Day 141 - Outside Looking In

 Outside Looking In

 Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

During the day she was Kaylee, but at night she was Nina. During the day, Declan was distracted with his new best friend, the Hong Kong, Philippine Anti-Piracy task force, Interpol agent. At night, Nina made sure the men in her new apartment building noticed her and paid attention. Declan worked well with a partner, but apparently not so well as a trio. Nina did her best work alone. Declan and Sonny compared notes and looked at pictures of tattoos and talked about numbers on forearms. The men Nina talked to had tattoos, but none were numbered.

Declan wasn’t sure who she needed to follow, just that he heard rumors of a Dragon Claw Agent living in her building. At night she would walk the streets and follow the men to local bars and restaurants. Often the men would gather at a restaurant called Pan Pan which served a pasta dish called Mafia Chicken. Nothing else about the restaurant was American-Italian themed or related to the “mafia” but there was the one dish. Nina never ate the food, but would drink a glass of wine at the bar, sometimes with a friend, sometimes alone, and watch the men in the reflection of the mirror behind the bar. She wondered if any or all could be the Agents she was looking for.

So far none of the men had bothered her. There was a hotel across the street that looked like the type of place men brought prostitutes to. So far none of the men in her building had gone across the street. Perhaps they were all too focused on work. If they were Agents, then the gunman on the street might be keeping them busy and they didn’t have time for women of any sort.

Kaylee wondered if Declan and Sonny were having better luck that she was. She looked forward to checking in and perhaps getting back to more serious business. If they had a lead on an assassin wearing a numbered tattoo, she wanted in on the job.

One of the men caught her eye – he was younger, more serious, but she was certain he had looked her way once or twice. She had seen him in the building and knew he lived two floors up. She would have to arrange to accidently bump into him sometime.