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waiting to see what he planned to do. Jake opened his mouth to tell him again to put the gun down, but something inside the kid shifted. His posture softened slightly and he slowly lowered the gun to the counter – seemingly relieved it was over.
    “Put your hands where I can see ‘em or I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”
    The terrified kid held up his shaking hands.
    Jake launched himself and landed on the guy – knocking him forward. He pushed the kid’s head down to the glass counter, then he grabbed his gun.
    He wriggled in Jake’s grip. “I’m sorry,” he wailed. “I didn’t want to hurt no one.”
    Jake glanced at the lady behind the counter. “You okay, ma’am?”
    She swallowed and nodded in a daze. “Think so.”
    “Good.” He tightened his grip on the struggling kid, who was thrashing around like a fish on the shore. “Could you call the cops please?”
    Another server grabbed the phone on the wall and made a frantic call to the NYPD. Jake grabbed the guy’s shirt and flipped him around on the counter, then he growled into his face. “You need to sort your life out, kid. This is your last chance. Don’t fuck it up.”
    He nodded frantically. The police arrived five minutes later – but it wasn’t anyone Jake knew from his time with the NYPD. They led the guy away in handcuffs, asked Jake a few questions, then left.
    The coffee shop exhaled with relief, and slowly eased back to normality – back to the business of selling hot drinks and cakes. The chatter trickled in, and Jake looked around for Astrid, expecting for her to have fled now she knew he was the sort of guy who carried a gun.
    But she was sitting there, bolt upright, glaring at him.
    He slid back onto the seat and took a sip of his coffee. “Urgh, it’s cold.”
    One of the servers called over. “I’ll get you another one, sir. On us.”
    Jake smiled modestly. “Thanks.”
    Astrid didn’t take her eyes off him. “You want to tell me who you are? You’re a cop, right?”
    He sighed. “I’m an ex-cop.”
    “An ex-cop… meaning you currently work as…?”
    He never told anyone what he did for a living – confessing was not only a sure way to jeopardize his cover, but it also prevented people from acting normal around him. But there was something about Astrid… he wanted to tell her everything. He was tired of lying and pretending. He leaned forward and spoke quietly. “You can’t tell anyone.”
    She shook her head. “Discretion is part of my job, Jake.”
    “Yeah… well, I currently work as a private investigator.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means – since they kicked me off the force – I follow people around for living, watching them, intercepting calls, checking emails, that kind of thing…”
    He let this hang in the air. Would she guess that’s why he’d been nearby last night when Graves had been hassling her? Perhaps the unconscious reason he was telling her all this was so he could confess the truth and she’d tell him to take a hike. That would solve the problem of him liking her way too much.
    She stared at him. “Why did they kick you off the force?”
    “You don’t wanna know.”
    “I do. It’s okay. I’m tougher than I look.”
    He gazed pensively at her.
    “I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “You can trust me.”
    “I know I can… I don’t know why, but I’ve got this feeling about you… All right. They kicked me off because I killed some scumbag drug dealer during a raid. He was unarmed. They said it was unnecessary force. And that was the end of my career with the NYPD. I was on track to be a detective. So I guess this job seemed ideal.”
    “And you still carry a gun? Is that really a vital piece of equipment for stalking people?”
    Irritation cracked in his chest. This was why he never talked about his work or even got close to people. They wanted to pick and pick away until they got down to that slimy festering sludge behind the wall he’d constructed to