some chandeliers, and tried to assassinate the visiting queen … or maybe she’d been trying to assassinate the newly coronated emperor. Everyone seemed to have a different theory. The freeze-frame on the screens showed a close-up of the girl with dirt smudges on her face and strands of damp hair pulled from a messy ponytail. It was a mystery how she’d ever been admitted into a royal ball in the first place.
“They should have put her out of her misery when she fell on those stairs,” said Roland, a tavern regular, who looked like he’d been bellied to the bar since noon. He extended a finger toward the screen and mimed shooting a gun. “I’d have put a bullet right through her head. And good riddance.”
When a rustle of agreement passed through the nearest patrons, Scarlet rolled her eyes in disgust and shoved toward the first booth.
She recognized Émilie’s handsome street fighter immediately, partly due to an array of scars and bruises on his olive skin, but more because he was the only stranger in the tavern. He was more disheveled than she’d expected from Émilie’s swooning, with hair that stuck out every direction in messy clumps and a fresh bruise swelling around one eye. Beneath the table, both of his legs were jogging like a windup toy.
Three plates were already set out before him, empty but for splatters of grease, bits of egg salad, and untouched slices of tomato and lettuce.
She didn’t realize she’d been staring at him until his gaze shifted and collided with hers. His eyes were unnaturally green, like sour grapes still on the vine. Scarlet’s grip tightened on the plate and she suddenly understood Émilie’s swooning. He has these eyes …
Pushing through the crowd, she deposited the sandwich on the table. “You had le croque monsieur?”
“Thank you.” His voice startled her, not by being loud or gruff as she’d expected, but rather low and hesitant.
Maybe Émilie was right. Maybe he really was shy.
“Are you sure you don’t want us to just bring you the whole pig?” she said, stacking the three empty plates. “It would save the servers the trouble of running back and forth from the kitchen.”
His eyes widened and for a moment Scarlet expected him to ask if that was an option, but then his attention dipped down to the sandwich. “You have good food here.”
She withheld a scoff. “Good food” and “Rieux Tavern” were two phrases she didn’t normally associate with each other. “Fighting must work up quite an appetite.”
He didn’t respond. His fingers fidgeted with the straw in his drink and Scarlet could see the table beginning to shake from his bouncing legs.
“Well. Enjoy,” she said, picking up the dishes. But then she paused and tipped the plates toward him. “Are you sure you don’t want the tomatoes? They’re the best part, and they were grown in my own garden. The lettuce too, actually, but it wasn’t wilted like this when I harvested it. Never mind, you don’t want the lettuce. But the tomatoes?”
Some of the intensity drained from the fighter’s face. “I’ve never tried them.”
Scarlet arched an eyebrow. “Never?”
After a hesitant moment, he released his drinking glass and picked up the two slabs of tomato and shoved them into his mouth.
His expression froze mid-chew. He seemed to ponder for a moment, eyes unfixed, before swallowing. “Not what I expected,” he said, looking up at her again. “But not horrible. I’ll order some more of those, if I could?”
Scarlet adjusted the dishes in her grip, keeping a butter knife from slipping off. “You know, I don’t actually work—”
“Here it comes!” said someone near the bar, spurring an excited murmur that rippled through the tavern. Scarlet glanced up at the netscreens. They showed a lush garden, flourishing with bamboo and lilies and sparkling from a recent downpour. The red warmth of the ball spilled down a grand staircase. The security camera was above the door, angled toward the long shadows that stretched out into the path. It was beautiful. Tranquil.