Protection for Hire Read online

  “Was?”

  “She died last year.” And Tessa had cried in her cell all day the day of her funeral, wanting to go but not allowed to. If Tessa had been released a year early, she’d have been able to say goodbye.

  Mina cleared her throat. “So, you roughed people up?”

  “I did whatever my uncle asked me to do.” Tessa looked down at her hands. “It’s probably best I not talk about it.”

  “Oh, of course. I was just thinking …” Mina flipped through a stack of file folders on her desk, then grabbed one and skimmed through the pages. “You can … basically take care of yourself, right?”

  “Uh … yeah. I studied Muay Thai from when I was in grade school, and I also studied Brazilian jiu-jitsu, tae kwan do, and a little Capoeira.” And basic no-holds-barred street fighting too, with a reputation among her cousins and her uncle’s kobuns for having a streak of creative ruthlessness.

  Mina’s eyes widened at the list, but they also shone with excitement. “So how about a bouncer?”

  Tessa wasn’t sure what to think about that. “You really think someone would hire me as a bouncer?”

  Mina made a face at Tessa’s job applications folder. “They obviously won’t hire you as a janitor, a burger flipper, a cashier, or a stock boy. Why not a bouncer?”

  Why not? “I guess … although I don’t know if I’d be comfortable working for a particularly shady nightclub. I’ve known the girls who work there, and sometimes it’s only a step above slavery.”

  “It might be a step toward doing bodyguard work.” Mina was on a roll. “You’d be perfect for that. Your own private company, you can pick and choose what clients you’ll take, and you can more than take care of yourself.”

  Wow. That would be really cool. “Yeah. Okay, got any leads on bouncer jobs?”

  “Uh … no.”

  “Oh, right. Battered woman not at the top of the bouncer qualifications list. I’ll look online.” Tessa rose and held out her hand to Mina. “Thanks for the idea.”

  “I’m sorry about those other jobs. I thought for sure that Fat Burger would hire you, but …”

  Yeah, but was she really surprised? Aside from the fact she was an ex-convict, being an ex-yakuza didn’t place her high on anybody’s hiring priorities.

  She walked down the stairs much slower than she’d gone up, and she headed to the quaint living room on the first floor, situated near the back of the house. A fire might be lit in the antique fireplace, and she loved the crackling sound and the smell. As she entered the room, she spotted the Southern woman’s glossy dark head next to a couple other women at the shelter. They all glanced at her with identical Oh-my-gosh-there-she-is-stop-talking-about-her expressions.

  Tessa looked away, just in case they could see the sting in her heart reflected in her eyes. She didn’t want to be feared anymore. She wanted to have friends who didn’t know how to shoot an automatic weapon or boost a car. She wanted somewhere she belonged … but where would that be? She was drifting in between the world of the yakuza and the world of normal, and she wasn’t in either one. She didn’t want to belong to the yakuza world, but she was starting to think she’d never belong to the normal world either.

  A stampede of footsteps. Tessa expected to see a rampaging gang of suspiciously quiet kindergartners come to attack their favorite playmate. Instead, the woman’s perky head popped up in front of her.

  “Tessa? Hi, I didn’t introduce myself earlier, I’m Elizabeth St. Amant.”

  Tessa took the smooth, manicured hand. “Uh, hi.” She glanced at the women Elizabeth had been talking to, and they had alarmed looks in their eyes.

  “Oh, don’t mind those cats,” Elizabeth said. “They thought they were warning me off of you, but as soon as they talked about your unsavory past, I just knew you were perfect.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Even though they don’t believe you’ve changed, why, as soon as I saw you with those children, I knew that you’d done a 180 like a flapjack on a griddle.”

  Flapjacks? Elizabeth had a way of talkingreallyfastanddraaaawlingatthesaaaametiiiiime that made it hard for Tessa to follow her. “What exactly did they tell you?” Tessa asked carefully.

  Elizabeth actually started ticking them off on her fingers. “Let’s see. First, you used to do some nasty things for your uncle, who’s some sort of head for the yuck … yak …”

  “Yakuza. Japanese mafia.”

