If she didn’t need to work to get his attention, there was no way she was going to risk poking herself in the eye with a liner pencil, so she tossed them both in the drawer that contained the makeup Janice had insisted was necessary through the years and went straight for her lip gloss. That was all she’d used at the retreat center, so it didn’t seem necessary for her to work much past that.
There was a pause when she had to pick out shoes. Her first instinct was to grab her running shoes, but she was wearing a nicer outfit, despite the jeans. So she decided to dress it up by going with zip-up boots that had a little lift. They were feminine, but if it was called for, the heels were sturdy enough that she could run and fight in them, too.
She ran her fingers through her hair again, amazed at how well the curls took from that minimal effort. Jose had said her hair would shine like this, and he was exactly right, even to Ellie’s overly critical eye. There was no way she was going to admit it to Janice, but her mini-makeover had probably been a good idea.
Since she was in regular clothes, she could bring her usual purse instead of a small clutch for a club. Thankfully, that meant her gun had a safe place to be, as well. Ellie might not relish the idea of having to use it, but if it meant saving her life, she knew she wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. She looked it over twice more, removing the clip and checking the action to be sure it was smooth and ready.
There was a soft knock on her door. She knew it was Phillips, which meant the rest of the crew was in the parking lot.
For years, she’d thought she would be a nervous wreck if she was ever forced to be a part of a take down again, but now that it was time to go, she found a strange calm come over her. In front of her on the table were the photos she’d gotten from her father’s belongings. She looked at the snapshot of her at graduation from the academy, standing next to her dad with their arms around each other. She wasn’t sure which one of them looked happier about her accomplishment. Without thinking, she lifted the bent photo up to her face and quickly kissed her father’s cheek before dropping the picture back on the table. As she moved to the door, she called out over her shoulder, “Wish me luck.”
She didn’t believe in ghosts, but in her mind, she heard the words her father had said to her many times growing up: “Luck is for people who aren’t prepared. I’ll wish you a speedy return and a straight shot.”
Chapter Nineteen
“I didn’t think you worked late on Fridays,” Ellie said to Joe when she walked into his mostly empty coffee shop. There were three college kids to one side, hunched over their computers, typing away madly, and drinking the cheapest thing on the menu.
“I don’t usually,” he agreed. “But I got this strange call from my cousin, telling me if I wanted to see you in action, tonight might be my best chance, so I came back and threw out the rest of my staff so there wouldn’t be any witnesses while I stared at you.”
“The chances of you seeing anything are slim,” she warned him. “I mean, real life is rarely like the movies make it out to be.”
“Good,” he quickly agreed. “Because if this were Hollywood, my shop would end up riddled with bullet holes and I’d be sweeping up glass for days.” Joe leaned in, “I really hate cleaning up glass.”
“I’ll see what I can do to keep that from happening.”
“Just promise me that when tonight is over, you’ll still be in one piece, and I won’t give a flying flip about any glass that might require cleanup in the meantime.”
“You’d clean up glass for me?”
A slight flare of surprise on Joe’s face proved to be enough of a reward that she wasn’t sure why she held back the little quips and comments that so often floated through her mind when she was around him.
“You have no idea the lengths I’d go through for you,” Joe replied cryptically. Before she could figure out how to get more information from him, the bell on the door interrupted them.
“Luka,” Ellie called out, surprised to feel genuinely glad to see the man she’d spent so much time with last weekend.
He moved over to her smoothly, with a grace Ellie found slightly unfair, as she didn’t think she could achieve it. He let his eyes briefly fall on the necklace she was wearing and then gave her a warm hug.
Once he pulled back, he said, “Being home obviously agrees with you.”
Not seeing a reason to disagree, she nodded, “Yes, but somebody has seriously disrupted my schedule, because they forced me to do all this morning yoga jazz, and now I find that it’s necessary to start and end the day that way.”
He laughed, surely knowing it wasn’t the burden she was attempting to make it out to be, and then warned, “Just wait, once you have lived this way long enough, you will find that a mid-day session will be necessary too.” Her expression must have shown how unamused she was by his threat. After Luka stopped laughing, he gestured to the counter and said, “Shall we purchase a drink and have a seat?”
Ellie nearly ordered one of Joe’s signature lattes, but decided at the last minute to change her usual request. “We’ll take a couple of your relaxing tea blends, please.”
Joe nodded, giving no indication that they were friends, and moved to prepare their drinks. He poured honey on a spoon and set it in her cup before sliding another mug to Luka with a spoon on the side.
“Do you come here often?” Luka asked after they sat down near the window.
“I thought you said you hated meeting people in bars, and as soon as we sit down, you throw out a lame line like that?” Ellie teased.
He seemed to find the humor in it, but clarified, “I noticed he sweetened your tea without asking, but did not give me the same benefit.”
