Catriona turned as casually as she could, pretending to be looking at her phone. Broch was right, the man had finished his cigarette and was walking towards them.
The man reached inside his coat.
“He’s reaching for something.” Catriona grabbed Broch’s arm and pushed him ahead of her down the walkway. She continued to prod him until they were power walking along the edge of the strip mall.
The man glanced in their direction, and she spotted a piece of paper in his hand.
Not a gun.
He looked away and entered a building next to Mo’s.
Exhaling, Catriona put her hand on her chest. She took two steps into the parking lot to get a better view of the building into which the man had disappeared with his loaded paper. As soon as she saw the name on it, she knew what the man had held in his hand.
A dry cleaning ticket.
“False alarm. I guess he got his collection of duster jackets cleaned last week. Weirdo.”
Broch clucked his tongue. “Yer a wee jumpy.”
She nodded. “Sorry. It’s Alain’s tone, the taxi being gone...”
“Somethin’ doesnae feel right.”
“Right. It’s more of a feeling than—”
A black Mercedes pulled into the parking lot, screeching on two wheels as it pulled off the main road. It rocketed towards Mo’s studio and parked diagonally across two spots. All four doors opened at once and men with guns in their hands stepped out.
Catriona put a hand on Broch’s chest. “Not good.”
Broch took two strides forward and pushed open the first door on his left.
“In here.”
They ducked inside a Chinese restaurant. Though empty, they could hear cooking noises clanking from the back.
Catriona raised her phone. “I have to warn Mo.”
Broch stared out the window. “Na ye don’t.”
“What?”
“They’re all comin’ this way.”
“Crap.”
Catriona wove through the tables and chairs towards the back of the restaurant and entered the kitchen through a hundred dangling, beaded strings. Two men looked up at her. One had been chopping vegetables, the other stood over a steaming cooktop. Neither were Asian.
“Get out, go, run.” Catriona said to them, shooing at them with the back of her hand.
They stared back at her.
“¿Quién eres?” asked the one with the chopping knife.
She made a gun with her fingers. “Men are coming. Uh, hombres con pistolas.”
She shot them with her finger gun and then hung her tongue out of her mouth, pretending to be dying. Jogging behind the metal countertop, she ushered them towards the back door.
“¡Ándale! Rapido!”
They looked at each other, shrugged, and sauntered out the back door.
“Mebbe we should gae out the door tae.”
“Good idea.”
Catriona followed the cooks to find the door opened to a thin alley. She watched as one of the workers skinnied past a man with a drawn gun. Having seen the weapon, the cooks’ gait had increased accordingly and they soon disappeared around the corner of the building.
The man with the gun had no interest in the kitchen staff. He continued forward, eyes locked on Catriona.
“Change of plans,” she said, closing and locking the door. “Stay away from the door. They’re coming that way.”
With a rustling of plastic beads, another man appeared at the doorway leading into the kitchen from the dining room.
He raised a gun.
Before Catriona could duck, something flashed by her head and a knife handle seemed to magically appear, sticking from the gunman’s shoulder. The man yelped and dropped his weapon to the floor as he spun back behind the curtain of beads and out of view.
Catriona turned in time to see Broch pulling a kitchen knife from a block.
She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You threw a knife?”
“Aye, but thare ur ainlie three mair. We can’t keep this up a’ day,” he muttered. “Where’s yer pistol?”
“Back at the damn hotel in my bag. I didn’t think I’d need to shoot Alain—”
“Catriona...” a voice called from beyond the beads.
“Why does that guy know who I am?”
Broch shrugged. “He doesn’t ken me. Ah kin donder richt oot o’ ‘ere.”
“Very funny.” Catriona ducked down, eyes peering over the stainless steel countertop as she called back. “What do you want?”
“Can I look around this corner without catching a knife in my forehead?”
“Maybe. No guns.”
“No guns. See?”
A man’s empty hands poked through the curtain, followed by a face. The man was tall, with a shaved head and sharp jawline. Catriona didn’t find him familiar.
As the man moved a little farther into view she thought his features leaned Slavic. He had an oval face and a nose a little too long for his face.
Overall, he didn’t look like a whimsical guy.
“What do you want?” asked Catriona. “Who are you?”
“My name is Volkov. I’m here to ask you to go home. That is all.”
“Couldn’t you have done that without the guns in the first place?”
“You were already asked once and here you are.”
Catriona scowled.
Alain.
Alain had asked her to go home and this man knew it.
She huffed. “Nobody really gave me a chance to go home, did they? I was barely off the phone with Alain before you and your thugs showed up waving guns around like maniacs. You work for Alain?”
The man laughed. “He might think so, but it is the other way round.”
Catriona frowned.
That confirms it. Alan and this guy are in cahoots.
Alain wasn’t the sort of guy who worked for other people. Catriona suspected he’d gotten himself in over his head with someone. The Russian mob, perhaps, based on the look and sound of the face poking through the red beads.
“He sent you?”
“No. Our mutual interests sent me.”
Another voice spoke from behind the wall and Volkov’s face disappeared behind the curtain. His hands, still thrust through the beads, held up a
