A Smile as Sweet as Poison by Helena Maeve Page B

had the evening off.” The switch was the only reason she had taken the graveyard shift.
    He turned, beaming. “Good memory. Don’t worry, I’ll be off when it quiets down.”
    She couldn’t resist darting a look around. Between the knitting circle and the community college students chugging down Red Bulls, the diner was pretty dead. A graveyard would’ve been more animated. “Watch out you don’t miss your chance. You know what Marco’s like.” Unpredictable, volatile, quick to berate what he saw as a cardinal offense against the ideals of the service industry—a regular manager, in other words.
    Travis hummed meditatively. He waited until she’d finished refilling cups in her section before falling into step. “Sounds like you don’t enjoy working here.” A jerk of the chin indicated the tight press of Formica tables under flickering lights, the laminated menus peeling at the corners. The speakers duct-taped to the ceiling because Marco placed the virtues of DIY above health and safety hazards.
    “When did I say that?”
    “I read between the lines,” Travis announced with an unapologetic grin. He had a wide mouth, his cheeks unshaven.
    Hazel tried to picture him in camo on an arid plain somewhere. “Can’t say I dreamed of making minimum wage when I was a little girl, no,” she confessed. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful to have a job, but…”
    “I know what you mean. Not exactly glamorous, right?”
    Glamour wasn’t what Hazel had been thinking of, but she didn’t press the point. With The Video resurfacing and her personal details being posted online, she was finding it hard to avoid dwelling on every bad decision that had led her to this moment.
    It all started with college and being away from Dunby for the first time in her life. One taste of freedom and—disaster. Maybe there was something to all those sermons Reverend McDaniels had recited over the years about wayward souls.
    “But you got other options,” Travis pointed out, startling her from an impromptu trip down memory lane.
    “I do?”
    He nodded. “You’re young and you’re pretty… All kinds of opportunities out there for a girl like you.”
    Hazel drew herself up a little straighter, the back of her neck prickling with perspiration. “Don’t know what you mean.” She wasn’t nearly the right weight for modeling and she had no acting chops to speak of, but she doubted that was what Travis referred to.
    “I think you do.” His voice was a low baritone, intended for her ears only. He leaned in. “I know guys who’d pay good money to see what you got under that uniform.”
    Shock turned Hazel’s limbs to lead. Her breath tangled in her throat.
    Travis casually tilted back as Sadie joined them by the far wall.
    “You two look cozy,” she giggled. “What’re you plotting? Is it my bridal shower?”
    Hazel couldn’t find her voice. She barely heard Travis trot out a lie, his elbow brushing hers when he gesticulated. Blood pounded against her eardrums. He knows. It might’ve been baseless suspicion before, but now her details were floating around in the websphere, tracing a map back to Hazel.
    Never mind men accosting her in the street or on buses, this was an eight o’clock news alert waiting to happen.
    On legs that barely felt like her own, Hazel pushed away from the wall under the pretext of getting a patron their check. It took her away from Travis’ innuendo and Sadie’s single-minded enthusiasm, giving her time to think.
    Marco was on the phone in the kitchen, arguing in rapid-fire Italian. He didn’t notice her slip out of sight.
    There was no staff room to speak of at the diner, no incentive for the servers and busboys—when Marco bothered to hire any—to hang around when they weren’t working. Besides a crummy restroom, the only other place Hazel could go for a little privacy was the cinderblock-walled locker rooms where she and the rest of the wait staff stowed purses and whatever clothes they