Dawn of Revelation

by A N Sandra

  “Your buns are looking great, Annalise,” Ashley told her. “I love good buns!”

  “Don’t look at Billy then,” Annalise quipped as she expertly wrangled a new tray of buns into the oven.

  After the first episode of One Tough Customer when Annalise had burned, then undercooked cookies in a nervous fervor, she had promised to get better in the bakeshop when the team was in the back of the house. And she had. The hamburger buns had been in the proof box for her to bake and the cookies were mixed, ready for her to bake because of the time constraints of the challenge of the day. It was the third time she had run the bakeshop by herself for a show and she was more confident. She had even mentioned she was thinking of going to culinary school to learn baking when One Tough Customer was completed. But the crush of prep sent everyone spiraling as the end of the hour neared.

  “These onions won’t caramelize—”

  “The soup is runny—”

  “Soup is supposed to be runny—”

  “She’s drinking the port I need for my reduction!”

  “I was just tasting it!”

  “Your first order!” Molly said at the window to the kitchen.

  The phone rang., Tilly answered, took the order, and everyone rushed madly to get it completed. The contestants got even wilder, but everyone worked while they talked.

  “Why is there no ginger horseradish dressing in the salad bar?”

  “Chives! My kingdom for the chives!”

  “Somebody put the anise almonds in the hamburger station!”

  The completed order was boxed, bagged, blessed, and handed to Maddy, who ran to the first driver with it. She read him the address and breathed deeply, holding the food carefully next to her so it wouldn’t get spilled or smushed. A cameraman sat across from her in the back seat.

  “Apartment 207,” Maddy read over and over again. She didn’t have a phone. Molly had never restored her service, so she had no way to get a visual of the building, but she looked carefully at it from the outside.

  “Don’t circle the block!” Maddy screeched at the driver when there was no spot for delivery drivers to park. She opened the car door and grabbed the food. The cameraman jumped out too and Maddy moved as quickly as she could without damaging the food to the lobby of the building.

  “The apartment is only on the second floor,” Maddy said. “I’ll take the stairs.”

  The door opened almost the second Maddy rang the bell, she received an envelope with money in it and handed the food to a dainty red-haired woman in a pink sweater. The woman smiled wide and preened for the camera.

  “Would you like to check and make sure everything is there?” Maddy asked. No delivery person ever asked her that, not her favorite pizza delivery and certainly not the Palace of Pho. The Pho delivery girl ran so fast after she got her money that Maddy worried she would get dizzy and trip on the street.

  The woman milked the time in front of the camera, opening all three of her take out boxes and cooing over how perfect everything was.

  “Just delightful, dear,” the woman announced, looking at the camera instead of Maddy.

  “Thank you, so much!” Maddy smiled. The woman smiled for the camera one more time before shutting the door, and then Maddy raced back down the stairs leaving the cameraman behind. She took the money out of the envelope and put it in her bra in the stairwell. Three one hundred-dollar bills. It was only one hundred and sixty dollars’ worth of food almost a one hundred percent tip! “Glad I made sure she liked it,” Maddy muttered to herself.

  When her driver pulled up to Crackhouse Maddy could see that the other drivers were out on deliveries. Maddy jumped from the car and ran inside to find another delivery ready for her to take sitting on the pickup window. Everyone was working as fast as they could in the kitchen, and the line of orders was like ticker tape across the area where cooks kept track of orders.

  “How’s it going?” she called to Ashley who was standing on the other side of the pickup window wrapping sandwiches.

  “Peachy!” Ashley snapped. “Wait just a minute and take this one too. You can hit two places—they’re close together. Annalise! Four Cherry Cinnamon Bombs! ASAP!”

  Maddy went to the hostess stand and set the white envelope inside the till as if it had money in it and by the time she got back to the pickup window the second order was ready.

  “Get outta here and get back!” Ashley looked up from a salad she was sculpting. “We need you, babe!”

