Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Black Cat or Pappa's restaurant, especially since I've been spelling the restaurant's name his whole time...^_^
Chapter 3
"It's not like that, this time. In the Reserved Area...one of them has a gun."
My eyes widened in shock as Diane's words sunk in. There was never, NEVER, a fight in there. All the stuck up customers ate there. And there was a gun involved. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a dark memory resurfaced. BAM! "Dad what was that sound?" A woman's body lay on the floor in front of the door, blood pooling around her.
I didn't waste a second. "Call the police," I instructed her. "Don't let anyone leave this room." I ran out the door towards where the fight was. Even if I couldn't break it up, I was not going to letting anyone lay a hand on my brother.
When I entered the room, I was greeted with breaking glass and flying knives. I ducked as a poorly aimed one sped in my direction. The knife stuck deep into the door. A guy with brown hair shouted my way, "Stay down!" "That's a bit late isn't it?" I shouted back at him. But I took his advice and stayed close to the ground as I scanned the room for Ryan. Where is he?Where is he?Where is he? I couldn't find him anywhere. I was ready to risk the crossfire when a gun fired. I froze at the all too familiar sound as silence filled the room. My heart stopped when I found out who shot the gun.
In the center of the room, a short, burly man stood with Ryan's neck locked in his free arm. The man held his gun's gleaming silver barrel against my brother's forehead. "If anyone moves, this kid gets it. Ya' hear?"
I tightened my grip on my lucky saucepan. Ryan had to get out of that man's grasp somehow. If there was a way to distract him for one second, ONE SECOND, that would be all he'd need to move.
Another voice broke the silence. "He doesn't have anything to do with this." It was the guy who'd warned me before. The expression on his face was angry but focused. Tense, wary, pensive. Like he was trying to figure out how to end this without anyone getting hurt.
I examined the rest of the room. Ryan stood hostage at the very center of the room, while I was lying flat on the ground in the far left corner. All the way to my right stood a man in front of the emergency exit, clearly the gunman's accomplice. A few feet in front of him was another man, clad in an off-white suit and hat, who looked really really pissed off at these guys. There was movement somewhere between me and the accomplice, hidden in the shadows against the wall. But anything that could knock out or distract Ryan's kidnapper was either broken or too far away. And even if I could reach them, nothing was faster than a gunshot in there.
Then, miracle of miracles, something (a giant fist?) shot out from the shadows and hit the gunman in the back. Everyone took that as their cue to move. While Ryan got out from under the guy's arm, I ran in his direction, saucepan in hand. Out of the corner of my eye, the man in the hat swung forward an attache' case and out of it shot a net that wrapped itself around the accomplice. Meanwhile, I took care of the gunman. I swung the saucepan with dead aim at his forehead. One hit and he was out cold. I sighed in relief. Ryan was safe and the other guy was taken care of.
Then another gun fired.
I turned my head frantically, looking for who else I needed to knock out. To my left stood the brown-haired guy with a huge gun in his hand, its barrel still smoking. Any trust I had in the guy flew out the window once I saw his weapon. Instinctively, I aimed my saucepan at his head and pitched it in his direction. I didn't plan on risking anyone else's safety. To my delight, it hit him square in the back of his head just when he was about to turn around. KO!
Ryan, however, wasn't so thrilled. "Luna, what the hell did you do?" I looked at him confused. "What do you mean 'What the hell did I do?' He had a gun!" "Yeah, but he just saved your dumb-ass!" He pointed to the front of the room. To the right lay a man, still twitching, face down on the carpet. His right hand was still up holding a knife, his arm poised to throw it in my direction. I looked back at the guy I'd just hit, lying on the ground next to my saucepan. "Oh..."
A couple hours later
The police came right after I put my apparent savior to sleep. They were ready to interview all the witnesses and the restaurant staff when the guy in the suit and hat showed them some kind of license. After that, they were pretty much hands off about the whole situation. They just wrote down what the guy said happened, looked at his license and two others that he passed to them and told him to meet them at the station for reward money. Then, the officers took the gunman, the knife thrower, and the accomplice and shipped them off to jail, no questions asked. Then Ryan introduced me to the group that had saved our lives. How he met them in the first place, I decided to ask later. Suit guy, who apparently, also wore an eye patch, was named Sven. The person that had been against the wall was Eve, a blonde haired girl about Ryan's age. And last but not least was Train, the man I'd left unconscious on the floor with a lump the size of Vermont growing where I'd hit him. We tried putting an ice pack on it from the kitchen, but it didn't seem to help much.