  “Second, you’ve been in prison for murder.”

  “Manslaughter,” Tessa automatically corrected. Not that it made that much difference, since she hadn’t done it in the first place.

  “Third, the only reason you’re volunteering at this shelter is because Evangeline, who used to be your cellmate, stayed here a few months ago because of an abusive boyfriend, but then she started volunteering here, and she vouched for you when you wanted to volunteer here too.”

  The problem was that some of the women here didn’t trust Tessa because she wasn’t really one of them. Tessa had never been abused, had never been a mother. In fact, because of her background, she had never been afraid for her own life.

  “Fourth, you’ve been going to the church here at Wings. And after hearing that, and seeing you with my Daniel, I knew you must be trying to turn your life around. You’re exactly the kind of person I need.”

  “What do you need?” The woman didn’t seem too loco, so Tessa wouldn’t mind helping her. She guessed.

  “My husband is trying to kill me,” Elizabeth announced, “so I want to hire you as my bodyguard.”

  Chapter 2

  Heaven must smell like homemade ramen noodle soup. Tessa stood in the doorway of the Japanese restaurant and breathed deep, closing her eyes and picking out Jerry’s signature spices in his ramen broth. She was drooling and she didn’t care.

  Well, it had been seven loooooooooooong years. Considering she’d eaten Jerry’s ramen once a week up until then, she ought to be excused an excessive Pavlovian reaction. Since she’d gotten out of prison, she’d moved into Mom’s house and began looking for a job, so she hadn’t had time to come here to get her fix.

  “Can I help you?”

  The young, perky voice interrupted her olfactory cloud of ecstasy and made Tessa open her eyes.

  The restaurant hostess, a young woman with long, glossy black hair, stood in front of the wooden hostess podium just inside the restaurant’s glass doors. She had a plastic smile and her eyes were just a little wary of the crazy lady smelling the restaurant. Tessa realized she knew her — Karissa Hoshiwara, one of Jerry’s granddaughters. Of course she wouldn’t remember Tessa, she’d only been a high school freshman when it all happened.

  “I’m a friend of Jerry’s. Is it okay if I go in back to see him?” The politeness sounded stiff on Tessa’s tongue, but after so many years, she didn’t really have the right to barge into Jerry’s overheated kingdom unannounced.

  “Oh.” Karissa’s smile lost its edge, as if being her grandfather’s friend explained all sorts of you-ought-to-be-in-therapy behavior. “Sure, go ahead.”

  As Tessa turned to head back to the kitchen, Karissa suddenly asked, “Do I know you?”

  Tessa turned to meet curious eyes. Innocent. My eyes were never that innocent.

  No, she had to remember that she was a new creation in Christ! With copious exclamation points! She had to act like it! “Yeah, actually, your mom is friends with my mom.”

  “Oh.” Karissa’s brow wrinkled faintly, marring the perfect skin of a young twenty-something. “What’s your name?”

  “Tessa Lancaster.” She couldn’t help the tension in the back of her neck, waiting for the reaction.

  Karissa’s dark eyes blinked. Then widened. And then she smiled. “Oh! You’re that Tessa.”

  She’d provoked a lot of reactions in her life, but never one like this. “Excuse me?”

  “I saw your picture from that old newspaper clipping.”

  So did everyone. Still didn’t explain the one-step-bel
ow-rock-star glow in the girl’s eyes. Tessa wasn’t sure what to say, so she smiled weakly. She probably looked like a sick pig.

  “Evangeline showed me the clipping,” Karissa added.

  “Evangeline?” The name made Tessa’s smile widen. “How do you know her?”

  “I, uh … I met her at Wings.” Karissa’s cheeks were faintly pink.

  “You went to Wings?” Karissa didn’t look old enough to be married, let alone at a domestic violence shelter.

  “I used to live with my boyfriend,” Karissa confessed. “He started getting rough with me, and we lived nearby the shelter, so I went there one night. Evangeline was volunteering that night. The shelter asked me about my family, and when Evangeline found out my Grandpa Jerry worked for the Otas’ restaurant, she told me about you.”

