Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) by Tanya Thompson Page A

Mexican restaurant, Sergiu couldn’t bear to see a quiet couple. Wherever we went, we would stay for hours and he could afford to give the miserable twenty minutes.
    He was careful to work on the man. “This is very good drink. It makes me happy. You no so happy, I can see.” And he’d order the uncommunicative fellow a duplicate. “You have beautiful wife – pardon me for noticing. You are in beautiful place with beautiful food. But you have bad day, no?”
    Sergiu would have the woman smiling and the man agreeing, as though it were in no way normal for them not to be speaking. It was all just a bad day.
    “You drink and you forget. Constanzia tells me your wife maybe like this drink she like.” The look between men was that neither of them would have it, but Sergiu would encourage, and the man would order his wife whatever cocktail Sergiu had ordered me.
    One would always ask, “Where are you from?”
    And depending on his mood, Sergiu might say Romania, Portugal, Spain, or Italy, but he’d twist it around to someplace the couple had traveled. He was brilliant. He’d make them laugh and then speak well of each other. And when he removed himself from their conversation, they were under pressure not to fall silent. People were watching.
     
    ~~~~~~
     
    It was late when I got home from dinner with Sergiu. Tricia was still up and at the basin washing her face. I was watching her from the hall, leaning against the door frame, babbling something inconsequential when she rose up to the mirror. There were distinct finger marks bruising her throat.
    “Tricia? What happened?”
    “I’ve had a bad night,” was her understatement.
    She’d had a horrific encounter with Jeff and a Baptist preacher.
    Jeff felt there was a misunderstanding between them and suggested they resolve it at his office. He’d asked the preacher from the large Cambodian church to attend, telling Tricia the man would be present to mediate. But the pair’s insistence that she had her facts wrong was menacing, and only minutes into the meeting, Tricia felt threatened. She had watched me leave work with Sergiu and realized no one knew where she was.
    When she tried to leave, the preacher blocked the door. Both he and Jeff wanted to hear assurances that she understood no women were missing. She wanted to agree but first she needed to dig in her purse for her inhaler.
    Thinking she was reaching for a gun, the preacher splayed himself across the door screaming, and Jeff snatched her bag to search it while Tricia wheezed out the explanation, “Asthma.”
    Fifteen minutes later, she was swearing the issue had been resolved, harmony restored, and if they would only stand aside, she’d cease to be a problem.
    Outside Jeff’s office, the street was bright but the only way to her car was through an unlit alley. She didn’t want to enter, but she didn’t want to encounter Jeff again either, so she reasoned with herself, telling herself there was nothing to worry about, convincing herself the worst of the night was over. Halfway down the darkened lane, the very thing she feared stepped out of a black alcove. The same height as her, the Cambodian rammed her against the wall and then held her by the throat. She expected to be stabbed and hacked to pieces, left as a gruesome warning to others who dared to question, but the man barely moved. And he had nothing to say either. He just gripped her by the neck, rattling her small frame against the bricks to keep her attention, and stared silently in her eyes. Then unknown minutes later, as a second asthma attack choked her for breath, he released her. She backed away for the parking lot and he stood eerily at ease watching her go.

Making Headlines
     
    At the end of November, Tricia resigned from the agency. Nothing had been resolved and Chantou hadn’t been found. But we didn’t talk about this. Any mention of the refugee agency would have Tricia wheezing for breath, suffering such debilitating asthma attacks,