The only question was finding the right time to do it.
Pete sensed something was up with Kat the moment they stepped out onto the street.
An ordinary person probably wouldn’t see it, but he’d known this woman better than anyone in his life.
At first he thought her shift in mood was related to what had happened in the strip club. Then he’d revamped his thinking and decided it was what had happened in the hallway of the strip club that had obviously thrown her so off kilter. Hell, it had certainly thrown him for a loop. Especially her little revelation that she hadn’t planned to jump his bones, it’d just…happened.
Talk about an ego crusher. Ever since he’d first seen her, his body had been lit up like a roman candle anytime he looked her way, and here she was telling him she didn’t really want him, she’d just simply been responding to her environment? Christ, this whole situation just got crappier by the minute.
He darted a look her way as they put distance between them and the strip club and noticed the change in her demeanor. It was subtle. A squaring of her shoulders, a lifting of her chin, a hardening of her eyes. She didn’t look worried or concerned about his or anyone else’s safety. She seemed determined, like she was in the midst of a major attitude adjustment.
Or she was planning something.
That didn’t sit well with him. Her planning something on her own had bad news written all over it as far as he could see. The last time she’d planned something, his life had hit the skids and stayed there for a long-ass time.
They walked four blocks in silence, sticking to the shadows as much as possible in the rundown neighborhood before they finally hailed a cab that took them over the Delaware River and into Camden, New Jersey. Thinking they were far enough away from Minyawi’s muscle and confident they weren’t sporting a tail, Pete signaled the driver and had them dropped off at some podunk diner off I-676 that served breakfast twenty-four hours a day. He couldn’t remember when he’d eaten last, and his stomach was growling.
There were only a handful of patrons in the diner when they stepped inside. A bell on the door chimed, and a darkhaired waitress looked up from the lunch counter where she’d been talking to a man in a 76ers cap. She nodded their direction. “Seat yourself,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Pete scanned the room, with its Formica tabletops and cracked plastic red booths. Darkness pressed in through the wide, streaked windows, but a neon green motel sign across the street with its flashing vacancy notice made it through the grime. A couple who looked to be in their eighties sat near the window, forks in hand, watching them as if they’d never seen strangers before. A middleaged man was reading the sports page at a table in the middle of the floor and eating french fries doused in ketchup. He, at least, didn’t bother to look up.
Figuring the place looked relatively harmless, Pete gestured to a booth in the far corner where he could keep a close eye on the front door, just in case, and where they had instant access to the emergency exit in the event they might need it.
Kat slid onto the bench seat, the plastic creaking as she moved. She shrugged out of her parka and reached for a menu propped between the sugar dispenser and the salt and pepper shakers at the end of the table. “I’m starving,” she said with way too much enthusiasm.
Pete frowned as he sat, dropped the backpack at his feet and reached for his own menu. Just what the heck was up with her? She’d gone from being scared shitless in the park to insanely aroused at the club to perky Paula here, all within a matter of hours? He wasn’t buying it.
“What’ll it be?” the waitress asked, stopping at their table with a pen and pad in hand. She eyed them with a bored look.
Pete glanced at his watch. 9:52 p.m. The sign on the door stated the diner was open until ten thirty, which meant the waitress’s shift was coming to a close.
“Coffee,” Pete said and smiled, though it did little good. The waitress lifted her brows and regarded him over the top of her glasses. “Two.” He held up two fingers.