Maelstrom

Chapter 8: Ivan Alkaev

Back to Friday night

The Corona was easy – grab one from the fridge, open with the speed opener I twirled out of my back pocket, plop a wedge of lime in the neck, and slide it along the bar into the customer's eager hand – but the Electric Long Island Iced Tea was the drink I'd earn the tip on. I grabbed the well gin and vodka in my left hand, the rum and tequila in my right, and poured all four at once into the waiting glass of ice. The fake redhead with bottle-blond streaks hanging on the Corona-drinker threw her fist in the air and whooped some drunken encouragement.

I filled the rest of the glass almost to the top with an alarmingly small amount of cola from my gun, floated a half-ounce of Cointreau on the top, and dropped in an orange-slice-maraschino-cherry flag from nearly two feet above the glass's rim. The woman was literally hopping with excitement as I passed her the cocktail, and the man now wore the smug look of satisfaction one sees on someone who knows he's getting laid tonight. Eight bucks, I bet myself silently.

"Twenty-two!" I shouted as he pulled a roll of cash from his front pocket. I scanned the crowd again as the man fumbled with his bills. Still no sign of anything unusual, or anyone that I'd been briefed on. Feeling a droplet of sweat trickling between my breasts, I pulled at the cut-away neck of my skin-tight burn-out Game of Thrones T-shirt and surreptitiously blew air on my chest. I'd pulled my long, pale blond hair back with several skinny braids joined in the back and wore minimal makeup tonight; several customers had already voiced their recognition and approval, and compensated my efforts financially, as well.

The man at the bar pulled out a 20 and a 10 and guided the woman he clearly saw as a silver-lamé-wrapped party prize away from the crowded bar. I rang up the sale and pushed the $8 tip down into my jar. I had already made more in tips tonight that I ever had bartending in grad school or in any of the clubs I'd worked in Paris or Stockholm. I was still beaming when I turned back to face the club's dance floor and saw Ivan Alkaev in the flesh for the very first time.

My first thought was that the photos in his thin police file didn't do him justice, not even close. Though the two gorillas moving clubbers out of his way were each commanding a lot of attention, it was Alkaev that drew everyone's eyes like a lodestone. His dark-blonde hair was cropped shorter on the sides and back than it had been in the pictures I'd seen – all the sun-streaked gold was gone, making his hair look dark in the dim, flashing lights of the club – but his skin still bore a light tan that spoke of his recent move from Miami. He wore a black button-down shirt open at the neck that flowed like oil over his finely muscled body. At this distance, I could confirm he was two or three inches over six feet, for a total of seventy-four inches of all-out, Grade A, sex-god lusciousness. And since he wasn't wearing sunglasses inside the club, I could finally see that his eyes were an intense steel blue ...

... a detail I could be quite sure of since those gorgeous orbs were looking right at me. There was absolutely no mistaking the object of his attention; I could feel the heat of that gaze even over the blast of air-conditioned air that continually bathed the backbar. The 1000-watt smile my loaded tip jar had inspired was doused as a whirl of chaotic emotions replaced my earlier elation. I watched his head turn ever so slightly to hold my gaze as he strolled across the room. And as I felt my stomach start to flutter and my breath catch and a deep, delicious, unexpected throbbing begin between my legs, a sadly-delayed follow-up thought finally worked its way into my brain: I'm supposed to be invisible.