Christian flushed bright red. “I am so sorry about that. He does know better, or he will by the time tomorrow is over.”
To his surprise, Kera looked more amused than anything. “I’m a blonde bartender. That was far from the most insulting comment I’ve gotten this week alone.”
“Ah. Right.” Christian looked around. “I’m sure you have a better appreciation than most for what alcohol does to the human brain.”
“Precisely.”
“Why not dye your hair?” Christian asked her. Then he frowned. “I shouldn’t have asked that, should I?”
“Eh,” Kera commented, “almost makes me feel like I’m back in college. Typical coder problem-solving, right to the point. Total detachment and the problem would be solved, admittedly. Now, since there are no extra parameters to provide nuanced information, the subroutine will be shit for reuse, but it’s valid given the input.” With a sigh and a pat on the bar, she disappeared to help another customer.
As Chris stared into the space she’d vacated, Ted leaned in by his ear.
“Chris,” he said, tugging the man’s sleeve. “Did I not understand that because I’m drunk, or because it was…you guys…computer stuff?”
“Computer stuff,” Christian replied, staring after her. “Isn’t she just…”
“Perfect,” Ted agreed, nodding sagely. “Chris?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t feel so good.”
“I guess I should have seen that coming. Let me pay, and we can go.” Christian pulled out money as Kera came back. “Hey, sorry. Have to get this one to someplace with water and aspirin.” He spent a moment agonizing about how much of a tip to leave so as not to look ostentatious, then handed the bills over. “Here you go.”
“Sounds good.” She took the money when he handed it to her, not looking at the bills. “It was nice to see a familiar face.”
“Same,” Christian said, smiling for a moment before he started to worry he looked dorky. He flushed and gave an awkward wave before heading for the door with Ted stumbling along beside him.
Kera slid a tab across the bar to one of the other drinkers with a professional smile. Unfortunately, he seemed to be the type who got crabby when he drank, and he had been looking for a fight to pick all evening.
He gave her a surly look, apparently having chosen a topic. “What’s up with those two geeks? Why you treating them like they’re…” He waved a hand. “Can’t even hold their liquor.”
Kera tried to keep her tone pleasant, but she knew there was an edge to it. “One of those geeks was a classmate in college. He helped me during one of my courses, and I had the opportunity to return the favor just now. Pretty sure he at least deserved a beer and a nice chat. He was patient, kind, intelligent, and funny. And did you see how he helped his friend?”
The man blinked.
“Do you do that for your friends?” Kera asked him. “Or the ladies in your life?” She paused and used one of the smiles her mother had taught her; the woman did have good skills. In this case, she had skills that made her look both totally pleasant and like the person on the receiving end of the look might not make it through the night. “I might not like your answer, so think before you speak.”
There was a moment where she worried she had pushed too hard. Cevin always had her back—he knew his female employees would get harassed and was fully willing to give those patrons the boot—but as Stephanie said, it was always better to defuse a fight than win one.
In a pleasant surprise, however, the man leaned back and seemed to contemplate her words, his eyes going distant as she went to check on someone else. When she returned, the grouchy man was standing up and leaving a couple of bills on the counter. “Something extra,” he said, “for your Oprah moment.” He nodded and walked out.
Kera accepted and processed the money, wondering bemusedly if she ought to consider giving “tough-love” advice to more of her customers. It might be profitable. On the other hand, she suspected the line between profitable advice and advice that made people angry might be harder to find than she’d like.
She did another quick scan of the place, then checked the time. Turning to address the whole bar, she yelled, “Last call!”
Chapter Eight
Johnny waited in the lot behind the Mermaid.
It hadn’t taken much research to find out that the place was run by a guy named Cevin. Johnny could look these things up online, but he preferred to find them out the old-fashioned way, by speaking to waitresses and bartenders. The way employees spoke about their employer was a good barometer for judging how to put pressure on them.
In this case, the waitresses seemed to like their boss. That probably meant he did all the gentlemanly things like walking them out the front before leaving alone.
He also apparently had a motorcycle. Johnny didn’t know much about bikes, but this one looked well-maintained. With how parking could be in LA, maybe Cevin just stored the bike here.
Johnny remained where he was, draped in shadows, as patrons straggled across the pavement at the end of the alley. Some called drunken goodbyes to one another. Directions were shouted to taxi drivers.
It wasn’t too long before the back door opened. Johnny stayed where he was for a moment, and his caution was justified when he saw that there were two people in the alley with him now. One was the thin, almost sickly-looking man Johnny had tagged as “probably Cevin,” and the other…
Was the blonde who had shot him down earlier. Johnny’s hackles rose, but he forced himself to stay still.
“What a night,” the blonde said to Cevin.
“Bad night?”
“Nope. Definitely some sort of night, but not that.”
Cevin shrugged. “I was gonna say. Looks like you made some decent tips. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’re good for business. Let’s just say the bar tends to be busier when you’re there, and my sales have gone up.”
She shrugged. It seemed she didn’t care much, which didn’t do anything to endear her to Johnny. “Maybe. Anyway, g’night, Cevin.”