  Maddy picked up the food. It was hard to carry two orders even though it was well packaged, and she headed out the door. The cameraman was waiting by the car. He stood back to let her struggle with getting everything situated carefully. Maddy made sure there was no room for him on the back seat, so he was forced to sit up front with the driver and had to turn to film her as she handed the driver the paper with the delivery address.

  “That’s at St. Agnes Medical Center,” the driver said out loud.

  Maddy thought she remembered that Doctor Justin had an office at St. Agnes. Was this his lunch? It would be so weird to see him, after everything that had happened. He had been right to remove their chips. Now that he was all mushy with Molly the thought of seeing him turned Maddy’s stomach. It didn’t matter if Doctor Justin was playing Molly or not.

  “Sarah Hemmings is on the ticket,” Maddy read out loud.

  “Do you want out here?” the driver asked.

  “Yeah!” Maddy jumped out of the car and wove through pedestrians to make her way into St. Agnes Medical Center. Sarah Hemmings turned out to be Doctor Justin’s administrator.

  Maddy ran into the medical office and asked for Sarah Hemmings.

  “I’ll just leave it here,” Maddy said as she reached for another cash filled envelope.

  “Doctor Justin wants to send something with you for Molly,” Sarah said.

  At that moment, Doctor Justin put his head out the door and motioned Maddy into his office. Doctor Justin gestured to the cameraman to stay back.

  “I know you’re in a hurry, but I need to know how you’re doing and if you know what happened to Sadie.”

  “Hollister Manor is now a psycho ward and we’re basically locked in, our cell phones don’t work, our bank accounts have been frozen, and our personal safety has been threatened if we leave... I’m glad I don’t know where Sadie is. She’s probably better off than Tilly or me.”

  “This is my personal number, call if you think of a way I can help. I’m sorry.” Doctor Justin looked sick. Even his lips were pale. “Take this card to Molly.”

  “Thanks, bye,” Maddy ran out of his office to get back in the delivery car, once again slipping the money from the envelope the receptionist had paid with into her bra. There was no time to count it, but it had been almost two hundred dollars’ worth of food.

  “You can go,” Maddy told the driver as the cameraman wrestled himself into the front seat.

  The rest of the shift went by in a blur as Maddy made deliveries. Every bit of cash she put her hands on went into her bra. At one point she had more than two thousand dollars. The other delivery drivers were putting the envelopes they collected into the register also. When Maddy was sure no one was looking right at her she opened two more envelopes and took money out of them too. It wasn’t enough to get very far on, but it would help a little to not be broke when they left.

  “Time’s up!” Molly called out and everyone on the Front of the House team froze where they were.

  “Clean up!” a young woman on Molly’s staff yelled. A swarm of young workers who appeared to be culinary students went through the entire kitchen and threw away the prepped food with gusto, sanitized surfaces, put buns in the proof box, and restored the kitchen to the way it had looked when the Front of the House team had first come.

  “That’s so awesome,” Annalise sighed. “That didn’t even take ten minutes.”

  “Usually it’s just the opposite,” Ashley laughed. “Ten minutes to make the mess and four hours to clean it up.
”

  Tilly was jealous of their countenance. They were giddy with relief that their shift was over, and it was easy for them to be happy. The shift couldn’t have gone better. The Back of the House would have a hard time beating them. Tilly, on the other hand, was dreading going back to her hotel room for the next three days, able to do nothing but wait and try not to drink away her stress. “I want my mom,” TIlly muttered to herself.

  “Huh?” Billy had somehow ended up next to her as they made themselves comfortable in the conference room where the sequestered team was supposed to wait. Everyone had their phones out but Maddy and Tilly, whose cell phone service had been turned off.

  “Stay away from me,” Tilly said fiercely.

  “Calm down,” Ashley said. “We just had a great shift. If we lose, it isn’t because we made any mistakes. We need to let go of our adrenaline.”

