Page 24 of Lethal Enforcer

He parked down the street and quietly stalked his way up to Kira’s address. He chuckled a little at the privacy fence, which he easily hoisted himself over. He moved silently through the shadows around Kira’s modest little studio apartment. It was thrilling to think she was just on the other side of the wall. He wondered what she was wearing this time of evening. If she was alone.

He perused the exterior for a few minutes, sizing up the area before he strolled up to her front door. He smoothed down his shirt and knocked.

He waited for a minute or so, but there was no response. He knocked again, louder this time. Again, no answer. Luka took out his phone and dialed her number again. To his amusement, he heard a phone ring from inside the apartment, confirming that itwasher place. But she quickly rejected the call, and didn’t come to the door.

“Kira,” Luka called out. “It’s me, Luka. I brought your paycheck. Can we talk?”

Again, only silence. Luka waited for almost ten minutes on the doorstep, listening for any sounds of life. Kira had to be standing totally still, barely even breathing. She was hiding from him like a rabbit from a wolf. It made his heart ache a little, but Luka decided it would only make things worse if he tried to force the door open. If she wasn’t ready to face him now, that was fine. Luka could wait.

After all, there was more than just bloody interrogations to being an enforcer. He was also a damn good tracker. He could stalk a target for days, weeks, months, years without losing track or interest. He knew how to stay on a scent and not let go.

Kira could play hard to get if she wanted. If anything, her refusal to let him in only made the chase more exciting. He knew where to find her now.

He would just have to find another way in.

CHAPTER12

KIRA

The late-afternoon sunglared sharply through the front windows of the diner. Kira squinted every time she had to turn that direction, the setting sun was so intense. She stood behind the counter with a dish rag in her hand watching clusters of people walk by on the sidewalk. She was nearing the tail end of the Monday dinner rush, when the restaurants across Vegas swelled to max capacity, filled with happy foodies and hungry tourists. This part of town was considerably less flashy than the downtown area near where Kira lived, and it was a far cry from the Shining Star Casino, which was nearly always thrumming with business. Around here, though, there were far fewer customers coming through the entrance.

When she’d first accepted the waitressing position here at Cal’s Corner, Kira had braced herself for the influx of clientele during the evening shift. She had worked at a diner before the casino, and she knew that was how things usually went. Kira was scheduled for all evening and night shifts, so she’d thought she knew what to expect. But to her surprise, the restaurant’s ‘dinner rush’ was barely a blip on her radar. Perhaps one or two more occupied booths than usual, but nothing to call in the reinforcements for. After putting on a flashy uniform and a party personality for the casino, Kira was kind of relieved to find a low-pressure workplace. Even with the few extra tickets, it had been a slow shift so far. Nobody here expected Kira to give them her full, undivided attention or indulge their every whim. There were no high rollers flashing their platinum credit cards to try to get her number.

Kira could just be a regular waitress. Even the required work uniform was casual. Kira just wore a plain white shirt tucked into jeans with an apron tied over her front with pockets for a pen and tiny notepad. However, Kira found that she rarely needed these items. There were so few customers at any given time, it was easy enough for her to keep their orders straight without writing anything down. It felt as though her previous jobs had over-prepared her for this one. Compared to what she had been doing before, Cal’s Corner was almost relaxing.

That gave her plenty of time to hang around the dingy restaurant, observing customers and people-watching from inside the diner. She was curious about the neighborhood and what kind of people dwelled there. Admittedly, it was not known to be a particularly safe part of town, especially for a petite young woman like Kira. She knew there was danger to working the night shift. Just walking to her car after work could be potentially risky.

It didn’t help that Kira was required to park her car a few blocks down from Cal’s Corner when she clocked in for work. As a company policy, only customers were allowed to park in the cramped lot behind the diner. Employees had to find their own parking spot, which could be tricky in a place like Vegas. But that was one upside of working in a less-affluent area; people weren’t exactly flocking to the neighborhood in their flashy cars for hours and hours on end. Tourists didn’t come here to wander around and ooh and ahh at everything from the street. There were usually plenty of parking spaces for Kira to use, albeit a few minutes’ walk from work. Taxis and buses rarely made stops in the area after dark, when Kira would be leaving. She didn’t love having to walk to her car alone at night. She hated making herself so vulnerable. Walking past the closed-down businesses, rundown remaining shops, gun stores, pawn shops, and liquor stores made her a bit nervous.

Kira had never seen the customer parking lot completely full. In fact, even though it was tiny, it was only ever half-full at most. She wondered if there was another reason employees were forbidden to park there, but she decided it was not the hill to die on. She had only been working there for a short time, after all, and she didn’t want to make any unnecessary waves. She chose to accept the various cons of working at the Corner. It was still a fair trade-off for the ‘pro’ at the top of her list: it wasn’t run by the mafia.

