Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [19]
And, on occasion, something a little more…unusual. Like this case. Sorry, she amended even though Sergei couldn’t hear her thought, this situation.
Callie came over, wiping her hands on the front of the white apron tied around her waist, and stood by their table, one bleached-blond eyebrow raised. “Your usual?” she said to Wren.
“Nah, I think I’ll live dangerously.” She scanned the chalkboard behind the bar with a practiced eye. “Give me the Caesar salad and the filet of sole.”
“Which is exactly what you’ve had the past three times. Experiment a little, willya?” Callie had the flat-toned voice of someone trying to pretend they weren’t from around here, but unlike almost every other waiter and waitress in town, she wasn’t waiting for the big break to sweep her off to Hollywood.
“And a glass of Chianti.”
“Ooo, red instead of white. You are living dangerously.” Not that being a professional waitress made her any more respectful of her clientele. Just the opposite, actually.
“See why I love this place?” Wren asked her companion.
“Indeed. A tossed salad and the halibut, please. Nothing else to drink.”
“You guys have really got to calm your wild lives down,” the waitress said in disgust, stalking off to the kitchen with a practiced flounce.
“We’re such a disappointment to her.”
Wren snorted. Callie had been flirting madly with Sergei for two years now, ever since Wren moved into the neighborhood and they started coming here regularly, and he remained serenely unresponsive. Disappointment didn’t even begin to cover it. Wren could understand Callie’s point of view, though. If she wasn’t so sure he’d look at her blankly, or worse yet give her the “we’re partners, nothing more” speech, she might have made a play for him, too. Well, maybe not when they first partnered. But lately…it was weird, how someone so familiar could suddenly one day, totally out of the blue and with a random thought, become…interesting. In that way.
Damn it, Valere, focus! “Whatcha got for me?”
Sergei lifted a plain manila envelope out of his briefcase and handed it to her. “The names of all the highly-placed executives, both within the Frants Corporation and at rival organizations, who would have reason to hold a grudge of this magnitude, and the financial wherewithal to hire someone to perform magic of this level. You?”
“Bunch of folk with the mojo to do the job themselves, almost all carrying a mad-on of one kind or another for our client. Strictly low-budget grievances, though.” She pulled out a legal-size piece of paper from the file and handed it to him in exchange. It was a copy of the original list P.B. had given her, with her own notes added under each name. “Doubt they’d be in any of your databases.”
“Don’t ever underestimate my resources,” he told her severely. “Many people who think they’re invisible often—”
“Leave a fluorescent trail. Yeah, yeah, I know.” One of the few “resources” of his that Wren had ever met in person was a former forensic investigator named Edgehill, who was paying off some unnamed but very large favor done in the distant past. He was a slight, frantic-eyed man with wildly-gesturing hands. Listening to him talk was sort of like watching an episode of CSI on fast forward while taking speed. But his shit was almost always on the money.
“Would the police have anything on file?”
Wren snorted. “Nobody on this list. Strictly no-see-um talents.”
“Noseeyum?”
“Too good to get caught.”
“Ah.” He grinned at her, the expression softening his face and putting an appealing glint in his dark brown eyes. Behind that hard-assed, hard-pressed agent façade, she thought not for the first time, Mr. Sergei Didier had a real wicked sense of humor that didn’t get nearly enough air time. “Kin of yours?”
“Hardly.” Without