"And if Marcus recognizes you?"
"Then the truth comes out sooner than planned."
"With Marcus Reed, sometimes the difference between an investigation and a fight becomes very small. Call if anything becomes dangerous."
"I'm investigating a restaurant, Daniel, not entering a war."
Daniel did not smile. "I hope Marcus understands the distinction."
They agreed on strict boundaries. Daniel would arrange an independent forensic accounting team and secure copies of financial records through authorized channels, keeping the legal and personnel review separate from Ethan's observations. Ethan would not secretly record private conversations, alter schedules, handle confidential employee files without permission, or ask anyone to trust him with information under false promises. His presence would help him understand the workplace, but no employee's livelihood would depend on whether Ethan happened to witness a particular incident.
The following Monday, a temporary staffing coordinator working through the restaurant's approved service placed an experienced dishwasher named Ethan Miller on the schedule. The first name was real; the surname, used for the temporary assignment, was not. His application truthfully described years of kitchen work, although it omitted the unusual fact that most of those years had happened before he became the company's owner. Ethan dressed in faded work pants, a plain dark shirt, a jacket with a worn zipper, and black shoes whose soles gripped tile better than the polished leather he normally wore.
He parked several blocks away in an ordinary sedan and approached the restaurant before sunrise. In front, delivery drivers slowed to admire the grand windows and the gold lettering above the entrance. Around back, the alley smelled of damp cardboard, detergent, onions, and old cooking oil. A truck idled beside the loading door while two exhausted employees moved crates from its lift, their breath visible in the cold morning air.
Inside, the service corridor narrowed between shelves loaded with cleaning supplies and racks of folded linens. The dish station sat beyond a pair of swinging doors and looked nothing like the restaurant's photographs. Steam curled from the industrial machine, a drain gurgled beneath a cracked floor tile, and a mountain of hotel pans leaned against the wall. Ethan breathed in bleach, hot metal, and yesterday's grease, then remembered with a painful clarity how familiar all of it once had been.
A young porter named Luis Alvarez showed him where to store his jacket. Luis spoke quickly because he was already late on his own prep tasks, but he offered practical advice without condescension. The machine jammed if the racks were pushed too hard, he said, the hottest water came from the faucet on the left, and nobody should touch the exposed metal under the broken dispenser. When Ethan asked whether maintenance had been notified, Luis glanced toward the corridor and lowered his voice.
"More than once," Luis said. "Just don't be the person who asks again when Marcus is here."