6

I might not have to go with Dobson to the station for questioning, but there was nothing I could do about the health inspector, who had the legal right to inspect every corner of my restaurant anytime she wanted to.

Including right now.

Given the tension, accusations, and hostility in the air, everyone was suddenly eager to push their plates away, pay up, and skedaddle, especially at the thought that there might be bugs in their food and cockroaches crawling around in the corners. Of course, the real roaches were out in the open where everyone could see them—Dobson, Madeline, and Emery—but I’d have a hard time convincing my customers of that.

So I gave the waitstaff the rest of the day off with pay, stationed Catalina at the cash register, and told her to charge everyone half price as they left, if they were even willing to pay that much for my supposedly tainted food. I wasn’t going to quibble about money today. No, I had far bigger problems to worry about.

“What do you want me to do?” Owen asked in a low voice, coming over to stand beside me. “Whatever you need, you know I’m here for you, Gin.”

I shook my head. “There’s nothing you can do. Go, take care of Eva’s problem at school and the one with your business deal. That’s the best thing you can do for me right now. Madeline’s screwing with us, and I need to know that you guys are safe.”

Besides, something could always go terribly wrong here, with all the cops with all their guns swarming all over everything, and I wanted the two of them out of the line of fire, should it come to that.

“Are you sure?” Owen asked. “I can stay. I want to stay.”

His violet eyes glittered with anger, and he eyed Dobson with open hostility, Owen’s fingers curling into fists over and over, as if he wished that he had one of his blacksmith hammers handy so he could kneecap the giant for me. Owen’s protective stance and obvious care and concern touched me the way it always did—and made me even more determined to get him and Eva out of here before something worse happened.

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll call you later,” he promised. “Just as soon as we’re done at the college.”

I nodded. Owen wrapped his arms around me, giving me a soft, lingering kiss. I held on to him as tightly as I could, returning his kiss with an even deeper one of my own, trying to let him know how much he meant to me. Finally, we broke apart, and he rested his forehead on mine.

“Whatever happens, stay safe,” he whispered.

“Always.”

I stepped back. Eva came over and hugged me as well.

“I know you’ll make that bitch pay for all of this,” she whispered in my ear.

I drew back and winked at her. “Don’t you know it,” I said, sounding far more confident than I felt about actually making that happen.

But my bright, breezy tone and false bravado worked on Eva, who let out a soft laugh, her face a little less tense than before. Owen put his arm around her, and the two of them left the restaurant. The bell over the front door chimed with a mournful note as they stepped out onto the street and disappeared from sight.

“What about me?” Finn asked, taking Owen’s place beside me.

“You need to leave too,” I said. “Go to your bank, and get everything squared away there. Look into the lawsuit, and see what needs to be done about it. Like I said, Madeline’s screwing with us. She wants us to react, she wants us to fight back, she wants us to be so pissed off that we do something stupid that gets us into even more trouble. So the best thing we can do right now is to stay calm, play it straight, and follow the rules.”

Finn sniffed. “Rules are for other people.”

I gave him a look.

“All right, all right,” he said. “I’ll see if I can figure out what else she might have up her sleeve. Or, at the very least, who else might be on her payroll.”

“Check into Dobson for me too. I want to know why he’s helping Madeline and exactly how much pull he has in the police department.” A thought occurred to me, and more worry twisted my stomach. “And see if you can get a hold of Bria. There’s no way she wouldn’t have come down here if she knew what Dobson was up to. He must have gotten her out of the way somehow, and I want to make sure she’s okay.”

Finn nodded, promised to touch base with me later, and left the Pork Pit.

The cash register ring-ring-ringed as Catalina calculated order tickets for the long line of customers. With the rest of the waitstaff having already gone out the back, that left me, Silvio, and Sophia with Dobson, Winona Wright, and the other cops in the restaurant.

Dobson looked at me as if he wanted me to put up more of a fight about the health inspection, probably so he could use my refusal to arrest me on some trumped-up charge. But all I did was give him a cold, flat stare in return. His face fell a little when he realized that I wasn’t going to protest, but he got over his disappointment.

“Well, then,” he said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “let’s get started.”

Dobson marched back to the men’s restroom, yanked open the door, and looked inside. “Filthy,” he pronounced. “Absolutely filthy.”

I walked up behind him and peered around his broad body. The restroom wasn’t filthy, since I had cleaned it this morning. In fact, nothing was out of place at all, unless you counted the lone, crumpled paper towel that someone had tossed at the trash can. The towel had missed the mark, since it was lying on the floor a foot short of the container.

Dobson shook his head. “I wouldn’t take a piss in here with someone else’s dick. Make sure you make a note of that, Ms. Wright.”

The only dick here was him. I had to grind my teeth together to keep from kicking him in the back of his knee, pushing him forward through a stall door, and drowning him in one of the toilets.

The giant moved from the restrooms to the cooking area, which ran along the back wall. Sophia stood in front of the ovens. She hadn’t moved a muscle since Dobson entered the restaurant, and her arms were still crossed over her chest, so that all you could see were the words Kiss off on her T-shirt. Yeah, that about summed up my mood right now.

Dobson did a double take at the Goth dwarf, but he was wise enough to skirt around her, instead of ordering her to get out of the way or using his enormous body to shove past her. He wouldn’t have been able to move her, not even with his giant strength, not when she was glowering at him like that. But what the good captain did do was purposefully shove his elbow into a full pitcher of sweet iced tea, making it tip over and spilling the sticky concoction all over the floor.