“All right,” he said. “Just don’t forget that I could kill you.”

Chef Art glanced at me with his white eyebrows raised. “You need to hire better team members.”

We were getting the first biscuit bowls ready to go in the awkward silence. It was almost seven A.M. I was trying to think of something clever to do that could save us all—well—mostly me since the gun was on me. Nothing came to mind right away.

Ollie lifted and secured the order window from outside.

“Look who I found waiting outside to see you, Zoe.” His voice was only weirder than the look on his face. “Your mom and dad are here to wish you well.”

“Hi, Zoe!” Daddy waved and grinned at me. “I think you’re going to win this thing. It’s been exciting hearing about it.”

“I’m glad you’re home again.” My mother was dressed, as always, in an expensive suit, lavender this time, her blond hair perfectly framing her determined face.

“Hi, Mom.” I smiled. “Hi, Daddy. It’s good to see you. We’re very busy.”

Daddy looked surprised when he realized Chef Art was in the kitchen with me. “I had no idea you were getting help from a celebrity.”

Chef Art smiled. “I want to see Zoe win the race, too.”

“Do you have time for your old man to come in there and give you a quick hug for good luck?”

Daddy was taken aback when Chef Art and I both shouted “No!” at the same time.

He glanced at my mother, who shrugged and walked away.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll see you later for your victory dinner.”

“Okay.” I waved and smiled like a trained monkey. “Bye-bye.”

When they were gone, Marsh wasn’t happy. “We’re too exposed this way. Close the window.”

“I have to get the biscuit bowls through here,” Ollie said. “Read the rules. If we don’t do what they say, we’ll be disqualified.”

“Like I care.” He shrugged.

“You will,” he promised. “Didn’t you notice the big interviews they do with the food trucks that are disqualified? They want you to go off about how unfair everything is. I can show you the YouTube video from when Our Daily Bread was disqualified.”

I knew there wasn’t a rule about serving the food through the window, and no YouTube video. Everything would be aired with the show, whenever that would be. But it was a good play on Ollie’s part. Marsh wasn’t familiar with the rules. He didn’t know Ollie was lying.

“Okay. Whatever it takes to get me out of here.”

“Right now, it takes getting these biscuit bowls out on the street so he can sell them.” I handed Ollie my cell phone, which doubled as a credit card machine, and gave him twenty dollars in cash to start with. “Good luck. Sorry I don’t have anyone to run the food out to you.”

“That’s okay.” He glared at Marsh. “Just be careful.”

“We will,” Chef Art promised.

We made more biscuit bowls after he was gone. It seemed he was back very quickly. With everything that had been happening, we were behind on having our food ready.

“Come on,” Ollie urged. “Come on! Delia is out here hardly trying to sell anything and selling more than we are.”

“We have a few unusual problems,” I reminded him. “Let’s worry about getting through this. If we lose, we lose.”

“Don’t even say that,” Chef Art said. “We can still win this thing.”

There was a knock on the back door before it opened. “Hey, I’m from the producer. He wants to know if you’re up for having a crew in here taping while you work.”

Beneath the glasses—which I think she got from Chef Art’s assistant—and the food truck race gear was Detective Patti Latoure. She was smiling, but I saw her sharp blue eyes zero in on the gun Marsh was holding.

THIRTY-FIVE

I knew from the look on Ollie’s face that he’d gone to get her. I hoped they had a plan that didn’t involve me getting shot to get Marsh out of the food truck.

“Biscuit Bowls?” Ollie said. “Are any ready yet?”

That took Marsh’s attention away from Patti, who was still in the doorway pretending to wait for my answer.

“I have one tray of sweet ready.” I handed it to him. As I put the tray up to the window, Marsh’s hand moved with me. I didn’t see any way to get out of this mess.

“What about the cameras?” Patti was as persistent as the real assistants.

“Sure. That’s fine. Whatever it takes.” I glanced at her. She winked when Marsh was looking away.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t do anything different. We want to catch you off guard, at least as far as the audience is concerned.”

It seemed as though there was a kind of code in her words. I hoped so anyway. They wanted us to act normal so they could catch Marsh off guard. I held it together by focusing on what I was doing.

“You should’ve said no,” Marsh said when Patti was gone.

“Tell her when she gets back,” I said. “I don’t care. I’ve had TV cameras all but rammed down my throat the last few days.”

“It’s too late now. We’ll have to make it work.”

I could see the fear in Marsh’s eyes as he glanced around the kitchen. He had to know there was little or no chance that he was going to get out of here. I hoped we both survived his run for freedom.

Chef Art caught my eye as he handed me a filled biscuit bowl. He glanced toward a large, sharp knife that was on the edge of the cutting block beside him.

I wasn’t sure what he expected me to do with it. Knives didn’t stop bullets. I wasn’t an expert knife person. Yes, there was a knife at hand—several, in fact. What good were they?

I shook my head in what I hoped was an imperceptible movement.

“What?” Marsh picked up on it. “Are you two plotting something? Don’t forget this gun could go either way.”

And that’s where he made his mistake.

He swung his body with the movement of the gun toward Chef Art and completely away from me. The knife Chef Art had tried so hard to get me to notice was too far away for me to easily pick up. I would’ve had to lunge for it across Marsh.

Chef Art’s cane was closer. I grabbed it as Marsh was swinging back toward me, the gun pointed toward the open food window. I used it to rap his gun hand as hard as I could.

In that moment of surprise, he dropped the gun and roared out his pain, putting his hand to his mouth.

“Oww! What are you doing, Zoe?”

I dropped to the floor and yelled for Chef Art to do the same. It took him what seemed like forever to get down there beside me. Marsh was still standing, nursing his hurt hand.

“Put the gun down, Detective Marsh.” Patti stood in the open doorway with another uniformed officer.

Two more officers appeared in the food window. All of their guns were trained on Marsh.

He slowly raised his arms. “I don’t have a gun. And I think Zoe broke my hand.”

– – – – – – –

The uniformed officers led Marsh away. Patti took the gun from my hand and smiled at me. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. A little shook up, but I’ll survive.”

“Good. I’m gonna need a statement from you about this.” She glanced at Chef Art and Ollie. “Both of you, too.”

“But not yet,” Chef Art said. “We haven’t lost the race yet.”

“I’ll leave you to get back to work.” Patti put the gun into a plastic bag. “We’ll talk when this is over.”

“Thanks for rescuing us,” I said before I turned back to three ruined biscuit bowls in the deep fryer.

“It looked to me like you had the whole thing in hand,” she said. “Good luck, Zoe.”

Chef Art stayed with us in the Biscuit Bowl until a real producer’s assistant came by to tell us that Shut Up and Eat had already sold their quota. Ollie put his head down on the order window. Chef Art rolled his eyes and mumbled a lot.