A Bitter Pill To Swallow

"Where will you guys be? To be honest he scares me now. I mean I'm not scared, scared, I just ... well you can't see if he slips something into my drink or whatever. He's a real sneak."

Melissa clenches her teeth. Why did she have to admit to being scared? Not a great confidence builder for the others to see. What did Dave see in her apart from her obvious vision skills?

"He's too good at avoiding my questions. I think the only way I could get him to answer anything would be if I got him in bed and even that's no guarantee, and boy would I be exposing myself in every way. Feels too risky." She grimaces at her choice of words but it was true.

Her eyes light up as an idea flashes before her. An age-old tactic that had endured because it worked. "I could get him drunk. Or turn the tables and give him a drug. What do we have available for that? Something I could slip in his drink. Something that takes some time. Then I could take him back to my place and you all could be waiting there. We'd interrogate him then."

"Floyd's pretty savvy. He might not fall for the obvious without being suspicious." Dave offered his advice. "And we'll need him sober enough to reliably question...
So getting him drunk is probably out. I think we should just kidnap him and take him out to a warehouse on the docks and waterboard him til he talks. Easy Peazy, hope none of you get Queasy." He looked at the others as if what he suggested was about as normal as going to the grocery store.

Eva looks at Melissa as the woman goes on and on, her expression suggesting she doesn't know what the hell the other blonde is talking about. She's shaking her head slightly when Dave breaks in with a... simpler plan.

"Yeah," Eva says. "That. Just get him alone briefly somewhere where we can grab him. I could also just break into his place at night and grab him."

Melissa listens while she picks at a piece of cracked nail polish on her thumb.

"Ok. Yeah. So where's the best place for my safety and a place you guys can easily swoop down on him?"

Augusta says, "If we do a snatch and grab, I'll come with you Eva. I can bring fog around to keep eyewitnesses blinded."

To Melissa she adds, "Is evening outdoor patio dining something you'd be especially interested in tonight?" She gives her a wide toothy smile.

Why yes, yes it would,"she answers enthusiastically, jumping into the scheme now with gusto. "Where would you guys suggest?"

Augusta knows just the place. "Signor Valencia's, in Cambridge Street. The chef de cuisine, Armando Bellerri is talented, and a James Beard winner. The patio is romantic and had a particularly perfect view of the city gardens. That darkness would be ideal for a good snatching."

She pulls her phone. "It's highly sought after, but I can make a call and have the concierge make sure a table is available near the edge if Brian phones for one."

ANNESBURG, 6 NOV 2023
Signor Valencia's, Patio
The next evening, as agreed, Melissa arrives at the Signor Valencia's in Annesburg. She and Brian agreed to drive there separately and when Melissa and the others get there, Brian's car is already parked in the street. As he is nowhere to be seen, he is most likely already seated at the two-person table right by the edge of the luxurious patio behind the restaurant with its view overlooking the city gardens. Melissa is able to confirm as much with her X-ray vision, seeing Brian sitting alone at the table out back, doing something on his phone as he waits.
The comfortably spaced surrounding houses are a mix of residential buildings and other restaurants or businesses, all out of the price class of any of your group, aside from Augusta. The street is mostly empty and the few people who are out aren't paying attention to your group in the half-dark of the evening.

Melissa drinks in her surroundings as she gets out of her car and heads toward the entrance. Her x-ray vision probes the insides of the restaurant where she finds Brian unsusprisingly on his phone. Anxiety tickles her nerves as she takes a deep calming breath and confidently strides forward to meet him. She prepares a warm inviting smile for when the good-looking man deigns to look up at her, all the while hoping that the group is ready with their plan that they will then execute flawlessly.

The big man leaned back on the trunk of the car, his dark and beady eyes admiring the swanky neighborhood and keeping a look out for potential witnesses as Melissa strides across the street. "Why do people go to these kinds of restaurants?" Dave asked to no one in particular though maybe Augusta would be the one to actually know. "They never give you enough food to actually get full. It's like these dainty little sandwiches and three leaves of lettuce with some kind of burnt sauce...or some kind of beef steak the size of a quarter and a single cherry tomato. And that vast banquet is like $300." His mind wandered back to the lunch date he and Melissa had a similarly high end joint when they were casing Floyd's apartment. "We sticking to the plan?" Dave asked as deadpan as if he were asking if they were going to stop at the store.