As an apology and a show of thanks, I offered to leave work early and drive Train and Eve back to their hotel while Sven went to the police station. And so Ryan, me, Eve and Train piled into my car, I with the name and address of the hotel written on a piece of paper. The four of us rode in silence, partly because sleeping Train didn't have much to say and mostly because Ryan and I didn't know what to say. I still needed to give them a proper 'Thank you' and 'Sorry', both for obvious reasons. But at the same time, I wanted to ask why the hell the fight started. As for Ryan,I had no idea why was keeping quiet. He was the chatterbox of the family and never had trouble saying what was on his mind.
I couldn't take the awkward silence much longer, so I decided to try and say something. "Ummm...Sorry about hitting your friend so hard," I started awkwardly. "I got kinda carried away with...knocking gunman out, I guess." Eve smile kindly. "Don't worry about it. You were only trying to protect your brother. Train had it coming to him anyway." I disregarded whatever the last part meant. It didn't sound like any of my business. "I still have to thank him when he wakes up. I can't thank all of you enough really." I paused to maneuver through one of the crazier intersections of the city. "Ryan and I both owe you our lives. Isn't that right, Ryan?" I nudged him to get him to join the conversation. Even if he wanted to be silent, he should at least be polite. "Yeah, umm...thanks for saving me back there." He fell back into his silent state. What's with him?
"Sooo...what exactly started the fight?" I was trying to keep the conversation from dying, and like I said, I was curious. Eve didn't speak for a moment before answering. "We're sweepers. The men that Sven turned in were our latest targets." "Sweepers?" I hadn't heard the term before. "You mean like, bounty hunters?" "In a way, yes." Now Ryan's curiosity was piqued. "So those guys back there were wanted? I don't remember seeing any of their faces on the news or in the papers, or...anywhere really." Eve glanced at Ryan with a bit of annoyance. "They've never had victims in this area, so few people here would know they were criminals. Those men were assassins wanted by the IBI, a group that called themselves 'the Sharks'. Their last job was in Buenos Airres, down in Argentina." Once she started, there was no stop to the information she gave.
"They often come to their HQ in Houston after a hit. Sven and Train got a tip-off that today was the head's birthday and they were going to celebrate it at your workplace since he happens to love Papa's food. The man with the knives was Morris, is known to be responsible for the death of fifteen men in three different countries. The man Sven caught was Alfonse, a notorious thief with a reputation for being able to drive himself out of any situation. He once raced professionally, but had himself disqualified when the judges learned he was using an illegal fuel. The man who'd tried to shoot Ryan was the head of the Sharks, Hubaldus. He was the most infamous of the three, having killed his wife and all his in-laws. He escaped an asylum in Italy last year, right before he founded the the Sharks. "
Ryan gave a low whistle. "You guys don't skimp on details do ya'?" I was simply stunned. I wasn't sure which was more surprising – the fact that I'd been cooking for wanted assassins or that she knew so much about those guys. But once I thought about it, it made sense they had that much information. In their line of work, they needed to be prepared for anything.
I was about to ask another question, but when I opened my mouth, we all heard a loud BEEP! BEEEP! I swerved the car to the right to get out of the way of some idiot on the road. The car narrowly missed my side view mirror as it flew past. "What kind of fuckin' idiot drives that fast? We're in the middle of Downtown for crying out loud!" I had a bad habit of cussing when I was frustrated or pissed off on the road, so I didn't realize what I'd said until I saw Eve's astounded face. "Oh,...Sorry," I mumbled. My face started turning a little pink. Just then, someone else in the back groaned. "You guys are too noisy," he mumbled.
Through the rear-view mirror, I looked at Train as he slowly sat himself up. He glanced around the car until his eyes focused on the driver's seat. "Where's Sven?" "He's at the police station," Eve answered. "How's your head feel?" I asked him. He reached his hand up to touch the welt I'd made. "Like someone cracked it open." Ryan chuckled nervously. "You're not too far off." "You have no idea how sorry I am for knocking you out like that," I finally apologized to him. It took Train a moment to orient himself and recall what had happened. "It's okay, I guess. Why exactly did you hit me with your pot?" I sweat dropped as I repeated my ridiculous explanation. "I...was caught up in knocking out gunmen?" It came out sounding more like a question since I wasn't even sure myself if that was a good enough reason.
