Countdown to Zero Hour

by Nico Rosso

  “The line’s gone. Two orders, please. Both with sour cream.” He was talking about the food, while she thought he might be indicating other needs for her to fulfill.

  An urgent heat rose into her cheeks and along the top of her chest. Switching gears out of her mental bordello, she focused on the dumplings, hoping the steam would justify her blush.

  “You didn’t eat dinner?” she asked. Victory swirled in the broth. She was on her way to selling out of pelmeni.

  “Some new tapas place. Too fancy for me.”

  She knew of only one new Spanish restaurant. It was expensive and exclusive, and the chef ran the kitchen like a submarine captain with his finger on the trigger of nuclear annihilation. Art’s mystery deepened. How the hell had he gotten in there?

  “One of these is for me,” he continued, taking a paper boat of dumplings. “The other is for my boss.” Tipping his head, he indicated the front door of the club. Standing at the edge of the light, near the burly doorman, was a refined man with silver hair and a perfectly tailored suit. The man was so confident he had to be a crook.

  And Art worked for him. Making him a...?

  “Also—” Art pulled out his wallet and slipped a bill out. “He owns this place.”

  All the heat of the steam cart couldn’t keep a cold chill from surrounding her. The traditional risks of opening a restaurant were blown away by the inherent threat of authority held by the man at the door. She’d parked herself outside a club owned by the Russian mob and was poaching his customers.

  Art maintained his small smile and somehow didn’t menace her with the new imbalance in the power dynamic. The money he held was a hundred-dollar bill.

  “I can’t break that and still make change for anyone else.”

  He blinked, like he didn’t understand anything she’d said. “Tip.”

  “I appreciate it, but...”

  Slow and deliberate, he placed the bill on the cart. “I understand about running a small business.”

  “Does your boss?” She tried not to stare at the eerily tranquil man by the door.

  “We’ll see.” He gave her a sympathetic look.

  So even when he was on the clock, he could be human. But she knew not to let a sense of relief make her too comfortable. “It’s a free sidewalk.”

  The edge returned to his eyes. “Nothing’s free. You know that.”

  “I do.” She’d paid for a lot through her life with money and sweat and had gotten very little back.

  He took the second tray of food and tipped his head toward his boss. “I’ll put in a good word with Rolan, but I think your pelmeni will do most of the talking.”

  His smile was only slightly reassuring. He was working for the guy who could make life very difficult for her. This stretch of sidewalk had paid well. It was a small start, but a start. She didn’t know if she’d be able to muster any energy to overcome yet another setback.

  Art walked the food over to his boss, leaving her alone on an island. The people waiting for the club watched her, but didn’t approach for food. Wary, they glanced at the boss, and she busied herself organizing the cart so she didn’t watch him eat the food. It would’ve been interesting to see Art eat, though. He appeared to take the world in with all his senses. Where would her food take him?

  He wasn’t the one she needed to win over, but she wanted to see him taste.

  Damn it, they were still eating when she finished distracting herself with a jar of relish and peeked up toward the club’s door. The boss nodded his head with approval. Art chewed slowly, savoring.

  She fought the urge to duck back behind the cart. She was a chef, had earned the title, and would watch as people ate every bit of her food. Showing any weakness now would send the wrong message to the man Art called Rolan. Not that she was going to be too ballsy with the Russian.

  His lean body radiated supreme confidence from within his lustrous suit as he strode toward her. Art remained close at his side, always picking apart the environment with keen awareness.

  Rolan smiled, ticking his finger at her, and praised with a heavy Russian accent, “Very good.”

  Art nodded agreement. “Best I’ve ever had.”

  She soaked in his honesty. “Don’t tell your mother that.”

  “She’d agree.” Again, Art curled his hands around the lapels of his jacket and balanced on his legs.

  Rolan planned something quickly in Russian. Art replied to him, and their conversation ran for a moment.

  “...good...nights...home cooking...”

  She picked out words and phrases here and there, wishing her family had taught her more growing up. They’d spoken mostly English at home. She’d only heard the steely opera of her ancestors’ native tongue when her father and aunt would talk without wanting anyone to know what they were saying.

  But her aunt had taught her to cook the family recipes, and those damn pelmeni had gotten Hayley into this situation. No, that wasn’t right. She tried to blame Burton for her position behind the steam cart but knew that wouldn’t fly either. A ton of circumstances had blended together to put her on that sidewalk. Ultimately, it had been her choice. And look where it got her.

  New dimensions to Art unfolded in front of her. His mastery of Russian deepened his mystery. He wasn’t just common muscle. She bet that anything she threw at him, he’d handle: leap from rooftop to rooftop, land a space shuttle, make a feast out of her body.

  A tingling awareness swept low in her belly, hungry for something other than food. She threw the thoughts of sex into a quick ice bath, setting their lurid color but keeping the heat from overcooking her.

  “Rolan loves your food.” Art licked his lips. “And so do I.” The growl in his voice let her know just how much her cooking shook him. “He says that you’re doing a good job, keeping his customers from getting too restless while they’re waiting to get in.”

  “Thank you.” She made a curt bow to Rolan. “Spacibo.”

