Page 51 of The Devil She Knows
Chef Cooper.Melissa said it like Sam hadn’t held her hair back for her while she puked after a few too many eggnogs at the Glut kitchen Christmas party last year.
“I guess I just wanted to see how things were going?”
Executive chefs were often more focused on menu planning, recipe development, hiring, the management of the restaurant at the macro level, than they were on cooking; this she knew. But as executive chef, she should stillbehere. On the premises, overseeing the place, parleying with Melissa and Raquel, the front-of-house manager, making sure everything operated as a well-oiled machine from the time someone walked through the door to the time they walked out of it.
“Smoothly,” Melissa said, voice clipped, and Sam had the strangest feeling that she wasn’t welcome in the kitchen. “Would you like to inspect the stations?”
“Inspect the—” Sam laughed. “Are you kidding me, Mel? That’s—”
At the wordinspect, like soldiers, everyone snapped to, hustling to their workstations, where they stood at attention. Shoulders back, chins held high, and arms clasped behind their backs, they stared straight ahead, unblinking.
… okay. Hello,Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This was getting weirder by the minute.
Cocowas the one who ran the kitchen with an iron fist and a sharp tongue, barking orders and issuing random station inspections like a drill sergeant on an ego trip. Sam wasn’t like that. She hated it when Coco did it and she knewthe rest of the kitchen did, too, everyone bitching about it as soon as she left the room. There was no way that as executive chef, Sam would turn around and do the same thing.
“Y’all can relax. I’m not here to inspect anybody or …” Her eye snagged on a stick of butter sitting on the prep counter where she had once worked. Standing there now was a young woman, probably no older than twenty-two, with an abundance of dark curly hair, smooth light-brown skin, and round cheeks. When she noticed Sam looking, like a deer in the headlights, she froze, eyes suddenly wide with fear.
“I-is there something, Chef?” she stammered.
“No! You’re, um. Well.” Sam cringed. To say everything was fine would be a lie. She gestured to her mise en place. “Are you making cookies, by chance …?”
“Nina. Flores. And no. I was making piecrust.”
“Right.” Sam nodded like she remembered. “I could be wrong, but I think your butter might be just ateenybit warm, Nina.”
The pea-size pieces of butter were melting into her flour instead of staying whole and crumbly like sand. Her piecrust would be dense and doughy instead of flaky the way it was meant to be.
Nina paled. “Sorry, Chef. I’ll fix that.”
The poor girl was shaking like a leaf.
It didn’t take a genius to be able to tell that Sam was making everyone uncomfortable, andthatwas makingheruncomfortable.
“All right.” Sam scratched the side of her neck. “I guess, I’ll, uh, get out of your—” Her eyes swept the room, taking in faces, new and familiar alike. “Hey, where’s Coco?”
She hadn’t thought it possible for the atmosphere inside the kitchen to grow more tense than it already was, but somehow it did, the room temperature feeling like it dropped several degrees. Felix and Oslo wore matching frowns, goggling at her like she’d lost her mind, while Javier stared at the cutting board in front of him like he was trying to will himself out of the room.
Melissa gaped at her. “How would we know where … Well, she’s nothere. Obviously.”
Obviously.
The only thing obvious was that Sam needed to get out of this kitchen.
“Right. I knew that. I just thought …” Sam forced a laugh. “Never mind.”
Melissa nodded slowly, looking askance at her. “Are you … feeling okay, Chef Cooper?”
Sam shuffled her feet, inching in the direction of the door. “I’m fine. But I just remembered there’s somewhere I’m supposed to be.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “So I’m going to go there and do the thing I’m supposed to do and I’ll just …” She gave the kitchen a thumbs-up. “Leave y’all to it.”
Sam trailed after the hostess, following her through the restaurant to a table in the corner where Hannah was already seated booth side, on her phone, staring intently at something on the screen. She looked up, spotted Sam, and it was like watching the sunrise the way a bright smile lit up her whole face, measure by measure.
Sam’s heart beat double time.
Hannah looked gorgeous, but when didn’t she? Her hair was pulled back in a chic chignon, loose wisps highlighted the color of wild honey framing her face.
Her eyes swept over Sam, and slowly, her head listed to one side. “Baby,” Hannah greeted her and gave a gentle, if not puzzled, laugh. “What are you wearing?”
“This?” Sam looked down at her outfit. She was holding her coat and wearing a cream-colored short-sleeved sweater with black scalloped trim at the neck and sleeves, French tucked into her high-waisted indigo-rinse jeans. It was cute … she’d thought. “Is there something wrong with it?”
