Bringing back hot coffee [rp for lapsedsaint]
It should have been a simple excursion. John looked too good sleeping to wake him just because Charlotte felt like moving around, so she left him and went out to find the nearest coffee shop. She could get her exercise, see his neighborhood some more and bring him back a treat. A note explaining went on her pillow and she took his keys with her.
Less than three blocks from the house an immense man stepped out of a parked luxury sedan. Charlotte had never seen him before but she knew the type. He was hired muscle of the worst kind. With a word he would kill, torture or merely kidnap without questioning the motives of his employer. And with absolutely no finesse, which was a small comfort.
Only when he stepped closer did she realize something else about him. He belonged to her father. Something in his features was similar enough to the man who had accompanied him through her childhood. That made the goon distant family. Even better. Without looking at the car, she continued walking, fully intending to walk around the man. If they meant to grab her, they would never have given her warning.
As she drew even with him, the man spoke in an elephantine rumble. "Mr. Blaine wants a word."
She glanced up at him. "No is a word. He can have that one."
He stepped in front of her and indicated the open car door. She finally looked over at the car, just for a moment, then back up at the goon. "I'm not getting in there." For another moment, even more brief, she crackled with energy her father would have been able to feel behind the steel. "Anything I had to say to him, I said twenty years ago, so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get coffee."
She didn't need to hear it to know an order'd been given. She was allowed to walk away unmolested and she heard the car drive away before she'd gone a block. Another block down she found excellent coffee. Only after she got a full cup in her and her hands stopped shaking did she buy pastries and fresh coffee to take to John.
She took a different route back to the house, carefully putting away John's keys before going to look for him.