  Her accent for her kitchen-table Russian was good enough to let people know her last name wasn’t just an ornament. Rolan appeared pleased and rattled off a string of sentences she couldn’t follow.

  Art translated, “You’re a fighter.” He added an aside, “I saw it from the way you handled the line. And me.” Rolan cleared his throat, and Art resumed translating. “You can stay. But...”

  Here was where the boss would name the price for letting her stay. Or he would lean on her for intimate compensation. She’d been subject to that kind of pressure before as a woman in a commercial kitchen. The answer was always an unwavering “no.” Was Art the enforcer for that kind of leverage? He didn’t seem like it, but nothing was certain outside the club.

  He continued, “You have to include a salad next time. Something with tomatoes and cucumbers with fresh dill and sour cream. And beets.”

  She knew better than to breathe too much relief. “That I can do.”

  “And forty percent.” Art’s face was all business.

  The hope of an easy deal crashed, taking her mood with it. Damn it, forty was a big chunk. And would make it harder for her to climb out of the hole. But how much leverage did she have? She pushed past the frustration and countered, “Ten.”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “Ten.”

  He chuckled. “Forty.”

  She stood up to him. “Your boss trusts you to negotiate for him?”

  “I’m trustworthy.” He casually crossed his arms over his chest. “Thirty.”

  “Fifteen.”

  Art shook his head, scanning the area before coming back to her. “It’ll cost twenty percent of your nightly to stay and sell here. No less. Otherwise you’ll have to find another club to hang out in front of, and I can almost bet their ownership is a lot less accommodating. And I’m damn sure their hired help isn’
t as friendly.” He gave her a secret wink. “You’re cash only, no receipts. Cook the food, not the books. We’ll go with a general twenty percent. Feel me?”

  “Not literally.” The monetary terms would work, but anything else was a deal breaker. Her quick and raunchy sexual fantasies with Art were very separate from these negotiations.

  He backed up. “Not what I meant, Chef. I was raised by my mother and sisters. I’ve heard the stories. We’re talking business right now.”

  “Twenty percent it is.”

  Rolan patted Art on the back, satisfied, then extended his hand to Hayley. Under the best circumstances, running a restaurant meant making deals the county tax board would never hear about. This arrangement put her running headfirst into very shady territory. But she had to. There was a career to salvage and a lot of generosity she had to pay back to her mother.

  Hayley shook Rolan’s hand.

  Art immediately broke the handshake with his hard forearm. He stepped between them, and she felt just how powerful his body was when he pushed past her. A shocked gasp cut off in her throat. Was he having second thoughts about Hayley making a deal with Rolan?

  The boss exclaimed in Russian, but Art didn’t turn around or answer. His focus was on two men hurrying away from the club line and toward Hayley and Rolan. They were coming on fast, but she saw the hard lines of their faces, their cold dead eyes. And the wicked combat knives in their hands.

  Her muscles locked, not knowing what to do.

  Art rushed the men, placing himself between them and Hayley and Rolan.

  She’d seen fights before and had even been in a few. They’d been clumsy and drunken, or fueled with blinding anger that limited the combatants to shouting and grappling.

  Art, though, moved with precise brutality. He engaged the closest attacker, who wore a leather blazer. Art used his forearm to knock a knife strike to one side. Before the second man dressed all in denim got too close with his blade, Art kicked him quickly in the shin.

  That man stumbled, and Leather Blazer swung back with his knife. Art leaned away, balanced. He kept his hands high and ready. The man continued to push forward, slicing the air. Screams erupted from the line of people outside the club, and bodies scattered.

  Art’s focus didn’t waver. When Leather Blazer overextended a strike, he countered with a quick jab to the man’s throat. Sputtering, the man lunged with a wild stab. Art jumped to the side and caught the man’s arm up under his. With a quick turn and a wicked elbow, Art broke Leather Blazer’s arm. She winced, gritting her teeth at the sickening sound. The knife fell from a limp hand and clattered to the ground.

  The man howled. Art kneed him in the chest, then kicked him to the pavement. The denim attacker had gathered himself and sprang at Art. Instead of facing the man, Art dove to the side in a tight roll. When he stood, he had Leather Blazer’s knife.

  To this part in the fight, Art had looked like a professional and trained combatant. A warrior. With the knife in his hand, he was feral. His face remained calm, his body coiled. He was a predator who understood life and death.

  He and Denim Man circled each other, knives out, Art always shifting to keep himself blocking the path to where Rolan and Hayley stood by the steam cart. All she had was a slotted spoon to defend herself, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to use it against the determined attacker with the huge blade.

  Art made no indication that he would let Denim Man through. He was cautious with the man’s knife but pressed his own attacks.

  Tension bolted all her joints in place. She couldn’t breathe while the conflict played out, just a few feet from her.

  Leather Blazer groaned on the ground, holding his arm tight to his chest. The line outside the club was gone, only a handful of people remaining on the far limit of the outside lights. Men streamed from the front door, hurrying toward the conflict.

