Until Death

4.

Nothing seemed uninteresting and yet interesting as passing strangers who you probably had crossed paths with a million times. Maybe twice or trice.

Mundane to the clueless people. An average person has passed an average size of murderers, hired killers, gangbanger, drug dealers and stalkers in their lifetime to risk their life itself. Criminals, by who walked free without a doubt or fear in the world with their uncanny ability to blend into their environment. Your neighbor who's down the street might be a con man who goes to prey on the innocents in a designer raincoat and an premium insurance policy. He might be a hired killer in the night. A henchman to a mafia family. A cannibal. The possibilities are endless.

And the possibilities are endless.

Endless are the possibilities of what happened that night to Jane's employers. A dead master and an arrested madame.

Never in her life has she been this confused than wondering how she got a B+ instead of a A- as a weeny kid who tried to please her family and their ancestors before them.

Jane watched her back, from the coffee shop, expecting someone to be watching her. Consider her a suspect. She was, but the eyes she felt on her back. Reminded her, she was loyal to the Romero's family. And she let their son died, and was living.

Fuck, she cursed internally as she sipped her steaming hot cup of supreme too soon. The burning sensation on her tongue was enough to keep her numb, but it wasn't enough to distract her mind from death. She felt it on her skin, her grandma once told her after a person dies. Their aura surrounds their surroundings like a blanket. And she was sure she reeked of it. Suspecting everybody that passed her a glance, a glare as she watched them before turning to the hunky Barista. Martinez.

Jane believed, staying in the Romero's house was too risky. And staying with her sister or family was hella lot riskier. Better her than them. She would've been a captive there, trapped, exposed to so many questions that will make her question the relationship of her employers. Dead or alive. Not the best. She needed space, an escape route from the scenes that flashed before her eyes. The gun, the body and blood. Everywhere. Her poker face couldn't spare the horrors and it has only been a day. A tormenting one. The shop didn't close for another couple of hours. She was safe to sit there and wait it out. Her superstition. The paranoia. And her sister.

Lisa had promised to come there with the money, she will need to lay low at some rundown motel or something. A shelter. She didn't know, but anything far from her mother and the family they served. She could picture her mum asking her to tell every detail of the scene to the grandfather and head of the Romero's. She didn't have the heart to chance them as a mafia family.

That only happens in the movies but you are in the reality of Beverly murder. Fuck. Nothing seemed to be in her favor anymore. She couldn't leave the family, get work or something.

No Lisa. No Lisa Wang.

All she had to do was put some savings from the sink cabinet where she hid her money and step into the shop. Give her the cash and leave. There was no sign of her sister or her low ass boyfriend, who was white and all hood gold chains, good looks and a frat boy without a destiny other than party hard, commit stupid crimes and die off hard drugs, and be added to the statistics. Harsh, was what her grandmother raised her and her mother to be. She died before she got to instilled that in Lisa.

Come on, babe. Come on, baby girl. Don't do anything stupid.

Jane huddled back in her coat and looked at the window she tried to guess people's day jobs. She looked up to the grey skies and cursed the weather for the umpteenth time. Just her luck. The weather showed her inners and outside, leaving her exposed. Like the story in the Times of her employers' deed being in the paper. She had seen what it had said. He was stabbed, one gun and blah blah.