  Tilly didn’t feel like explaining to Ashley and everyone else why she couldn’t stand the sight of Billy. She was pretty sure Molly would make her pay for outing Billy’s behavior. Billy had fans. If he left the show prematurely viewers would be mad. There were cameras in the waiting area anyway, and Tilly was tired of being on camera.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Tilly said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth she was sorry. She needed every friend she could get for the next few days.

  Ashley took the high road and turned away, but Annalise was annoyed.

  “It’s easy just to be nice,” Annalise spoke up.

  “That’s right,” Billy said. “There’s no reason to treat other people like shit—”

  At that, Maddy, who had been sitting behind Billy to keep her distance, lost her patience and hit him in the back of the head as has hard as she could. He turned around with reflexes that belied his big size and wrapped his fingers around her throat.

  “Don’t touch her!” Tilly screamed and began to lunge toward him, but Ashley and Annalise jumped up to hold her back. “He tried to rape her the other night!”

  “I did not,” Billy said. “She came to my room and begged to come in, but you came to the door because you were jealous and wanted a threesome—”

  “Liar!” Tilly screamed. Maddy couldn’t make a sound. Billy had a grip on her neck and wouldn’t let go.

  “I talked to Molly all about what really happened,” Billy went on. “She has footage from the hallway. It’s in the next show—”

  Tilly broke away from Annalise, who had no martial arts skills to speak of, and Ashley, who couldn’t contain her. With fury, Tilly jumped on Billy, who had to let go of Maddy to defend himself. The brawl that ensued got crazy as Annalise and Ashley tried to save Billy, and Maddy and Tilly tried to go after him, and Billy just tried to get away, but he was in the center of the tangle.

  “That’s enough.” Security stepped in to break everyone apart. Two guards pulled the mess of humanity away from each other.

  “Took you long enough!” Ashley rubbed her arm where she had been scratched deeply by someone.

  “They were getting plenty of footage!” Maddy spat, twisting in the grip of a beefy clean-shaven security guard. “I hate this! Let go of me!”

  “You need to cool off.” The security guard pulled Maddy away from the group and led her through the restaurant, where the chaos from the Back of the House team was getting loud. Without letting go of Maddy’s arm, he took her to the staging area, unlocking the door because it wasn’t in use since there were no celebrity guests. “Stay right here with no more of your drama!”

  Maddy hadn’t felt this hateful toward anyone since her junior high principal had refused to suspend a group of “mean girls” who had tormented her when she wouldn’t do their homework. Maddy had retaliated against the girls by telling them she paid a fortune teller to put a curse on them. They had made fun of her, but the first bad thing that happened to one of them had scared them all senseless. Maddy had the last laugh.

  “I’m putting a curse on you!” Maddy said spitefully as the security guard left.

  “Lady, I’m already cursed!” the security guard said on his way out the door.

  “I’m going crazy!” Maddy tried to breathe deeply to calm herself, but she couldn’t quit shaking. Out of frustration she began to pace the tiny area like a zoo animal. Underneath a pile of paperwork was a large sleek purse. “Molly’s purse is in here!”

  Maddy had never stolen anything in her life until she took the money from the envelopes earlier in the day. But she hadn’t really considered it stealing because in addition to hijacking Maddy’s life, Molly Hollister had turned off the service to her cell phone, stolen the one Dan had given her that wasn’t bugged, and frozen her bank account. Taking the three thousand dollars hadn’t even begun to level the playing field. There might be enough cash in Molly’s purse to make a real getaway.

  More than anything Maddy did not want to get caught going through Molly’s purse, but three thousand dollars was not enough money to make any kind of escape. Molly was a billionaire heiress. The money in her purse was too tempting. Maddy had heard the guard lock her inside, but it wouldn’t take long for someone to come in. There was a swivel chair and Maddy jammed it under the door knob, hoping it would slow someone down if they tried to enter the room.

