Free No Safety in Numbers by Dayna Lorentz Page B

Books.”
    “I’ll call you,” he said, turning. Then he stopped. “Wait, I lost my phone.”
    Shay shrugged. “Mine’s dead anyway.”
    “So we’ll meet by the registers. Nine o’clock tomorrow?” He began shuffling away backward toward his friends. He looked hopeful, as if he really did want to meet her. As if this wasn’t all some hallucination on her part.
    “Nine on the dot!” she shouted, waving. Like an idiot. She felt ready to float away.
    “So
that’s
why we had to come to the Grill’n’Shake,” Preeti said, her lips pursed in a smug smile.
    Even Nani had a mischievous look on her face. “I think you owe your grandmother some kind of explanation,”Nani said. Then she coughed and the sparkle of the healthy grandmother Shay used to have disappeared.
    The plastic disk buzzed.
    “Let’s get you some more water,” Shay said.
    Nani leaned on both Shay and Preeti as they wound their way into the restaurant.



M
A
R
C
O
    A fter Mike the Moron left, Marco went back to his stakeout. The government must have thought everyone in the mall was an idiot—of course, they’d been right. No one except Marco seemed to have noticed the plywood walls erected overnight around the former PaperClips. Then again, no one else except the girl from the police cruiser knew about the bomb.
    Marco had started his hunt for information as soon as he got a break from the breakfast rush. The plywood wall was a dead giveaway; the only question was how to spy on the place without getting caught. He employed a tried and true method he’d used as a kid to eavesdrop on his sisters. He bought a cheap baby monitor and installed the baby end under a discarded bag at the edge of the plywood wall, mic facing the crack. So far, back in the restaurant, he’d heard very little, but what little he’d heard was fascinating.
    “…air samples within the ducts have yielded no information…”
    “…if there’s anthrax, I want the cops in gloves…”
The senator.
    From this, he gleaned that (a) the government had no idea what they were dealing with and (b) they assumed it was a deadly biotoxin. Meaning everyone located where the contaminated air duct let out was royally screwed. At least anthrax wasn’t contagious.
    “Carvajal!” Mr. Seveglia’s hand waved Marco into the manager’s cramped office. “Can I sign you up for an extra shift?”
    Marco switched off the monitor, hid the receiver in the bottom of the host stand, and approached. “Of course, sir,” he said. He could use the extra cash, given that he needed a new bike thanks to Mike the Moron.
    “My man,” Mr. Seveglia said, patting Marco on the arm.
    Of course, the extra work would cut into his stakeout time. He needed a map of the ventilation system. Maybe if he broke into the janitorial offices during his next break…
    “Marco.” It was Trish, the bitchy hostess.
    “Patricia.”
    “Some girl at table fifteen asked for you.”
    This was unprecedented. Marco was not good with people. Especially his peers. His peers tended to be assholes.
    He glanced around the corner and saw that table fifteen was occupied by an old lady, a little kid, and the girl from the police cruiser.
Shay
.
    Last night he’d blathered on like some drunk moron.Now she expected him to talk with her again. He sighed. At least she was pretty.
    He stalked over to her bench seat. “You wanted to talk?”
    She looked relieved to see him. “Marco, right?”
    Her grandmother said something in a foreign language—not Spanish. The little girl laughed. Shay blushed and made a face at the little girl—Marco assumed that they were sisters.
    “Sorry,” Shay said. “My grandmother doesn’t speak any English.” She seemed to brace herself slightly, as if she’d borne the brunt of sarcastic comments at her grandmother’s lack of fluency. Perhaps they had more in common than Marco had thought.
    “My grandmother’s lived here for thirty years and speaks less than ten words of English,” he