Revenant

Chapter 34

A couple of hours later I was sitting in a corner booth at a Denny's ten blocks away from my place, my back to the wall. From my seat I had a clear view of better than half of the restaurant, as well as a good portion of the parking lot outside. All of these places are built more or less from the same template, and we've all visited one, so chances are you know exactly the seat I'm talking about.

There was a reason I'd picked this location to meet, and that's because everyone knows deep down inside that nothing of vital importance ever, ever happens at a Denny's.

It was a little after two-o-clock, and the place wasn't terribly busy – a foursome of construction worker types having a late lunch in the opposite corner, an older couple doing the same some thirty feet away, and what appeared to be a very distressed accountant or businessman who was busy drinking coffee like it was going out of style and poring over several dozen papers he'd spread out over his table.

I'd paged agent Moss about an hour ago with the details, and had arrived twenty minutes ago so that I could pick my seat and spend some time getting comfortable. I had no ID on me, a cheap, throwaway thirty-eight in my windbreaker pocket, and had already identified two ways I could get rid of it in a hurry if Moss was trying to set me up for something. There was a fire exit not ten feet away, as well as a large window I could shoot out and jump through if it came down to that, and both of those exits were a short distance away from my car. Strategically, it was a fairly comfortable spot.

I took another sip of my iced tea, having decided that I'd had enough coffee already today. Yes, sugar is bad for you, but given that I hadn't slept I figured I should at least get a few cheap carbohydrates in me, keep my energy levels up. Sure, I would have gotten more of a pick me up from something like a milkshake, or a sundae, but I'm not completely insane. This was Denny's we were talking about, after all....

The waitress who had seated me, a girl in her mid-twenties who wore the standard issue strangely-brown uniform complete with ever-present coffee pot, walked over to my table, established eye contact, and gave me the sort of smile you'd expect a waitress to give you.

"Are you ready to have a look at a menu?" she asked.

I gestured at my half-full glass of iced tea. "I'm fine with this for now, thanks."

She smiled brightly at me, despite the fact that she'd probably already written me off as nothing more than a five-dollar table she wouldn't get much of a tip from, and then wandered over to the older couple's table to inquire if their coffees needed topping up. I watched her for a while before scanning the room once again, taking another sip of iced tea as I did so. My eye caught a trace of movement from a far window - a man in a grey suit jacket and sunglasses walking towards the front entrance, which I wasn't able to see from where I was sitting.

Moss was here. A few minutes late, but then I had set this up in a rather last-minute fashion.

I took a slow breath and willed myself to relax, resting my hand on the grip of the gun hidden in my windbreaker pocket, slouching slightly to keep that portion of my jacket a bit further under the table, and thus hidden from view. A short while later Moss appeared, rounding a corner and walking down the aisle towards me, smiling affably.

The first thing I did was to observe the people at the other tables to ensure that nobody reacted to Moss's arrival in an unusual way, or had gone out of their way not to react to him. Satisfied by what I saw, I turned my attention to Moss and scrutinized everything I could about him I could during his short trek over to my table. He had on a different suit jacket today, one that still didn't quite match his pants. Same cellphone and pager combo as before, check. Same larger-than-usual two-wallet bulge in his front pocket, check. Gun – nothing visible for hip or harness, which was promising.