  Biting her lip with concentration, Maddy looked into Molly’s bag taking care not to mess anything up. The contents were not what she had expected. Instead of lots of high dollar makeup and cash Molly had expensive vitamins, and a bottle of something labeled Mexitrin, which Maddy thought might be an expensive stimulant. There was a checkbook that would do Maddy no good, one shiny turquoise credit card, and an emerald green velvet jewelry box that looked like a watch box. Against her better judgment Maddy opened the box to find a small rounded ivory box inside. The ivory was delicately carved, and it appeared that whatever was in the box was glowing, even though Maddy could not figure out how to open the ivory box to see what was inside.

  “No money at all,” Maddy huffed in disappointment.

  There was nothing in the purse that would make it easier for Maddy to get away. She tried to put everything back as she found it, but for some reason she did not want to leave the ivory box in the purse. It fit in her hand with a sort of ease that convinced her it belonged to her. Just holding it revealed to her that some of the things in the purse would be good to have if she was going to make a break for it. Which she might. She didn’t see how she would make it over the long weekend in her room. With a deep breath, Maddy shut the now-empty green velvet box and put it back in the purse after taking several vitamins and Mexitrin out of their bottles. The ivory box fit in the front pocket of the slim pants she was wearing. It made a bulge, but not a huge one.

  “I can’t believe I’m stealing something from someone,” Maddy muttered. “Even Molly.” Especially Molly. Molly Hollister was not going to be gracious if Maddy was caught with something that belonged to her. It made no sense at all that she would take something like that because she had never stolen anything in her life. But somehow, she had the irrational thought that the box wanted her to take it. Touching the box had calmed her raging nerves, which had been raw since finding out she would be forced to compete on a reality show and had become worse in the past few days.

  Maddy’s sister Jill was an amateur magician. Several years ago, she had taught Maddy to pick a lock to get out of a locked box as part of her tricks. Looking around the staging area Maddy saw a small toolbox, and opened it, delighted to find it had just what she wanted. Even though she hadn’t picked a lock in six years she was calm enough that it didn’t take her long to get out of the small room.

  “Just look confident,” Maddy told herself, pulling the door open. There was no one on the other side, just several trays of food for Molly’s production staff. Maddy fixed herself a sandwich with lunch meat and whole wheat bread just as if she had been invited to do so and she ate it while she slipped outside into the hot summer sun that beat down on the sidewalk. Walking around the whole block, she entered Crack
house from the back alley, went straight to Rodney’s office where Tilly was, and picked that lock too.

  “What are you doing?” Ashley came around the corner.

  “None of your business,” Maddy said. It was surprising that she didn’t lose her concentration. The door swung open to reveal Tilly looking almost catatonic.

  “You’re in big trouble,” Ashley started to walk away, but Maddy grabbed her with surprising force and shook her.

  “Stay out of my business,” Maddy warned Ashley. “I mean it.”

  Pulling Tilly from the office, Maddy exited back through the alley. Tilly seemed to come to herself and they ran down the alley to the sidewalk. Maddy managed to flag a cab almost instantly. Maddy could see a Hollister security guard right behind them. She hoped he didn’t get the plate number of the cab, but she would have to assume he did.

  “Let us out here,” Maddy said as soon as they were a few blocks away.

  “We’re not far enough away yet—” Tilly started to say.

  “It’s okay,” Maddy told her. Everything was going so well it was like a dream. The two of them didn’t even wait for change from the cab driver. They got out, scurried down a block, and took another cab several blocks before taking a subway ride. They got strange looks from everyone.

  “Being famous sucks,” Maddy fretted. “Any of these people are going to know who we are.”

  “It might be easier if we split up and meet at the marina later. We might attract less attention that way,” Tilly said.

  “I’m going to call Doctor Justin and have him send a private car for us,” Maddy said. “I don’t want to split up.”

  Maddy found a pay phone, and Doctor Justin agreed to send a car for them. It was late afternoon by the time they slid into the car.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Tilly told the driver.

  “I know you guys!” the driver enthused. “But I promised the doctor I wouldn’t tell anyone I gave you a ride. My little sister would be so excited to know I met you two!”

  “I wish I had an autographed photo for her,” Maddy said. “But I really need you to keep this on the down-low.”