Page 22 of Knot Playing Fair 2

“What the—” I began, outrage warring with shock inside my head. “Is that what I think it is?”

Nat locked the screen and put the phone back in his pocket. “If you think it’s Joe the waiter dumping a couple thousand live cockroaches in the dining room during a busy shift, then yes.”

Shock won the pitched battle in my brain, at least for now. “Why in thehellwould he do something like that?”

“Why would someone put grease at the top of the stairs, or saw through the hooks holding up a two-hundred-pound ceiling rack in the kitchen?” Nat asked. “I’d say we’ve found our saboteur.”

Through the haze of stark disbelief, puzzle pieces started clicking together in my mind with no conscious input from my higher brain functions.

Joe, reaching out to shake my hand after I hired him, his sleeve riding up to reveal a wrist tattoo of gothic letters I hadn’t recognized.

Emiel, hurrying me out of the Bella Vita restaurant after we’d had lunch there... warning me not to go there alone. “That waiter,” he’d said. “He had a gang tattoo. SSG. So did the owner. They’re Luca’s old gang... the one he ran away from.”

Bella Vita’s owner, Blake Berlusconi, who’d come to the Elderflower Inn personally to scope us out as the competition.

Blake... Berlusconi.

Blake.

Blaze.

The gang leader who wanted Luca back... badly enough that his minions had tried to kidnap us when we went to Emiel’s cage fight. Badly enough that SSG goons had tailed Zalen and Byron when they’d dragged Emiel back from the Spivey Building.

My breathing sped up. I must have gone pale as a sheet, because Nat reached out a hand to steady me.

“Mia?” he said in alarm. “What is it? Are you all right?”

“We have to take this to the police, Nat,” I choked out, fighting lightheadedness. “There’s more going on here than you know about.”

TEN

Nat

I’D EXPECTED MIA TObe upset. I mean, who wouldn’t be? Joe hadn’t been an employee for that long in the grand scheme of things, but it still hurt when someone whose paycheck you signed randomly knifed you in the back for no reason.

However, Ihadn’texpected her to shoot to her feet, swaying alarmingly as all the blood drained from her face in a heartbeat. I reached out before my brain could catch up, steadying her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Mia? What is it? Are you all right?”

She shook her head frantically, her eyes wide and unblinking.

“We have to take this to the police, Nat,” she said, forcing the words out in a choked rasp. “There’s more going on here than you know about.”

I didn’t understand what had caused such a violent reaction, but her distress was already crawling behind my ribcage, sending a jolt of sour adrenaline through my veins.

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