  “She was my cellmate for three years,” Tessa said.

  “Oh. I liked her. But I haven’t seen her in a few months.”

  “You moved out of your boyfriend’s apartment, right?” Tessa hated that she sounded like a mother but she’d seen too many horrible stories at Wings.

  Karissa nodded. “I’m living with a girlfriend in an apartment near San Francisco J-town.”

  “You drive from San Francisco to San Jose every day to work?”

  “Oh, no. I’m only here today to help Grandpa Jerry out. He’s short-staffed today.”

  “That’s nice of you, to give up your Saturday to help him out.”

  Her eyes flickered away. “I didn’t have anything else planned.”

  Tessa recognized that look, and the meaning behind Karissa’s words. Many of the women at Wings had lost touch with their friends during their abusive relationships, but in trying to regain their normal lives, they battled loneliness and the struggle of making new friends. She wondered if Karissa was the same way.

  “Lots of the women staying at Wings could use someone to chat with,” Tessa said. “Uh … if you came to church at Wings with me and Evangeline one Sunday, you could meet them, maybe … be a friendly face.” And maybe Karissa wouldn’t be as lonely herself. Evangeline had helped Tessa find the church at Wings soon after being released, but this was the first chance she’d had to invite someone else.

  Karissa looked uncertain.

  “You don’t have to,” Tessa said. “But in case you wanted to. You could see Evangeline again.”

  “I … I think I’d like that.” She looked like she even meant it.

  “Call me and I’ll pick you up. This is my mom’s home phone number,” she added with a pained sigh. No job, no cell phone. Mom’s cell phone was on one of Tessa’s aunts’ plans and Tessa didn’t want to utilize yakuza cell phone minutes.

  A harsh voice gave a short bark of laughter. “Still living with your mom, Tessa?”

  Rita, one of the waitresses, approached them with two steaming bowls of ramen. Rita had always been jealous because Tessa’s close relationship with her uncle caused her to receive a kind of respect not typically given to women in the world of the yakuza. In contrast, Rita, the sister of one of the older yakuza members, had only received this waitressing job at Jerry’s restaurant. “It’s been what, four or five months? Still haven’t moved out yet?” Rita managed to say the innocuous line with a sneer in her voice.

  Tessa reached out to oh-so-accidentally knock those bowls into Rita’s …

  No. Tessa drew her hand back, blinking to clear her head. She had to control her temper better. She wasn’t that person anymore.

  “Get back to work, Karissa,” Rita hissed, with a significant glance over Tessa’s shoulder. A couple had entered the restaurant while Karissa chatted with Tessa, they now stood waiting patiently just inside the glass doors. Tessa hadn’t even noticed.

  Karissa gave her a small smile and turned to greet the newcomers. Rita wove through the tables to deliver her ramen bowls.

  As Tessa headed through the main dining area toward the kitchen at the back, passing patrons in teakwood chairs, her heart started tap dancing. She’d met a new friend. Invited her to church. And in a few minutes, Jerry would crush her in a ginger-scented embrace, then sit her down with a bowl of ramen the size of a wok, stuffed with vegetables and his homemade noodles.

  “Coming through!” Rita’s voice sounded almost at her shoulder.

  Tessa jerked in surprise, and her elbow connected with something hard. Then the sound of a shattering clay bowl sliced through the buzz of restaurant patrons, and she felt a lash of pain against her ankles.

  “Yow!” She grabbed her stinging leg and tried not to hop on her other one as she spied steaming liquid streaming through the grout in the floor tiles. Knowing her luck, she’d twist her knee and do a double back flip landing square on her behind. She side-stepped the river of noodles.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Rita hissed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You did that on purpose.”

  Tessa’s temper snapped. “What is your problem? I have better things to do than waste calories making your life miserable.”

  Tessa’s raised voice sounded abnormally loud in the small restaurant.

  Rita’s face paled. It was the same fearful look Tessa had seen when fellow prisoners found out who she was and what she had done for her uncle. Rita’s reaction made Tessa realize her reputation as a bully hadn’t changed, even though she wasn’t working for her uncle anymore.

