CHAPTER 1: DELINA REDWOOD

I glanced on my watch. As I took a deep breath, I realized I had a lot of things to finish. I never thought this kind of small cafe would give us workloads like this one.

I never thought that I could be this kind of busy at this time when it is almost the closing hours for work. I am amazed at how time can be faster than I expected. I am wiping the glass window from inside of our café for almost an hour. There are days that I feel are very meticulous. As a result, I don't want any dust particles visible on it when customers will observe closely. The glass window surrounding the place is covered by an elegant curtain designed exclusively for the mini-cafe as a trademark of our big boss.

I love to hide beyond the curtains so that nobody could ever see me. I want to stay this way. As long as I can, I want to endure. I could feel working for long periods of hours could tear my shoulders apart and yet I'd still want to take my job seriously. I want Mrs. Myles to not regret the moment she accepted me as one of her helpers.

When I realized that we've been working this late, I felt lazy all of a sudden. Even the way I will wipe the glass window is in a full, circular, slow motion. Also, I can feel that my eyes are closing already. I waited tables, mopped the messy floor because a bowl of soup was spilled mercilessly by those unruly children. I sometimes hate their parents for letting them play with it like they don't care at all. Dang, they are spoiled to death by their parents that they don't realize how difficult it is to clean the whole mess. Other staff are really spending time just for this part of the cafe to be shiny again.

I glanced at the other people around the cafe. Some of my co-workers are arranging the tables but they are also moving sluggishly, shoulders down because we’ve been working for long hours already. I can see them wiping the tables one by one because the mess is too much to handle.

I am almost drowning myself to sleep from where I am standing when a beautiful car stopped right in front of me. My jaw dropped when I saw a good-looking guy get out of that car. I guess he can't see me looking at him from where I am inside the cafe. I am standing behind the curtain of our glass window. I guess he will not see me if I do not go out from where I am. Deep within me, I feel like I must not catch his attention.

Yeah, he's definitely good looking, however, I can't help but doubt his actions. It's like everything about him is a bit suspicious so my eyes followed him and his actions. I don't exactly know why but I'm starting to get nervous. I can see him slowly stepping towards the counter where Mrs. Myles is proudly counting the bills that we had for the whole day. I turned my gaze at Mrs White. Looking at her, she's very proud of what she's doing right now. It is because she is not only counting coins but bundles of money, and that's not a joke to start with.

“What do you want? Can’t you see? We are closing. We will not accommodate any customers anymore at this time.” She mumbled, not even looking at the customer that's in front of her because she's paying attention to the bundles of money more than anything in the world at that moment.

I can still hear her arrogant voice from where I am standing. How I love mimicking it with my mouth as I silently giggle. I can imagine the “double troubled” wrinkles that she has on her face. I checked on them and I noticed the good-looking guy was having his weird gestures, glancing at the busy staff people doing their duties all of a sudden…

“Don’t move every one or else you’ll be killed! Now you! Give me the money!” He roared, at the same time pulling a trigger out of nowhere and pointing it to all of us, and then especially to Mrs. Myles. She stood frozen on the counter as well. We all looked at her, helpless and she’s crying while she’s slowly getting bundles of money from the cashier box. I can't hear the guy telling her to do something. I noticed that she's transferring those into a medium, yellow cloth bag while her tears were welling from her eyes.

I can’t help but become nervous as hell. I can’t help clutching the dirty cloth that I used in wiping our dusty window. How my knees trembled as I stood there just beside the long curtain that’s covering the glass window of our small café.

Everyone was alarmed and I can hear tiny shrieks from one of my co-workers.

“Everyone, sit down and don’t move a muscle!” Everybody followed just as they were told to do so, and from where I am standing, I can see a lot of faces worried for their lives as much as I am worried about mine. The staff that I noticed who followed the man was less than ten and there was no security available at the moment.

I remembered Mrs. Myles also turned off the CCTV camera because we’re already closing, so it is a bad day for all of us who are inside the café.

Even though nervous, I was able to slowly move my right hand to locate my cell phone in the pocket of my ragged jeans. I was alarmed when my phone suddenly rang because someone was calling me.

“Holy shit!” My heart almost stopped when it came to the man’s attention. He was able to hover his gaze around. Not able to locate the sound and where it is coming from, I could hear him curse as his movements become restless. I can see from his face that he was alarmed by the caller ringtone of my phone. I saw him running outside while he’s being observant looking around until he reached his car. In one swift of motion, the car moved away at its fastest speed.

I slowly moved the window curtain to check on everyone, still holding my mobile phone on my right hand but I was shocked when most of the staff people started running towards me to hug and shout cheers.

What just happened?

Everything is still not sinking in. It’s like everything happened in a snap of a finger my puzzled mind can't process the details.

“Delina! You saved the day! I can’t believe it, girl!” Lea hugged me tight, still in tears. I can feel her heartbeat still very fast as if her heart will go out at any minute.

“Why?” I looked around, puzzled and I noticed my phone stopped making its noise.

“I should also copy that caller ringtone. It’s cool. Where’d you get that police car siren plus gunshot remix caller ringtone?” Ellis, our janitor joked around while grinning. I can see the relief from his eyes as well.

“Oh…” As soon as I heard Ellis, I did understand the whole thing now. I covered my mouth as I gaped my jaw open. And then I realized, my addiction to action movies indeed saved the day. Many of my co-workers were also amazed at the timing of that someone who called me minutes ago.

“Who called you? I want to thank whoever that person is. Maybe he or she sensed that we’re in great danger when he or she thinks about calling you.”

“Nah. It’s just my mom who asked to confirm if our salary will be released within today or tomorrow.” I smiled as I shrugged my shoulders. They all laughed at what I said. I suddenly became happy because many of my friends that are also working in the café were all safe and relieved.

We rushed to the counter to check on Mrs. Myles when we suddenly heard a crashing noise behind us. We were so busy expressing our relief when we noticed Mrs. Myles fainted. I guess it was because of too much nervousness and shock at what happened to us this afternoon. One of Mrs. Myles’s assistants hurriedly called the police to report the incident while we’re all preparing the necessary things to pack for her. We also need to bring her to the hospital because we’re afraid that she had a heart attack because of the sudden fear that that gun brought to her.

Oh my, what a day!