𝙑𝙖𝙡𝙠𝙖𝙮𝙖: 𝙀𝙥𝙞𝙥𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙮

Chapter 7: The Moonlight Restaurant

(Geralt's POV)

          It has been about two hours since the meeting. I was outside of the restaurant. I had brought my SA-95 handgun with five magazines of 15 bullets each. With my hands on the steering wheel I took a deep breath as I was about to enter a case where I was expected to do some combat. Exiting the car I looked up into the night sky and into the large moon, I adjusted my fedora. Walking into the restaurant, I could already see the irony of the name of the restaurant. A person would think this place would be packed with couples eager to spend time together... maybe get a good meal... but no...

It was empty of customers....

      A voluptuously figured female was cleaning out some glasses at the bar and didn't even take a second glance at me entering. I went to the bar and took a seat on one of the stools.

    "Can I help you to a drink detective?" she asked me.
"No thank you. I could have you answer some questions for me though." I said leaning into the bar slightly. She paused her cleaning for a moment then sat the glass down.
   "Shoot detective..."
   "What do you know about the Purple Den?" I asked her.
"Biggest strip club on this side of the precinct. Any hedonist's dream if you ask me. Rumor has it that some ritualistic orgies of some kind are taking place there... weird stuff." she said.
"Something you read in a fairy tale," I said. "Am I correct?" I asked her.
"Sure... I mean what do I know about books honey? I'm just a bartender and a waitress."

"Thank you for your..."

Suddenly, the sound of glass shattered as a bullet flew past my head and into the shoulder of the waitress. She screamed as blood spurted from the wound. Falling backwards into the glass bottles behind her in shock, she gave panicked cries as she managed to get behind the bar in cover. As for me, I hurdled over the bar, ducked with her and drew my handgun. From what I could discern so far we were dealing with a sniper. I got out my phone and dialed for Winston.

"Hello?"
"Listen old man, I have a sniper trained in on me and a wounded innocent bystander at the restaurant... I'm going to try and get back to the West Precinct." I said with a little frustration as another scare bullet hit a glass bottle.
"My... arm... my arm is numb!" the bartender cried.
"You know you can't radio in for help..." Winston said with a grimaced tone. "Pray you make it back somehow..."
"I'll be fine old man... I'll see you by tomorrow most likely."

This was a screwed up scenario. The police could not be called since our main suspects may be in the ranks of the VSF. Not only that... they were most likely fully aware of what was going on already. The only hope we had was making a beeline to the car and getting out of this mess.

Or so I thought...

"Detective! There is a door in the back we can get to. We will have to crawl to it though and time getting through it." she said pointing at a door in on the other side of the bar.

I sat there for a moment and thought to myself about this situation. Whoever was shooting at us had to have done some reconnaissance on the area before getting to this particular situation within the scenario. I looked quickly to my left and viewed a bottle of some old "vintage" wine and then grabbed it.

"What are you doing?!" the lady yelled.
"Quiet..." I whispered. I tossed the bottle into the air in front of us and what I predicted happened. The sniper shot the bottle immediately. As the glass shattered, we both managed to cover my arm in time to prevent the shards from cutting into our faces. As a couple shards cut into the arm of the lady causing her to yell in pain. I was fortunate enough to be wearing a leather jacket with long sleeves.

Something was off... this individual was an excellent marksman. Why in the world would she decide to miss me and hit the lady. I decided to save these questions for later as I developed another plan.

I crawled over to the end of the bar with the lady crawling behind me. I grabbed another bottle and turned over to the lady.

   "What's your name?" I asked her.
    "Elizabeth Gelder..." she replied.
    "Listen Elizabeth, the moment I toss this in the air you book it for the door." I told her.
   She nodded as I took a deep breath. With a quick toss of the bottle into the air, the booming sound of the sniper rifle shattered the bottle. Elizabeth Gelder was already gone as I turned my head back to where she was.
I decided to book it for the door without using the bottle tactic. Surprisingly, I wasn't shot at as I barreled into the back alleyway of the restaurant.
Elizabeth was leaning against the alleyway's wall as blood flowed down her shoulder from her wound. A storm made it's presence known with the booming sound of thunder... rain was soon to follow.
"Come here... we are heading back to the front... we need to get you to our office..." I said as I grabbed her hand gently. We had enough medical supplies at the office to treat and disinfect the gun wound.
"Aren't you worried about to sniper?" she asked me.
"No. She didn't shoot me while I was going through the backdoor."
She nodded as we made our way back to the front of the restaurant. As we quickly got into the car, I turned the keys in the ignition and we were out of there and zoomed out the Eastern Precinct and onto the glowing highway, heading towards home.

"Jesus, old man... that didn't go well at all." I thought to myself.