[Quinn Novella 03] - Off the Clock Read online

  He watched as she started setting everything up. When she finally noticed him, she froze, a worried look on her face. Apparently Natt had told her about their conversation outside the kitchen. He waved her to come over, but she stayed where she was.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Just for a minute.”

  Natt came out of the kitchen, grabbed a beer out of the cooler and carried it over to Quinn. Seeing her friend behind the bar seemed to break Ice’s resistance, and she came over and joined them.

  He looked at Ice. “You can go back to your apartment now.”

  “No,” she said. “Cannot. He might—”

  “He won’t.”

  She stared at him, her look telling him she wanted to believe what he said, but unsure if she could.

  “Never?” Natt asked.

  “Never. Neither of you will ever see him again.”

  “He move away?” Ice asked, still confused.

  “Yes. He moved away.”

  Finally, he could feel some of Ice’s tension dissipate.

  “You sure?” she asked.

  “One hundred percent.”

  The corner of her mouth curled up just a bit. “Okay,” she said, her tone still cautious. “I believe you.”

  He glanced at Natt. She looked relieved. No doubt she’d been worried about whether she should have talked to him at all. “I believe you, too,” she said.

  Later, when Ice was back at the karaoke machine, singing and smiling and laughing, Natt leaned across the bar and whispered, “You not just say that to make Ice happy, are you?”

  “No. I said it because it’s true.”

  She was silent for a moment. “What kind of man are you?”

  He shrugged.

  She locked eyes with his, her gaze boring deep into him. Finally, the trace of smile began to form on her face. “I know answer. You good man,” she said, then wandered off.

  Once he’d finished eating and drained the last of his beer, Quinn said, “Check, please.”

  “No check,” Natt said.

  He looked at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “You no pay.”

  “That’s not necessary. I want to.”

  “Nick really gone?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Then you no pay.”

  Knowing he would never change her mind, he pulled a twenty out of his pocket and put it by his plate.

  “I tell you, you no pay,” Natt said, picking up the twenty and holding it out to him.

  “Tip,” he said.

  She frowned for a moment. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay,” she said, her frown turning playful. “Khob khun ka.”

  A curious thing happened as he stood up. The two other waitresses ran over, put their hands together and bowed their heads in a traditional wai, and said, “Thank you for coming.”

  As this was going on, Ice handed the karaoke mic to a customer and hurried over.

  “You leaving?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he told her.

  “Come back soon, okay?”

  “I will,” he said.

  She gave him a deep, respectful wai. “Khob khun ka, Khun Jonathan.”

  He retuned the wai, then headed outside. If his mentor Durrie had still been around and known what he’d just done, he would have been shaking his head. “Didn’t you listen to anything I taught you?” he would have said. “Never use your training to help someone on the outside! What do you say to that?”

  But as much as Durrie had taught him, there were some rules Quinn discovered he could only use as guidelines. This one, it turned out, was one of those.

  “Khun Jonathan.”

  Quinn looked back. Natt had just come out the front door.

  “I told you it’s a tip,” he said.

  “I know is tip. I keep tip, no problem.”

  He waited, seeing there was something else she wanted to say.

  “Where he go?” she asked. “Where he go that he not come back?”

  Quinn looked west down Sunset Boulevard. By the time Natt and Ice got off work at four in the morning, Nick would be at his destination. It seemed fitting that Quinn had sent him to Thailand. An hour after Nick was set up in a hotel room in Bangkok, just about the time his paralysis would begin to wear off, the police would come knocking at his door.

  Well, not knocking. Barging in. That’s what they did when they got a tip that a major foreign drug smuggler was in town. In Nick’s luggage, they’d find the drugs planted by Quinn’s contacts in Thailand, more than enough to put Nick in a Thai prison for the rest of his life. Which seemed like a fair trade-off for the life he had been leading.

  Quinn looked back at Natt, gave her a smile and a wai, then walked down the street toward his car.