“This is partway between where I live and where I work. I stop by often enough that most of the people here recognize me,” she admitted, hoping to change the subject.
Thankfully, they had yoga to serve as a distraction, and for the next hour, they talked about how she’d found her adjustment back to real life after the retreat in California. He made suggestions to address her minor complaints and seemed genuinely excited to hear that she was still doing much of what he’d taught her.
“I have to admit, practicing it at the retreat was much easier because Lydia was there to work out all the sore muscles.” She was unsure why it suddenly felt like a good idea to bring up the woman who’d been so difficult to understand.
“She can be helpful,” Luka replied, but something in the way he said it made Ellie think there was a lot more running through his head.
Too curious for her own good, she prompted, “You’re going to have to say more than that, because it almost sounds like you aren’t convinced she’s an asset to the center.”
“No, it is not that,” he quickly disagreed. “I owe Lydia a great deal—honestly, I owe her everything.”
“I don’t understand,” Ellie said, confused.
Luka sat back and looked out the window, as though searching for the right answer. “I studied yoga in this country and then went abroad when I was in my early twenties. By the time I came back, I felt like I had all this powerful knowledge, but no place to share it. So, I had to accept any job I could and ended up working at a gym as a personal trainer and yoga instructor. Lydia was one of my first students. Most of the people that came were spoiled wealthy women, just trying to do enough to keep their figure so they could fill their responsibilities as a trophy wife, but Lydia was not like them. I felt like I was making a difference with her.”
“I’m sure you were,” Ellie prompted, easily able to picture what he was describing.
“She said the same thing,” Luka continued. “Over time, after each of our sessions, we talked and became friends. She had a very sad and isolated life and when she asked me to keep an open mind about an idea she had, I felt I could trust her.”
He paused briefly and looked back out the window before finishing his story. “She had me meet her at a luxury spa her family owned. It had been a dream of her p
arents, and she was trying to manage it after their tragic deaths. Lydia suggested we go into business together and change it from a resort into the yoga retreat that it is today. I could not picture what she described, but when she offered me the position of head instructor, I was just desperate enough to accept it.” Luka turned to look at her once more. “The rest is history.”
The niggling feeling in the back of her mind that he was holding something back was too strong to ignore. “If the rest were just history, then you would have agreed with my original statement and not acted so…weird.”
Luka smiled. “I have not been called weird in years.”
“Stick with me much longer, and you’re liable to be called a good many things,” Ellie threatened.
His smile grew before he continued his story. “It took a few years, but eventually, word of mouth began to grow, and before long, we had more students than I could handle, so I suggested bringing in assistants to help. I thought she would be thrilled because the center was turning a profit for the first time in a decade, but she fought bringing in any help for at least another year. Finally, it was complaints from clients about the lack of personal attention that got her to agree to bring on new instructors.”
Having seen her extreme personality shifts firsthand, it was easy for Ellie to picture what Luka was describing.
“We worked through those difficulties,” he continued. “But over the course of the last year, something in her has changed again. “She demanded I just do the one-on-one sessions. At first I fought it, but after doing a few, I realized she was right. Individual lessons allowed me to delve much deeper into yoga, meditation, and a healthy lifestyle transformation. As my focus shifted to those kinds of instructions, I realized the people who were coming to me were no longer as interesting or committed. I accused Lydia of filtering my private clients so there would be no temptation to get attached to them.”
The term cougar came to mind, and Ellie wondered if Lydia was jealous of the attention her young instructor was getting from his students.
“She apologized later and admitted that she had been worried I was losing my focus and getting too involved with my clients. We compromised and agreed that she would not filter my students, so I could choose which ones I wished to work with and then I could pass the others to qualified staff. With that in place, I started taking off occasionally to do some seminars around the country to bring the knowledge I had gained in my travels and experiences to more people than we could serve at the center.”
“How has that been working?” Ellie asked, feeling like she already knew the answer.
“I like traveling and meeting new people, like this weekend. And I enjoy the time at the retreat with my private students, so it is working fine.”
“You don’t sound overly convincing,” Ellie challenged him softly.
“I guess I am not,” he agreed. “Most of the students that come to me now are uninteresting, and I find myself inventing reasons to pass them off to other instructors at the center. Sometimes, I will have a great first session, and then on day two, it is as if the person has totally changed. They come in with paint on their nails or wearing makeup, as though their outward appearance has anything to do with the journey inward I want to take them on.”
Ellie wondered why he kept working there if it was so disheartening. “Why do you keep doing it, then?”
He shrugged, “I do it because several times a year, I meet someone like you, who is both challenge and reward, and reminds me what a difference this life can make. I feel revitalized to keep going.”
“And the trips have to help too.”
“They did when I made them alone, but the last few months, every conference I have come to, Lydia has appeared unannounced as well,” he answered, causing a chill to run down Ellie’s spine.
