Hope’s maternal instincts soon drove her out of her hiding place and toward the back of the catering truck. If she didn’t get inside, she told herself, she had no chance of finding Penny.
Larson’s BlackBerry buzzed yet again-area code 314, St. Louis-and again she ended the call to keep the device from vibrating and giving her away. Wedged between the Dumpsters, she was in no position to strike up a conversation. Had it been area code 206, Seattle, any possibility of being the kidnappers, she might have dared answer.
The two caterers came and went from the truck in roughly two-minute intervals. Hope reached the back of the truck, snagged the corner of a plastic cooler, and carried it by its two handles. Bravely now, and with great resolve, she approached the building’s back door and thumped her foot against it, knocking. She knew the faces of both caterers from having observed them. She was glad to see it was one of these women who opened the door for her.
Hope explained herself. “They asked me to help you out.” She offered a perfunctory smile. “I’m on the wait staff here. Where to?”
“I’m Donna.”
“Alice,” Hope supplied automatically.
“We were told there’d be six of you.”
“Well… I’m the first,” she said brightly. “The others will be along.” A stopwatch started in her head. By the time someone determined they had seven waiters and waitresses, not six, she would have to be gone.
“We’re setting up in the kitchen,” she was told.
Hope pressed past the woman holding the door.
“We were told it was black bottoms, white tops.”
Hope noticed that Donna had stuck to the uniform. “Yeah. I’ll change into my stuff after load-in.”
“Midnight to two,” Donna said. “You always work these hours?”
“We see it all here, believe me,” Hope answered, the cooler growing heavy in her arms.
“At least the pay’s right.”
“For you maybe.”
“These guys are real pricks about us keeping to the basement-”
“And the upstairs dining room,” Hope completed, having overheard this condition. “Same old, same old.”
Donna shut the door behind herself as she stepped outside.
Hope hurried down the hall and followed a line of water drops like a mouse after crumbs. She paused at the kitchen door. An exit sign, straight ahead. A small elevator-no, a dumbwaiter-to the right of the kitchen door. A set of stairs that beckoned her.
She stepped into the busy kitchen, set down the cooler, and wondered what came next.