Bullies Sl-apped the Waitress in a Bar — She Dropped Him Instantly Like a Strike
Chapter 21
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Walter still hadn't told her what he'd found in the archives. He had planned to; he'd rehearsed it twice on the drive over that evening, but every time the moment seemed right, something in her tired, steady face made him hesitate, made him wait just a little longer for the right words to arrive.So, instead, they talked about small things: the weather turning colder, a leak in Walter's roof he kept meaning to fix, the way Margaret's roast chicken dinner never tasted quite the same anywhere else in town. Ordinary things: the kind of conversation that keeps two tired people company at the end of a hard week."You did a good thing tonight," Wren told him as he stood to leave. "Sitting with Margaret at the diner. She needed that more than she'd ever admit."Walter waved off the compliment with a small shake of his head. "Wasn't anything. Just sat with a friend a while.""Still counts," Wren said.Walter left just after 10:00, walking the four blocks home the way he always did, cane tapping steady against the sidewalk, his mind still turning over what he'd found in that library.He never made it all the way home.They came out of the alley behind the hardware store, three of them moving fast in the dark.Chad had spent most of that evening at a different bar on the edge of town, nursing his frustration with a few beers and a growing sense that Brett expected him to fix a problem Brett himself had created. He wasn't a stupid man, not entirely. Some part of him understood that what he was about to do crossed a line that couldn't easily be uncrossed. But loyalty in a town like Millbrook sometimes mattered more to men like Chad than conscience did. The Whitmores had given him steady work when the mill jobs disappeared; they'd given his brother a loan when the bank turned him down flat. Debts like that had a way of feeling permanent, the kind you paid back whether you wanted to or not.So when Brett called that evening, voice tight with anger, telling him the old man at the bar had been snooping around library archives asking questions, Chad didn't argue. He just grabbed his keys and two of his cousins and went looking for Walter Hodges on his way home.Walter heard the footsteps before he saw them, and by the time he turned, it was already too late to run, even if his legs had still been young enough to try. He recognized one of them immediately: Chad, from Brett's table at the bar that Friday night, the heavy-set man who worked at the Whitmore lumberyard."Evening, old-timer," Chad said, stepping close enough that Walter could smell the beer on his breath. "Heard you've been spending a lot of time at the library lately. Heard you've been real friendly with the waitress, too."Walter's grip tightened on his cane. "Get out of my way, son.""See, that's the thing," Chad said, ignoring him completely. "Brett's real worried you and that old lady are going to go running your mouths at the hearing Monday, and Brett doesn't like being worried."