“You didn’t know she planned on coming?” she asked evenly.
“No.” Luka gritted his teeth. “She may believe in living naturally, but she was born in privilege, and her brief marriage with Mr. Taylor only enforced it. There is part of her that cannot give that up. Anytime Lydia travels, it is always in a private jet.”
That explained why Agent Peters hadn’t been able to find a commercial ticket with her name on it. Of course, it didn’t help answer the question of why he didn’t search any further when he realized she was filthy rich to see that she had the ability to fly privately.
Joe caught Ellie’s eye and winked. She raised an eyebrow and tried to repress a smile. The espresso machine whirred in the background and Ellie felt strangely comforted by his presence behind the counter. As the smell of fresh ground beans filled the shop, she wondered what Joe was brewing up.
“I still feel like I owe her,” Luka continued. “She gave me a chance to make a living doing something I love, and it seems wrong to quit just because she can be difficult.”
“Do you think she’s in love with you?” Ellie asked, feeling like the last person in the world who should be leading a relationship conversation, but she still felt the need to try to point out part of why Lydia acted the way she did.
“No.” Luka objected so quickly that Ellie knew he was hiding something. “She is much older than I am, and knows I am not interested, so even if it were true, by now, she would have given up.”
Ellie laughed a little under her breath. “Not all women give up just because a situation appears to be hopeless.”
“True,” he nodded. “It is strange, because she is older than I am, and a widow, but I have always thought the way she treated me was more like an overeager child trying to impress their parent.”
“She’s been awfully controlling to consider you a father figure,” Ellie pointed out.
“Yes, but even children can be manipulative,” he seemed to get lost in his thoughts and paused.
Joe was cleaning off some tables nearby and she knew he was listening to their conversation. What she wouldn’t do to exchange her tea in for a cup of whatever he wanted to give her. Her mind was drifting to places she knew was dangerous right now.
“Lydia lost her parents early in life when her father shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself,” Luka continued, helping Ellie to focus once more. “Even though she had every need attended to, her only sibling was much older and distant. When I first met her, she connected with the image of a lotus flower – she even found a way to make them grow in Northern California, which is next to impossible because of the temperature and reduced sunlight. Once she felt she had risen from the muck of her life and bloomed at the top of the water, she was possessive of that position. I have tried to help her see that the bloom only stays at there for a period of time before releasing a pod to fall back to the bottom and repeat the cycle, but she’s never grasped that concept.”
As much as Ellie didn’t want to agree with Lydia, she could understand why that part of the progression wasn’t as appealing. “Do you blame her? Who wants to think about their life ending and being replaced?”
“But that is not it at all,” Luka quickly disagreed. “If you have endured something difficult and risen above it, then you have undoubtedly grown stronger in the process. Why would you want to remain stagnant with your new-found strength? You should eagerly look for new ways to grow. Why not embrace the cycle of working to develop and then relishing in the sunlight before finding a new challenge and working through that one? Our lives are meant to be evolving cycles. The lotus is not a symbol of complacency; it’s a symbol of evolving endurance.”
Ellie had listened to Luka’s instructions enough to know that there was a lot more to what he’d just said than a defense of the retreat center’s owner. She knew his words would be running through her mind later and would no doubt apply to her as well. Luka was like a coated medication: you might get the initial hit when it comes into your system, but there was also the slow release over time that continued to do your body good.
By the time they’d finished their second cup of tea all the other customers were gone, and Joe
had begun sweeping the sitting area. Ellie only had her suspicions that the man beside her was not the killer they were after. In order to clear him completely, she assumed she was going to have to leave with him, trusting that the team outside would move in quickly enough to keep her safe if she was wrong.
Before she could come up with a way to end their evening, Luka spoke up. “It is getting late and I have an early morning class, so I should excuse myself to make the long drive back to my hotel. It was wonderful to see you again, and I hope you will reach out if there’s anything you need, at any time. You have my cell phone number now, so I will expect you to use it.”
They exchanged a few final pleasantries, and then Luka hugged her and walked out alone into the darkened lot. They had talked well past the closing time for the businesses on this street and Mocha Joe’s seemed to be the only shop with much internal lighting still in use. Luka got in a small Prius and drove away without a glance back. It made no sense. He hadn’t even tried to move her into the parking lot. She typed a quick text to alert the team supporting her that tonight was a waste and then let out the partial breath she’d been holding through the night’s operation.
“Not every bad guy is caught on the first try,” Joe said, placing his hand at the small of her back, letting the warmth of his hand calm her.
“That I know,” she agreed leaning into his simple touch, “but I’m starting to believe we didn’t catch this one because we’re after the wrong guy.”
“Do you have anybody else on your radar?”
“Not officially.” Ellie hated admitting that because she felt it was because she’d failed to push more on Lydia as a possibility.
A Killer Cup of Joe Page 23