Kira was certain about that. If the casino was the standard for what Russian mob establishments looked like, the diner couldn’t be farther from it. Nobody was getting obscenely wealthy working here. They weren’t drawing in celebrity clientele. No one was going to seize control of Las Vegas with Cal’s Corner as their headquarters. It was laughable to think about, Kira thought as she looked around the quiet, unassuming restaurant.

The place was barely big enough to warrant the term ‘restaurant’ with only four booths, two small tables, and a breakfast counter with bar stools. The kitchen was a tight galley-style room barely large enough for the ever-changing cast of big, beefy men who worked in it. Kira never seemed to catch their names, and they came and went through the back entrance. She rarely saw the same face twice. Apart from popping her head into the kitchen to put in an order, Kira never even got to interact with the other employees. The back rooms of the diner were functionally off-limits. There was always a manager or supervisor of some kind in the back doing paperwork or talking on the phone. They were always too busy for Kira, and she would quickly float back to the front of the restaurant.

Kira had a lot of time to kill between guests. There were spans of several minutes, sometimes up to an hour, with no customers. Kira was restless enough to embark on a full-scale cleaning sweep of the whole front end. It seemed that nobody had taken the time to do it in a while, judging by the buildup of dust and grime over everything. Kira dove into the project headfirst. She scrubbed every surface, scraped mildew from the bathroom grout, and wiped clean the edges of furniture that hadn’t been touched in ages.

Kira made multiple attempts to extend her clean sweep to the back rooms, but the manager on shift always insisted that the back rooms were already clean. Besides, they claimed that since customers only experienced the front end, it was unnecessary to clean the back. Kira was a little dubious of that reasoning, but she shrugged it off. There was enough work to do up front anyway. Between the flickering fluorescent lights, perpetually musty odor, and the water coming out gray from the bathroom faucets, Kira had her work cut out for her. She spent more time cleaning than waiting tables most of the time.

The front entrance creaked open and Kira jumped to her feet, already smiling and ready to welcome in a new customer. To her surprise, though, the guy barely even looked at her.

“Hi there! Would you prefer a booth, table, or seat at the counter tonight?” Kira asked.

The man was oddly overdressed for the balmy evening. He wore a puffer coat over his clothes, a bandana around his neck that covered his mouth, and a beanie pulled down tight over his head. He had on a pair of dark sunglasses, despite the late hour. Kira could see the faintest outlines of a beard and sideburns, but little else defining about him. He looked familiar, but maybe it was just because she had seen him there before in one of the back rooms, talking to one of the managers. The man didn’t even glance her way, almost shielding his face as he went right past her to the back of the restaurant.

“Oh. Okay,” Kira muttered confusedly.

This wasn’t the first time he’d done it. Kira often saw the same man, always walking with that distinctive swagger and wearing more clothing than necessary. Almost like he was trying to pass incognito. But who was he hiding from? Cal’s Corner was so slow, who could possibly be watching? Every time, the man just went to the back rooms where he would talk in hushed tones with the manager on shift. Something about him made Kira uneasy, but she just assumed it was his overall weird appearance and the fact that he always pretended she wasn’t there.

He wasn’t the only strange appearance, either. Kira seemed to meet a new employee every time she worked a shift, rarely to see them again. She wondered how many there were and when or if she would ever meet them. It was odd to have such a long list of employees for such a quiet, low-pressure diner. Many people only came by on their off days to pick up a package or drop one off with no explanation to Kira. She wanted to introduce herself as a polite gesture, but they were always moving so fast. No one stopped there for long. Even customers seemed to barrel through their meals and leave immediately. Occasionally Kira had a hard time discerning who was an employee, a customer, or just a friend of the management team dropping by for a personal visit.

The shift schedule posted on the kitchen door didn’t clear things up. Kira saw a ridiculous array of names penciled into the schedule almost randomly. Only Kira’s hours were consistent, so it was nearly impossible to predict who was going to work the shift alongside her. Kira assumed it had to do with a heavy turnover rate for employees. Maybe that was why the incognito man ignored her, too: he had met so many new faces over the years, only for them to quit. He must have introduced himself to hundreds of waiters and waitresses just like Kira, and now he simply gave them the cold shoulder.

That wasn’t quite enough for Kira, though. She was determined to earn his acknowledgement, if not his approval, somehow. She would work harder and longer than anyone else. She would take any shift offered. She would hold fast to this job and not quit, like everyone else seemed to do. Kira would simply be the very best waitress Cal’s Corner had ever seen until the management had no choice but to like her.

She was only nearing the end of her first week, but Kira had her heart set on making the diner her long-term workplace. She could easily handle the workload, she enjoyed the slower pace, and she relished the alone time she got between customers. There was no floor manager breathing down her neck, no drunken guests pawing at her. Sure, it wasn’t a cash cow, but it was a reasonable place to work.

Kira was just grateful to be there. She needed this. Her parents needed it.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com