“Take care.” He waved to her.
It was only when she went over to the bike that Johnny realized she was wearing leathers over her bar uniform, and his eyebrows shot up. The bike was hers? Seriously?
She fastened her helmet and adjusted it, flexed her hands inside her gloves, and then swung one long leg over the bike. A brief readjustment of the bike and a wave to Cevin, and she revved it smoothly into motion. After a brief pause at the street, she banked into a gap in the traffic.
Showtime, Johnny mouthed silently to himself. As Cevin turned toward his truck, the other man pulled out a cigarette and a pocket lighter, allowing the flame and the cherry glow to draw attention to him.
Cevin stopped where he was.
“So,” Johnny began, his tone low and casually conversational, “Cevin, right? We need to talk.”
Cevin squinted into the darkness. “You were in the bar today. Back corner.”
Johnny ignored that. “I’ll be straight with you so we can get done with this ASAP. There’s the easy way to have this discussion, and there’s a more difficult way.”
Cevin said nothing, but his eyes strayed to his security camera, which was aimed at the space right beyond the rear door where the truck was parked. He frowned when he saw the shattered lens and turned his head slowly back to Johnny.
Johnny smiled. “So, let’s get down to it.”
Kera was three streets away before she remembered her little clutch—specifically, the one into which she had stowed her tips after the shift. She had put it down to flip chairs up onto the tables, and she hadn’t picked it back up.
She groaned. She was just beginning to wind down. Hearing Zee purr beneath her had a nice, relaxing effect after a shift, and the air felt cool and heavy. It was about to start raining, something she had anticipated fondly when she thought she was close to home.
But if she went back now, she’d probably have time to
catch Cevin. She knew from experience that he liked to chill out in his truck, smoke a cigarette and listen to a song or two before heading home. Everyone had their own rituals.
“Sorry, Cevin,” she muttered. “Setting your relaxation time back a couple minutes. Oh, and rain? I’d appreciate a few minutes’ grace from you.”
She banked right and headed back toward the Mermaid.
Cevin crossed his arms over his chest and let out a deep breath. He wasn’t naïve; he’d heard all sorts of stories from other bar owners over the years, and he made sure to take action when he needed to. The result was that he hadn’t ever clashed with any of these gangs because he got rid of the problem before it came to a head.
This time, he had failed.
He supposed it had to happen sometime, but part of his brain was still spinning in the background. He hadn’t heard of any new gangs in the area or extortion attempts. These guys had come out of nowhere.
The other man was taking an excessively long time to take a drag on his cigarette, which had Cevin itching to go for one of his.
He didn’t want to take his eye off the ball even for a second, though. He knew the other man was waiting for him to make an offer first, so he was going to draw a line in the sand. “The answer is no,” he said bluntly. “Whatever the hell it is you’re proposing, there’s never a good reason to get involved if the sales pitch starts off with someone waiting in an alley to make threats.”
The other man chuckled. “Careful, friend. You need to not jump to conclusions. See, this right here is one of those moments that could take you down the difficult path.” He strolled forward at a relaxed pace. The red tip of the cigarette floated through the darkness in time with a gesture.
Cevin said nothing. Of all the things he despised, this was one of the worst: veiled threats and then artfully hurt feelings when someone called them on it.
“Don’t worry,” the man explained, “I’m not looking to take any of your income if that’s what you think. This isn’t a protection racket.”
Cevin raised an eyebrow. That did not put his mind at ease.
“All we want is an agreement that we’ll be left alone to do our thing,” the man said smoothly. He took a drag on his cigarette. “We leave you alone, and you leave us alone.”
“Oh?” Cevin’s eyes narrowed. “And who are the people I’m supposed to turn a blind eye to? I’d like to know who’ll be preying on my customers.”
“That hurts,” the man said, his voice heavy with fake emotion. Cevin could see the faint outline of an exaggerated, theatrical expression of shock. “To make a reasonable proposal, and for you to assume that I’m going to be harming someone. No, sir. All we do is provide–”
He was cut off by the growl of an engine as Kera pulled back around the corner atop her motorcycle. Both men looked over, equally ill at ease with this new element to the conversation.
The shadowed man snapped his face back toward the bar manager. “You call her back?” There was no hint of congeniality in his voice now.
“You see my hands move?” Cevin was cursing inwardly. The last thing he wanted was for someone else to get involved in this. “No, for the record. I didn’t.”
“Well, you might want to get rid of her.” Johnny’s voice had taken on an edge of annoyance. “Pronto.”
Kera stopped the bike near the corner of the bar and climbed off before taking off her helmet. “Hey, Cevin. I was a dipshit and left some stuff in the breakroom. Can I get back in?”
Cevin knew he had to be the one to put her at ease and get her out of here. He saw her do a once-over of the other man. She couldn’t be seeing much, save for the glowing cigarette in his hand, and Cevin told himself that she would cue off his mood. He dug into his pocket, produced a ring of keys, and tossed it to her. “Here you go. Make it quick though, okay?”
