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The door to the store was only a half a dozen steps down the hallway. She’d only taken the first step in that direction before hearing a noise from Hunter’s phone.
“Hold up,” he said and promptly focused on his phone, tapping a message back using only his thumb.
His expression was hard to read, but in the next second, the sound of glass breaking and a loud crashing sound followed from the front of the store area.
“Lilianna!” screamed a voice from the direction of Herbert’s storefront that Lilianna recognized more easily than she wanted to.
* * * *
Dylan watched Hunter and Lilianna disappear into the narrow hallway, then wandered around Herbert’s small electronics store after Hunter gave him a dark look that meant to keep on his toes. The store looked like a front for something else. Which it was. Because Herbert was a bookie.
The space itself felt old and one small step away from being listed as uninhabitable and then condemned. The scent of dust long accumulated filled the air, although the glass looked like it must have been swiped at with a rag now and again.
There was mostly junk in the glass cases, probably obtained from various garage sales, and a few open laptops open on the opposite glass case by the door, but even from here, Dylan could tell that they were antiquated.
He planted himself on the opposite side of the room, leaning his elbow above the glass case holding a plethora of what looked like antique calculators, and kept a close eye on the door where Hunter and Lilianna had just disappeared through.
They hadn’t been gone a whole minute when the front door opened very slowly. Dylan didn’t move. He just watched.
The off-key bell didn’t even make noise. But Dylan stared at the two guys very carefully as they entered in sort of a stealthy way. As if they didn’t want to signal the owner of the store just yet. He already didn’t like them.
The guy in the lead seemed at first surprised by his quiet presence, but covered it well with a sneering look of superiority the moment he realized he wasn’t alone.
Dylan knew he wasn’t as efficient as Hunter when it came to knocking heads together, but he wasn’t unskilled either. He’d been in more than one bar brawl over the years. He could hold his own against one or two guys.
The muscle-bound dude following Mr. Self-Satisfied carried a sizable brown packing box tucked under one arm, wedged against his side, resting hard on his hip. He also had a dark blue suitcase dangling from the opposite hand, which looked miniaturized in his huge paw.
The other man still wore a sneering, self-righteous, smug look on his face that only the rich could ever manage to do without eventually breaking into laughter. Dylan had grown up with many perfect examples of that very same expression, and it was another reason he already hated this prick on sight.
The second guy, Mr. Muscles, put the box and suitcase on an open spot of the glass counter by the front door. Were they here to sell something? Or trade something to put in a bet?
Dylan remained leaning over the glass-encased calculators, watching the two carefully. He was positioned halfway between the two new intruders and the door where the others would exit from eventually.
“You the owner here?” Mr. Self-Satisfied asked.
Dylan put on his best bored face and said, “You know I’m not. Don’t bother playing games. I’m not in the mood.”
The other man smiled an evil wide grin of acknowledgement.
“All right then. I’m here because I heard a rumor that a particular woman came in here not long ago. A woman I happen to be looking for. A woman who owes me something valuable. Something I intend to collect.”
“Is that right?” Dylan swung his head exaggeratedly from left first and then all the way to right before saying, “I don’t see any woman in here. Guess the rumor was false. Maybe you should move along to some other place.”
“You’ll understand if I don’t just take your word for it, right? Maybe she has you under her spell. Maybe you’d do anything at all for her.”
Dylan gestured the room empty of any females. “Again I say, what woman?” He shifted his face to one of concern. “Do you often see things that aren’t there? They have doctors for that you know.”