  Denim Man saw the oncoming bouncers and bodyguards and doubled his attack. He swung and sliced quickly with his blade, showing murderous skill. Art remained nimble and stable, avoiding the razor edge. If she could’ve drawn a breath she would’ve shouted some caution to Art.

  Just when he looked to be on his heels, Art launched his own assault. The knife struck out like a snake in his hand. The first jab missed, but he swiped the edge to the side and cut through the man’s shirt and into his forearm. Denim Man winced, clenching his teeth. Art didn’t let up. His knife flashed out, again and again. The man’s arm was cut in long stripes.

  Her heart thundered harder at the sight of blood in the violence. The blades were much more brutal than anything she worked with in the kitchen.

  Denim Man tried to counter, but Art blocked him with a quick punch to the shoulder that knocked him back. Art stabbed out again and sliced across the back of the man’s hand, forcing him to drop his knife.

  She winced and drew her arms tighter to her body, knowing the pain must’ve been intense.

  The man’s terrified eyes stared wide at Art’s blade. Art made him flinch with a fake stab. Denim Man never saw Art’s other fist coming in. The blow landed square on his jaw. The attacker was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  Art immediately picked up that man’s knife and patted him down for any other weapons. He found only a cell phone and tossed it to the side with the man’s wallet. He did the same for Leather Blazer, who was in too much pain to put up a struggle.

  The other men from the club descended on the scene. Half surrounded the two downed attackers, while others whisked Rolan back into the building. For a moment, the only sounds were the low groaning of Leather Blazer and the quick, hard thumping of Hayley’s pulse in her ears.

  Art emerged from the group of men and went to her, his face focused. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. Was this the same man she’d been flirting with? He’d changed so fast, the fighter just beneath the surface. He seemed human again, but all that violence couldn’t go away that quickly. “You?”

  Still holding both knives, he checked over his hands. “Couple of nicks, nothing bad.” One of the knives had the other man’s blood on it. Art’s amazingly calm gaze moved on to her face again. “Get out of here before the cops show up.”

  She glanced down the hill to where her SUV was, trying to figure out how to switch gears between life-and-death struggles and the nuts-and-bolts details of hitching up her steam cart.

  Art grounded her with his calm and even tone. “You’re not part of this business. You just sell pelmeni, right?”

  She nodded.

  He continued. “I’ll stay with your cart. Get your car.”

  Usually taking orders prickled her, but having a clear directive helped sort out all the chaos. She jogged away from the side of the club, realizing she still held the slotted spoon like a weapon. She had clenched her fist so tight her fingers creaked when she opened them to get her keys out.

  She laid too much gas on, and the tires screeched up the hill toward the club. The group of men surrounding the downed attackers paid little attention when she double-parked. Art didn’t hold the knives anymore, and pushed the cart over to her trailer hitch. Hayley helped him hook it up, but lost most of her dexterity to jumping nerves.

  Selling her family recipe pelmeni outside a Russian nightclub had seemed like a perfect way of digging her way out of debt and turmoil. But in one night, she’d shaken hands with a mob boss and witnessed an attempted killing. The man who’d taken on and neutralized the attackers appeared way too calm. The same physicality that had flared vivid sexual fantasies had erupted into quick, devastating violence.

  Art placed his warm palm over her trembling hand. “Chef. You’ve got this.”

  Part of her believed him. He’d stood between her and the attacker’s blades, even if he was protecting Rolan, too. She was amazed that he could make her feel at all safe amid the violence.

&nb
sp; “Thank you,” she breathed.

  He was dangerous. The depth in his eyes resonated through Hayley, making her think she understood a piece of him. But, no, she told herself. He was too different, too far away from anything she’d known.

  “You’re welcome.” He walked her to her car door and opened it for her. Once she was inside, he tapped reassuringly on the roof. “I’ve got to keep you cooking. Besides, you had my back. If they’d gotten through me, you’d have taken them out with the spoon.”

  It rested on her passenger seat.

  He smiled, slightly crooked, slightly honest. “See you next weekend.”

  Fear and a hidden thrill tumbled through her. She’d found a good place to start her life back up but had to make a deal with a bad guy to do it and had entered into a world of knife attacks and violent men. Art was one of them. And he seemed like something else. She’d see him again. She’d be back in the danger. Would he protect her? Or tempt her deeper into the shadows?

  Chapter Two

  Art showered in the dark and left the lights out as he toweled off. Soap had stung the hairline cuts on his knuckles and the backs of his hands. He’d had worse growing up with his sister’s cats. He’d had worse fighting in the hills of Afghanistan.

  Long ago, he’d memorized the layout of his simple apartment and now moved silently through the darkness without bumping into anything. Leftover warmth from the shower dragged at his tired muscles. After pulling on a pair of boxers, he used an app on his phone to deactivate the motion sensing area light in the living room. The glow of the floodlight would’ve warned him if anyone had come through, even if he couldn’t hear the footsteps. A .38 special in a zip-top bag in the shower was always close at hand.

  His feet creaked the floorboards as he walked to the kitchen and poured himself a tall shot of aged tequila. There was another revolver within reach, taped to the underside of the counter. The cooking knives were kept sharp, even though he didn’t cook much.