Gray jumped, and Kait grabbed the door in fear. “That fucking bell,” she hissed.
Once their hearts had slowed, they crept into the lobby. Gray used his phone as a flashlight. Why didn’t we bring a real flashlight? Kait wondered in despair. Something with a strong, wide beam and a skull-crushingly heavy base.
The main lights were unfortunately controlled from the kitchen. Only the lights in the vestibule between the double doors could be turned on, and Kait had never realized how dim they really were. Being inside the restaurant had done nothing to reduce the feeling of being watched, and she kept close to Gray as they made their way back.
They paused at the entrance to the kitchen where the windowless darkness was much thicker. Kait wrinkled her nose. Instead of smelling like the lemon disinfectant they used to wipe down the counters at the end of the night, the space smelled noxious. It was a familiar smell, but she couldn’t quite place it.
Silently, Gray reached back and stopped Kait from following him in. His message was clear: Stay back. Kait nodded, though he couldn’t see her, and held onto the side of the entrance way. The adrenaline that had powered her this far was starting to make her feel sick. She took a deep, raspy breath, trying to steady herself, and hoped Gray would get to the lights quickly. The darkness was disorienting, it swirled around her until she couldn’t tell if she was still holding herself upright or if she was mid-faint.
Then she heard something that brought her senses back to her. The squeak of a sneaker, the sound of the air being disturbed, Gray’s sharp inhale, and then something heavy crashing against something hard, and then the sound that could only be a full-grown man hitting the floor.
“Gray!” Kaitlyn gasped and fell on her knees, trying to crawl toward him.
A man who was not Gray yelped in surprise at the sound of her voice. The thin beam of a flashlight cut through the darkness, searching and then finding her. It trained on her face for a brief moment and then winked out.
“Oh, Kait,” Antonio said sadly. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”
Landon called Kait then Gray on repeat as he drove at breakneck speed to their apartment. When they didn’t answer, and Gray’s car wasn’t in the lot, he called the police on his way to the restaurant, praying that the parking lot would be empty, that they’d just gone out to celebrate a good weekend.
But no. There was Gray’s Honda, straddled across two spaces as though its driver had been in a hurry. Landon’s heart froze and dropped. There was no reason that Gray’s car would be here so long after close, with the restaurant so dark, unless something was wrong. And if Gray was here—so was Kait.
Galvanized, he pulled in beside it and was out of the car practically before he’d gotten the key out of the ignition. If Kait was here, he wasn’t going to wait for the police.
Antonio bound Kait’s hands and feet first, avoiding her eyes as he did so. He’d turned on the lamp in the small office so he could see what he was doing. Kait stared at Gray’s crumpled body in the patch of light, tears filling her eyes. She couldn’t see the rise and fall of his chest. Was it the angle, or was he dead?
She dragged her eyes away as horror filled her. Think, Kait. You’re in a kitchen, surely there’s a weapon you can use against Antonio. But even as she thought it, she made out the shape of a gun strapped to his side.
“Why are you doing this?” Kait whispered.
“I wasn’t planning to,” Antonio said quietly. “You weren’t supposed to get hurt. Gray, maybe, if I couldn’t avoid it. But I thought I’d made sure that you were safe.”
Kait’s head swam with questions. “I don’t understand.”
Without answering, Antonio moved to Gray and began wrapping the roll of duct tape around his wrists. He had to nudge him over to do so, and Kait nearly cried with relief when she heard him take a deep, shuddering breath.
Wake up, Gray, she urged silently, but his eyes stayed closed as Antonio finished his wrists and moved to his ankles. When he was done, he stood up and retrieved something from the back of the kitchen. To Kait’s horror, the distinctive shape and color of a gas can stood out even in the faint light.
Continuing to avoid her wide eyes, Antonio began splashing the oil around the perimeter of the kitchen.
“This is your plan?” Kait gasped. “You’re going to burn the place down around us?”
“I told you you weren’t supposed to be part of it,” Antonio muttered.
“Part of what?” Kait tried to clear her head, but the noxious fumes were making her sicker and dizzier than ever. “What did we do to you, Antonio? Why are you doing this to LeClarks?”
“Because of what he did to 1358,” Antonio said. “Because of what he did to my uncle.”
“Gray didn’t do anything to—oh,” Kait gasped. “You mean Landon. This isn’t about LeClarks at all.” But then why hadn’t he gone after Rathskeller? Was the chain just too big? Or was there something else?
Her mind, poisoned by the fumes, struggled to connect the dots. Think, Kait. There was something she was missing. 1358 was Basil Hampton’s restaurant. But Basil Hampton was in Norway. Finally, her mind latched onto it.
Antonio was Basil Hampton’s nephew.
Both sets of double doors were unlocked, a fact that—had he stopped to consider it—would have chilled Landon to the bone. Instead, he barreled through both of them and toward the dim light coming from the kitchen.
And then he stopped dead because there, halfway in the dining room, halfway in the kitchen, was Gray. And he wasn’t moving. A figure suddenly emerged from the right side of the kitchen and stood framed