"You were asking for it, though, the way you walked up to them like that," Eve scolded him. "Sven was about to explain his plan before you left." Suddenly, Train's mood changed completely. "Princess, you don't even feel an ounce of pity for me?" he whined, sounding like a little kid. "What's there to pity?" she answered coldly. "I was still able to stop them, wasn't I?" "And risk getting someone else hurt!" she all but shouted as she stabbed a finger in our direction. "You could have gotten someone killed!" Train was silent for a moment at that. Then, he turned to face us with a warm, though apologetic smile.
"She's right about that. Sorry for getting you mixed up in that mess." He seemed sincere, and neither Ryan nor I had known until then that the whole ordeal was his fault in the first place. Even so, he didn't point a gun at one of our heads or try to throw a dagger at us. "It's okay," we replied simultaneously. "We're even after Luna hit you with her 'lucky saucepan'," Ryan added.
Train looked back at me."So you're the famous Luna Ryan's been talking about. I here you can cook a tasty shrimp and coconut dish." I side glanced Ryan. "You were advertising my cooking?" Ryan started turning a little pink at the confrontation.. "Well..." "That's the whole reason he came up to us, actually," Train added. "He said he wanted your manager to hear compliments about your food." That explains how he met these guys.
I was a bit surprised. Ryan wasn't much for flattering his older sister, let alone my cooking. "Is that so...?" Ryan's cheeks began turning darker. "I was trying to help you out at work, is all," he mumbled. I smiled at how embarrassed he was getting over this. "Awww, you're so cute when you blush like that." Train laughed. "You do that easily, don't ya'?" I caught my brother stealing a panicked glanceat Eve. And there's why he suddenly went mute.
As fun as it was to tease my little brother, I decided not to point out Ryan's little crush on Eve right then and there. That would simply be too cruel. I gave him a friendly punch to the shoulder and laughed. "All right, no more teasing. There's no shame in saying something nice about me once in a while, ya' know...Thanks." I mussed up his curly blonde hair for the second time that day. "I need as much help as I can get." Ryan's face began turning back to normal. "No problem, Loons."
"So, are we going back to the hotel?" Train asked. "Pretty much," I replied. "We should be there any minute now." I knew Downtown like the back of my hand. The hotel wasn't really that far from Papa's, but the city was almost always crowded with bad drivers and angry pedestrians. The traffic that day was especially bad what with all the commotion back at work. I checked the clock as we parked in front of the lobby of the Traveler's Palace. 9:00 P.M. It had taken us a good thirty minutes to drive, what, 10 miles? But the traffic would probably clear up by the time we needed to get home. No one wants to be out late around here.
"You guys go to your room already. I'll come up after a minute or so." "Okay!" Train quickly agreed. Before I could say anything back, he bolted out of the car, into the hotel. "What's the rush?" Ryan asked. Eve just shook her head as she watched Train run off. "Him and his stomach...," she mumbled, exasperated. She walked after Train out of the car. Once she was out of earshot, I whispered into Ryan's ear, "You're not gonna walk your girlfriend up to her room?" Ryan sat straight up and turned to face me ( again with the blushing). "I thought you were done teasing me? And no, she's not my girlfriend." he said quickly. I raised my hands in front of me. "Okay, okay. Whatever you say chief." I shifted gears back into drive. "But if you need help with your crush, I'm right here." Ryan didn't say anything as we drove around back.
We parked on the 3rd level of the parking garage. Which was no surprise since it was the beginning of spring break and everyone was probably coming back this late from touring the city. I tried to get Ryan to cheer up a bit. An apology wouldn't work at this point so I tried pointing out all the license plates we passed as we walked through the garage, like we used to on road trips. " Hey, look. Someone's here from Michigan. And there's a car from Illinois and Arizona and..." Ryan looked up a bit. "There's a car over here from Toronto,"he said. He smirked. "I won the contest again." I laughed, "Yeah, I guess there can't be a car from farther than Toronto." Ryan was smiling again, relieved that I really was done teasing him. He looked at a car that was parked next to the elevator down. "This one's from Nevada." I couldn't help but start the line. "What goes in Vegas," "Stays in Vegas, baby," he finished, making a Presley pose with both hands pointing out as he winked. Then we both busted out laughing. "Remember when we went to Chicago?" he asked. "And visited that upside-down house?" I grimaced at that memory. "You mean the one where I threw up in the rotating hallway?" He laughed again. We continued our reminiscing until we got to the lobby. And realized what we'd forgotten.
"Luna, did you remember to ask them for their room number?"