Off the Clock - Страница 2

“Natt, who is he?”

He could see a struggle going on in her mind. After a few seconds, her gaze flicked across the room to the table where the man was sitting, then settled on Quinn. “His name Nick. He bad man,” she whispered. “No good.”

“What do you mean, ‘bad’?”

“He come in here all the time. Act very nice at first. Make friends with all of us.” She paused.

“And then?”

Her eyes narrowed. “He ask Ice out on date. She tell him no. She have boyfriend, but he keep asking. Finally she say okay, go for coffee only.”

Quinn could feel a coldness growing just below his skin. “What happened?”

She hesitated. “I say too much already. Forget everything.” She moved down the bar to see if the other customers needed help. He decided not to push her.

Ice returned to the karaoke machine just after Natt brought Quinn his panang moo. As he ate, he kept an eye on Nick in the mirror, but the guy just sat at his table, beaming in Ice’s direction.

Once Quinn finished, he put more than enough to cover the bill and a good tip under his beer glass and headed out to his car. But once he was behind the wheel, he didn’t start the engine. He knew he should probably just go home and forget about it. But he knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t exactly close to Ice and Natt and the others, but they were his friends.

Anything outside of work isn’t worth the risk. Durrie’s voice again. Would he ever get out of Quinn’s head?

It was nearly an hour and a half before Nick appeared. His smile was still plastered to his face as he stepped outside, but as soon as the door closed behind him, it disappeared. This new Nick looked like a smug, cocky ass.

He stood at the corner for a moment, watching the traffic on Sunset. Then he walked across the street, forcing several cars to stop quickly so as not to hit him.

Finally, Quinn started up his BMW and pulled away from the curb. At the intersection with Sunset, he stopped and watched Nick walk down the row of parked cars. The man stopped next to a Mercedes sedan.

Nice car. Definitely not what Quinn was expecting. Apparently whatever this Nick was selling, he was doing well at it.

As the Mercedes came out from the curb, Quinn turned onto Sunset and fell in behind it.

It wasn’t too much longer before they were winding their way up into Beachwood Canyon above Hollywood. As always, Quinn was careful as he followed the other car, but he sensed that even if he were right on the Mercedes’s tail, Nick wouldn’t have realized he was being followed. The self-absorbed seldom saw beyond their own reflection in the mirror.

After taking a few smaller side streets, the Mercedes slowed to a stop in the middle of the road. Quinn, still a block back, pulled to the curb and turned off his lights. On the right near the Mercedes was a house surrounded by a tall white wall. Across the driveway entrance was a seven-foot-high, solid wooden gate that was swinging open. Once it was out of the way, the sedan pulled in, and then the gate began to close again.

Quinn slipped out of his car and jogged down to the wall. The gate finished closing just as he got there, but there was enough of a gap between it and the wall it hung on for him to get a partial view of the property.

The house was a nice, two-story Spanish-style structure that was undoubtedly out of the price range of most people in the country. There was a porch light on next to the door, but the lights inside the house were off.

Quinn heard a car door open, followed by a step as someone got out, then the door slamming shut. A moment later Nick’s shadowy form walked into view, heading for the front door. When he reached it, he stuck a key into the lock, turned it, and went inside.

That was all Quinn was waiting to see. There had been the off chance that Nick was just visiting a friend. And while having a key didn’t necessarily mean he lived there, Quinn felt it was more than pretty damn likely.

He noted the address, then slowly began walking back to his car, thinking.

How much should he get involved here? Or should he even get involved at all? It really depended on what this Nick guy had done, and there was only one way to find that out.

He arrived back at Taste of Siam a little after midnight. The place was packed mostly with Thais now. The music loud, the smiles wide, everyone enjoying themselves. Even Ice, who was still in charge of the karaoke, seemed to be her old self again.

Quinn viewed all of this through the restaurant’s windows from the street, but instead of going in the front door, he headed around the side. As always, the kitchen entrance was open, covered only by a flimsy screen door.

Quinn slipped inside.

The main cooks were an older Thai couple Quinn had exchanged greetings with on occasion. There were also three Hispanic men in the kitchen, doing the prep work and washing the dishes.