  And that thought made her anger die away. Because she had changed. She wasn’t a bully anymore. And she needed to act like it.

  “Let me help you clean up,” she said.

  The normal restaurant noises rose again, although some patrons gave her sidelong looks. Tessa found a mop in the broom closet near the restrooms at the back of the dining area and started cleaning up the spilled ramen broth. Rita bent to pick up the clay bowl pieces, head down, but casting occasional glances her way — filled with fear.

  It hurt.

  “Got a new job so soon, Tessa?”

  The taunting voice shot adrenaline down Tessa’s spine and she snapped to attention. She whirled around to face her cousin Fred, Uncle Teruo’s son, striding through the restaurant like he owned it.

  She had expected Fred to at least be obligated to come see her or talk to her in the three months she’d been out, yet this was the first he’d shown his face to her, and it looked like it was entirely by accident.

  Fred had always hated her for being stronger, faster, and smarter than him. Then one night she discovered him panicked because he’d murdered his girlfriend. Because she knew her uncle would want her to, she’d taken the bloody knife and shouldered the blame for Fred’s crime.

  Now her cousin owed her, but rather than gratitude, it made his hatred slice even deeper than before. That hatred glared out of his eyes as he stalked toward her.

  Fred had always unfairly lashed out at her with his nasty temper, but Tessa had never let him get away with it. She wasn’t about to let him get away with it now.

  She’d never been so grateful for her Caucasian father’s tall genes as she straightened and stared down at Fred’s beady eyes. He stopped a few feet from her, probably because he’d have to crick his neck to glare at her and that would just be embarrassing for him.

  “Dealing with garbage suits you.” Fred’s lip curled.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not after your day job.” Tessa smiled.

  Her comment went over his head. “I don’t clean up messes.”

  “No, I clean yours up for you.”

  His neck reddened.

  To think she’d gone to prison for this moldy tomato.

  No, she hadn’t gone to prison for him. She’d gone to prison for his father.

  She flashed him a smile. “Fred, do you have a point to make, for once in your life, or are you just here contaminating the air?”

  She caught a few gasps from the quiet restaurant that had stopped to witness their tense conversation. She realized that because of what she’d done for him, she could freely insult this rat dropping whereas others
could not.

  “You can’t speak to me that way,” he spat at her.

  “I just did, you squashed slug.” And Fred knew that if he touched her, she’d use his head to clean up the spilled ramen instead of the mop in her hand.

  He sputtered. Fred didn’t have many brain cells devoted to quick comebacks. “You ex-convict.”

  “What’s wrong, Freddy-weddy? If you’re going to insult the ex-convict, you better be prepared to take what you dish out.”

  “Tessa, leave him alone.”

  A commanding voice filled the restaurant even though he hadn’t raised his voice above its normal growl.

  Rita and the other waiter scurried away, and patrons suddenly turned back to their meals, although the volume was barely half what it had been before. Subtly, the air became denser, as if blanketed by an invisible fog.

  Not a fog. The presence of the man walking into his restaurant — one of several he owned — was more charged than a mere fog.

  “Uncle Teruo.” Tessa stood her ground as he approached her, aware of Fred scuttling out of his father’s way like a cockroach. She dropped her eyes and bowed at the waist in a sign of respect.

  He paused, acknowledging her greeting, then suddenly his large square palms were cupping her face, rough against her skin but tender in their touch, raising her gaze to meet his. His eyes, half-shadowed by eyelids puffy with age and responsibility, gleamed with the familiar tenderness that was like water to her parched soul. He shook her face gently, playfully, then drew her to him in a brief embrace. “How are you, Tessa?”

  “I’m fine, Uncle,” she spoke into his suit jacket, breathing the familiar scent of his favorite brand of cigar. He had hugged her like this the day she’d been released, and the smell brought back that feeling of being free, of being home. Her fingers curled briefly on his back, then he straightened and stepped away.

  “Have you eaten yet?” he asked her.