As Melissa uses her X-ray vision to find Brian on the patio behind the restaurant, she notices something else. Or rather, someone. Two tables away from Brian, there is a man, seemingly just slowly eating from a bowl of soup. He looks mostly inconspicuous, but thanks to her vision, Melissa notices that he is carrying both a concealed holster with a gun under his jacket and another weapon that looks like some sort of baton in the bag to his feet. He's seated to face Brian's table and now that Melissa has noticed him, she realizes that he is watching Brian. He appears to be some kind of bodyguard there to keep him safe while remaining unnoticed.

"I'm ignoring your comment on the food. A cultivated palate is its own reward."

She shakes her head as she texts some of her friends rapidly, trying to setup a fundraiser for TANC awareness.

"I bribed the maitre d to seat them right on the other side of this hedge. When Melissa signals us, we just need to break our way through the hedge, grab him, and stuff him in the car, then get lost. Melissa can meet us later while we question him the hard way."

This is a time where wearing a wire would have been handy because no sooner does she spot Brian than she notices another man who she is pretty sure is keeping an eye on her date. Now why would Brian need a bodyguard when lunching with her? Did he consider her that much of a threat? And if so, she was probably in more danger than she originally thought. She was glad that the team was nearby and it was time for her to appreciate how serious all this was and take Dave at face value. This shit was real and death was always a possibility.

Averting her eyes from the man, she shoots a quick text to Augusta, while walking. With Brian on his phone, he probably wouldn't notice, and even if he did, so what? He was glued to his phone, wasn't he? Same for the goon protecting him. They'd both figure it was an innocuous text.

MK>Augusta: Brian has a bodyguard 2 tables away. Gun and baton concealed.
Then she strides to the table and sits. "Hi Brian. What's new?"

Augusta shows the text to Dave and Eva. "Maybe one of you needs to distract the bodyguard?"

She gets into the car, keeping her hat low, and readying herself to take off if this terrible plan works.

"Cultivated Palate, eh?" Dave harrumphed. "So that's how you stay a Size 2... His big hands checked his long coat pockets for the 'supplies' he'd brought for the job; heavy duty zip ties in the left coat pocket, a head-sized opaque plastic bag in the right, Rooster's oversized Bowie knife concealed in his left sleeve, and a fresh roll of duct tape he kept fidgeting with as the group waited.
He glanced over at the text Melissa sent and nodded, "Well, gun means the bodyguard probably doesn't have powers. Offensive ones, anyway, but we'll just have to be more careful..." His bushy brows furrowed for a moment as a thought rolled around in his mind. "I've got an idea to distract the guard if you two can handle nabbing 'lover boy' and getting away... " Calling his plan a 'strategy' would be quite a stretch but it might work. His mischievous grin did little to sell the sanity of what he had in mind.

Eva has been sizing up the whole neighborhood, looking for means of ingress and egress, for blind spots, for good places to slip away. After Augusta shows her companions her phone, the blonde nods and points.

"I can get up there, on that roof, easy. From there I think a running jump could land me right on the patio, maybe even on their table. I do that, grab Brian and hurl him over the hedge and rail? You catch him, Dave, then I get in the bodyguard's face so Melissa can get away?"

Hesitating a beat, Eva then says, "Or... what's your plan, Dave?"

Earlier - That Morning at the Diner

"So it seemed like -- oh god these eggs are good -- it seemed like you had something you wanted to tell me yesterday," Eva says to Dartalla as the woman drops off her check. They are the only people in the restaurant, which is the way that Eva likes it. Having the other woman all to herself. Bacon follows the eggs, then toast. So. Good.

"That's just as good a plan as mine..." he shrugged. "I was just gonna go in there and make a spectacle of myself, accuse Melissa of seeing another man, start some trouble and draw the bodyguard's attention so you guys could abduct Floyd and escape in Auggie's mist."