The old man was the first to notice Quinn and started saying something to him in Thai.

“I need to talk to Natt,” Quinn said.

The man looked at him for a moment, then recognition dawned on his face. “Ah, Khun Jonathan. You eat?”

“No, thank you,” Quinn said. “I’d just like to talk to Natt.”

The old man looked confused, obviously not fully understanding what Quinn wanted.

Quinn was about to repeat his request when the door to the dining area opened, and Lek came in. She looked surprised to see Quinn.

“Khun Jonathan. You’re back?”

“Lek, could you get Natt for me, please? I just need to talk with her for a moment.”

“Okay. Sure.”

He pointed toward the screen door. “I’ll wait for her outside.”

A minute later, Natt came out.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“Natt, what did that guy do to Ice?”

A worried look passed over her face, but she looked unsure about what to say.

“Listen to me,” Quinn said. “If you tell me, I can help.”

“What can you do?” she asked, clearly wanting help, but unable to believe he could provide it.

“I can make sure he never bothers her again.”

“How?”

“Just trust me. I can.”

“Maybe you make it worse. Maybe he do what he say before and hurt her next time.”

Quinn tensed. “You need to tell me what he said. I will take care of this problem. I promise.”

She looked over at the kitchen entrance, then back at him. “She not want me to tell you.”

“Only because she’s scared.”

“Yes.”

“When I’m done, she’ll never have to be scared of him again.”

She hesitated for a moment. “You sure?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

More silence, then, “Okay.”

* * *

Forty-five minutes after Natt finished telling the story, Quinn had climbed over the wall around Nick’s property and was standing in the front yard. He did a quick outside tour of the house, and came to the conclusion that whoever had designed it was an idiot. While it might have been aesthetically pleasing, and Nick had gone to the extra effort of having a security system installed, the building was just waiting to be broken into.

Before Quinn had returned to Beachwood Canyon, he’d made a stop at his house, and picked up a few items he knew would come in handy. Now, kneeling next to the side of the house, he pulled off his backpack and removed a small kit that contained — among other things — wires, a pair of cutters, and a bypass box. The last item was about the same size as a rubber eraser, and designed to melt into an unrecognizable plastic lump two hours after it was activated.

He stuck the items into the pockets of his black windbreaker. Then, with little effort, he used the poor layout of the house to climb onto the roof.

Less than ninety seconds later, he had disabled the phone service, and set up a loop that would make the security firm monitoring the house think that everything was fine. Now, if the alarm did go off, the only thing he’d have to worry about was Nick’s neighbors hearing it. But Quinn wasn’t planning on having it go off.

Back on the ground, he donned his backpack again and headed over to the sliding glass door that led from the house to the backyard. It would be the easiest way in. While he knew there would be an alarm contact along the jamb where the door met the frame, there was nothing monitoring the glass itself.

Using a suction holder in one hand and a glass cutter in the other, Quinn cut a large oval out of the door, set it carefully on the grass, and stepped inside.

There was an alarm panel a few feet to the left of the door. All the indicator lights were glowing green, and displayed on the tiny screen at the top were the words: HOUSE SECURE. He’d deal with the alarm later. His immediate goal was to discover Nick’s location.

He checked all the rooms on the first floor: kitchen, dining room, living room, two bathrooms, and a den. As expected, no one was in any of them. Upstairs he found four bedrooms, and a common bathroom. The asshole was in the master bedroom at the end of the hall, snoring away. Quinn was pleased to see he was alone.

Quinn spotted a cell phone on the nightstand next to the bed. He silently walked over, and put it in his pocket. Carefully, he then pulled out the nightstand drawer. Lying on the bottom was a little plastic box that looked kind of like a thin garage door opener. This was the alarm system panic button. Quinn slipped it in his pocket with the phone.

He thought it was probably a good bet the guy had a weapon stashed away somewhere close. His kind always did. It took Quinn less than a minute to find a Beretta in a box, under the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed. Instead of taking it, Quinn removed the bullets from the magazine and the chamber, made sure there were no other ones in the box, then put the pistol back.