“It is a security check.” I keep my voice flat and tap the brim of my cap where it readsSECURITY.
She does not flinch. “We’ve got a camera out there,” she says, wiping her hands on the towel. “One’s enough.” Her finger lifts to the spot above my head.
“Angles that cover the door and the stairs,” I reply, ignoring the jibe. “The last set watches the case and nothing else.”
“We’re a bakery, not a bank.”
“Thieves prefer cash. Enemies prefer doors.” I keep my voice light as I move toward the stairs. “I am closing doors.”
She considers that and lifts the counter flap, moving between me and the staircase. “The door’s that way. Don’t scare my neighbors.”
“I do not scare easily,” I tell her.
“Good,” she replies. “Then you’ll fit.”
She tucks hair behind her ear though nothing is loose. It is a movement I have seen from her in a dozen moods. It works on me in all of them.
“I’ve got thirty minutes,” she warns. “If you want to play, play fast.”
“It is not play.”
“It never is with you.”
Petro appears with a backpack and a notepad that saysMartin Electricacross the top. He grunts at the light fixtures and nods at me like customers are waiting in three other towns.
“Front case corner,” I indicate. “Kitchen door frame. Hallway stair landing.”
Lila folds her arms. “Next you’ll put one in the sugar canister.”
“If I do, it will be because you keep more secrets there than flour.”
Her mouth twitches. She does not give me her smile, just an idea of one.
“If this turns into flirting, move it to the sidewalk,” she mutters. “People are here for cookies, not drama.”
“We can offer both,” I answer, and Lila cuts me a look that would stop most men. I enjoy the heat and do not show it.
I walk the perimeter. The front camera goes high, nestled near a smoke sensor. The lens sees the door, the counter, the corner table where gossip lives, and the mirror under the shelf that shows the room to anyone who glances. The kitchen frame takes a pinhole at the top corner where grease will not reach. Thehallway landing gets the last one, aimed so the first step is visible and the line of the handrail reads clean.
Lila watches every move with a stillness that is not passive. She takes in screws and wire and the way Petro wipes his palms before he touches the stainless. She presses her lower lip with one tooth, and I think of a night when she walked up to me, clad in an emerald-green Valentino, a flute of Prosecco Mela Verde catching the light like glass spun from fruit. Her eyes, brown but edged with something that caught the room’s green, held a depth that could unmake a man who stared too long. She stopped close enough to see which of us would strike the fire first.
“Who pays for this?” she asks with that same fire.
“I do.”
“Of course.”
“That is the easiest part.”
“Then you’re not looking at the same bill I am.”
“You pay in flour and mornings,” I tell her. “I pay in things you don’t want to think about.”
Her eyes harden, then soften, then harden again. “You make everything into a war.”
“Because some men arrive for war whether you invite it or not.”
“Your men,” she presses.