“Sure.” She caught the keys, walked straight to the door, unlocked it, and stepped in.
When the door closed behind her, Kera took a moment to think. The tension outside—the sense of wrongness—was obvious, but she knew it would be better if she didn’t try to intrude or do anything stupid until she had a better idea about what the hell was going on.
Who the fuck was that? There wasn’t another car, which meant the person had come up the alley on foot, and it hadn’t been very long for them to have done that since she left: arrive, and start a fight of some sort.
Which meant he had probably been there when she and Cevin left the bar. She felt a prickle on the back of her neck, and instead of going to the bar to grab her clutch, she went directly to the security camera monitors and checked the one viewing the back lot.
Her eyes narrowed when she saw that the screen was black. Cevin was methodical. All of the staff got paid precisely on time, the bar was scrupulously clean, the cash register always balanced…and the security cameras were always on. One lapse she could have overlooked, but on the same night that someone showed up to confront him?
“Aw, hell,” she muttered.
When she went into the main room, she hardly remembered to grab her clutch. She shoved it into her backpack absentmindedly and detoured behind the bar, scanning the shadowed shelves.
Beneath the register was a cigar box. As Cevin had told her when she’d first been hired, the box contained a Glock 19. She’d fired guns like it before, and while the grip was a little bulky for her hands, she could manage it fine. In this state, they were restricted to ten-round magazines, but she didn’t expect that Mysterious Cigarette Guy had any backup. Ten should be fine.
Anyway, she wasn’t going to pull it unless she was reasonably sure it would de-escalate things instead of the reverse.
She closed the box and carried it in front of her, her pack hanging from her left shoulder as she walked back to the rear door. She waited by it, pressing her face against its surface and listening to try to determine what was happening outside.
Cevin and the stranger were speaking quietly. She couldn’t make out their words, but it was clear things hadn’t escalated yet. Her heart was hammering in her chest. Breathing in, she opened the door, stepped outside, and let it fall closed and lock itself behind her.
The two men continued to converse in low voices. Kera pretended to ignore them and headed toward Zee, intending to drop off her pack and then assess the situation to see if Cevin needed help.
The man in the shadows had other ideas. “Perhaps,” he said, loud and clear, “you need a little more convincing.”
Kera stopped about five steps from Zee.
The man’s voice changed direction, as though he were turning toward her. “I know you won’t care if we make an example out of your piece-of-shit truck, but the girl seems to really like that bike of hers.”
Kera swung her head around sharply. “What about my bike?” she asked before she could stop herself.
Cevin started to say something, but she never got to hear what because her answer from the man in the shadows came in the form of three sharp, cracking gunshots that echoed off the pavement.
Kera jerked back in shock, throwing herself against the wall and covering her face and stomach with her hands. With the sound dying and her ears ringing, she couldn’t tell at first if any time had passed—or if she felt any pain.
When she realized she didn’t, she whipped around to look for Cevin. He was on the ground, his hands over his torso, but as her mouth opened in a scream, she heard liquid trickling.
Looking over, she saw what the real target had been: Zee’s gas tank.
Relief, fear, adrenaline—all of them hit fast. The anger came in a slow stream, just like the gas dribbling out of the tank. Kera stared at it, her breath coming short.
“Well,” said the man, “looks like you’re going to need a ride home tonight, sugar.”
I know that voice, Kera realized and gritted her teeth. It was the jerk who wouldn’t take no for an answer earlier.
She said nothing. Anything she’d say right now would only make things worse, and she als
o knew she wasn’t going to draw an unfamiliar gun, aim it, and shoot before this guy got the drop on her.
He’s making a point, she told herself. He wants to scare you and feel superior, and then he’ll go away.
That didn’t make it any easier to keep her mouth shut, though, especially when the stranger snickered in an unpleasant, self-satisfied way.
“Think it over,” he said. “Both of you. No one needs to get hurt, right? As a sign of goodwill, I’ll let you two leave first.”
Kera watched as Cevin picked himself up off the ground and came over to her, swinging wide around the man in the shadows. Her boss kept his body between her and whoever their attacker was, and she saw him do a quick double-take at the box.
“Keep that for tonight,” he murmured under his breath. “I’ll pick it up from you later.”
Neither of them spoke as they climbed into the truck, though Kera’s shoulders hunched. She didn’t like knowing that the man was behind them, his gun still out, ready and able to shoot as soon as their backs were turned.
Cevin’s hands shook slightly as he put the key in the ignition, but he pulled out of the space and toward the road without hesitation. He always took the time to turn the truck around when he came in so he could leave easily, and Kera appreciated that now.
She didn’t look back, not even after the truck had turned into traffic, and her hands didn’t relax where they were clamped on the edges of the box.
Johnny remained behind, watching them leave. It was possible that some residents of the nearby housing complexes might have heard the gunshots.
No sirens yet, though.
He turned to leave before another memory surfaced. What was it that blonde had said? No, thanks? Not interested?
He raised his pistol, a Beretta 92FS that had once belonged to the LAPD, and fired two more rounds, one into each tire.
How to be a Badass Witch Page 7
