I don’t argue. Pulling the door shut, flipping both the locks before moving toward the staircase. He falls into step beside me, and we go down without speaking. His car is parked a short distance down the street. I don’t ask where his driver is; it seems completely irrelevant at the moment as I get in the passenger seat. My focus solely on getting to Evie.
Victor pulls into traffic, and the city moves past the window. I hold my phone in my lap and breathe through the panic. Evie is at school. The receptionist knows I’m on my way. Victor is here. Everything should be ok.
Should be.
“Tell me what happened at the café,” he says. His voice calm, but serious enough that I hear the strain in it.
Everything that happened this morning feels so far away from this car, from this moment, what was hours ago feels like days with the dread that sits in my chest. And I suddenly am struck with awe that so many days like that seem to be happening recently. First at the club, and now at the café.
“It was a quiet morning, normal honestly,” I began.
It had started like any other Tuesday morning. Rosa had already arrived, the coffee station set up and restocked, which was a sure signal that she was in a good mood. Which had been fairly consistent for the past few weeks. Marco on the cash register, playing some low, happy tune on the radio beside it. The morning light reflecting through the front windows.
“You’re three minutes late,” Rosa said, handing me my apron with a wink before restocking the pastry case.
I’d glanced at the clock on my phone, “I’m two minutes early according to this.”
“Well tell your phone it needs to learn to tell time,” she’d looked at me then, reading my face, eyes narrowing slightly. “You look different, there’s a glow to you.”
“No there isn’t,” I countered, tying the apron.
“Uh-huh, you look like you're actually sleeping these days,” she said. “Or are you not sleeping, but for good reason now?” she asked, eyebrows moving as she leaned on the counter. “Which is it?”
“It’s too early in the morning for this conversation, Rosa.” I laughed. “It’s only eight in the morning.”
“That wasn’t a denial.” She was already smiling as she moved to load more pastry. “Marco said he saw you getting out of a very nice car last week outside your building. Want to tell me who’s?”
“Marco should mind his own business.”
“Maybe, but he won’t, and neither will I. Those are the facts.” She pinned me with a knowing look. “Alex. Are you seeing someone?”
“What I am is starting on tables,” I said, evading the question with as much grace as I could muster.
“That’s a yes,” she called after me. “That is one hundred percent a yes, you don’t walk away from a question like that if it’s a no!”
I took the front section, Marco had the bar, and Rosa took the back section. It was good, ordinary, smooth sailing until just after nine-thirty. During a brief lull between the early rush and the mid-morning crowd, March had appeared at my elbow with an odd expression I’d never seen him with before.
“Hey,” he said. “I need to talk to you about something.”
Marco is twenty-two, effortlessly social, and not scared of anything as far as I could tell. Which was what made the expression he was wearing so alarming.
“If it’s about whose car?—”
“No, it’s not about the car,” he cut me off. Glancing toward the front window, toward the street. “So this guy came in about an hour ago,” he paused, thinking longer than he usually would. “He had this weird feeling about him, one that sets the hair on the back of your neck on end and you instinctively know — don’t make this guy unhappy.”
I looked at him, feeling my eyes widen. “What did he look like?”
“Big. Well dressed, but not friendly. Not trying to look approachable.” He laughed slightly, uncomfortable as he thought back on the encounter. “I was actually a little intimidated by the guy if I’m being honest. Like genuinely, and I don’t get intimidated often. He was perfectly polite and everything but I didn't know there was something off about him…”
My hands had gone numb on the coffee cup I was holding. “What did he want?”
“He was looking for someone,” he said. “He asked if there was a girl working here named Yarina.” The name came out awkwardly on his tongue. “When he described her… well he described you, Alex. I told him I didn’t know anyone by that name and he just — looked at me for a really long time. Like he didn’t believe me.” He paused. “Then he said thank you and left. Stood outside for about twenty minutes. I watched him, but he just stood there on his phone, not really doing anything. It was just — strange. I think he’s still out there, Alex. I thought I saw him across the street just now.”
I was no longer looking at Marco. I was looking out the front window at the parking lot, the street, and the alley. My heart racing at a thousand miles per hour.
Yarina.
“Alex?” Marco said, drawing my attention once more. “Do you know who he is looking for? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
