There were people all over the Boardwalk.  The tourists watched with idle curiosity while the locals averted their eyes.  Such a contrast there – the locals knew what was up.  It was just inconvenient to pay attention to it.

It’s Somebody Else’s Problem.

He forced her into a side street, then rounded a corner so they were behind the row of stores.  He shoved her against a wall, held her there.

She spoke, “Tell me what they’re paying you, I’ll double it.  I won’t have the money right away, but-“

Nice try.

“Not negotiating,” the enforcer spoke.

A few long seconds passed.  She pushed the welling nervousness down, did her best to offer him a smile with her face smushed against the brick.  She asked him, “What’s next?”

“For now, we wait.”

For a vehicle, perhaps?

Waiting she could live with.  Waiting wasn’t getting shot and left for some store employee to find as they took out the trash.

It took a minute before the boyfriend and girlfriend rounded the corner.

Ah, right, for them.

“Marcus, you know that’s no way to handle a lady,” the ‘girlfriend’ spoke.  She had a posh English accent.  When she spoke again, the accent remained, but the upper class lilt was gone, her voice serious, “Turn her around.”

I don’t like this.

Marcus, the ‘enforcer’, hauled on Lisa’s shoulder, flipping her around, before planting his palm on her collarbone and pushing her back against the wall.

The ‘boyfriend’ was holding a phone to his ear.  He handed it to the English woman.

“You have a phone call.  We advise you take it,” the woman smiled at Lisa.

Coil, that you?

He marched her out of the store, heaving her to the right to keep her from bumping into the doorframe.

He wasn’t an enforcer though.  And he had a gun.  The looming punishment was a little more final than what the enforcers tended to pull.

Has gun; has killed before.

Yeah, maybe, but I don’t think these people are actually here to punish you so much as make sure you come with them to meet with Coil.

He might kill her.  It wasn’t like she hadn’t done something worth killing over.  She’d drained people’s bank accounts, pocketed the funds.  Thousands of dollars, sometimes.

A spot of light hung in the center of her vision.  She’d pushed too hard with her power.  She’d have to conserve the use of her power, now, or the migraine would knock her out cold when it arrived in force.

Ah, yeah. Time to stop knowing for a while.

Also, I finally got what kind of code she was trying to get. I’m an idiot sometimes.

“No kidding,” she muttered to herself.  How had they tracked her down?  She had been careful to stay out of sight of security cameras, and she had avoided poaching at the same location more than once.  She’d used a different ATM each time she drained some rich schmoe’s bank account, hidden her face from the hidden cameras at each.

I guess if Coil himself put in some effort, he could decide that they would just happen to be in the right place at the right time to find her?

She bolted, shoving a display of sunglasses on top of the enforcer, ducking around to his right, out of his reach.

It was a miscalculation, he didn’t care about the sunglasses.  He pushed the rack to the ground, hard, and closed the distance with a single long step.  He had superior reach, strength.  His fist swung in one fluid movement with his step forward, striking her in the stomach, just below her ribcage and off to one side.

Oof.

Future Tattle must be getting sick of people hitting her in her stomach.

Striking solar plexus; trained in martial arts, striking to inflict maximum pain, disabling-

Mission to capture alive. 

Unlikely to use gun for anything but intimidation.

“Urggunnnh,” she swore, as she crumpled to the ground.

“Oh my god, oh my god, what the fuck did she do?!  The merchandise!” The cashier shrieked, shrill.  “I’m going to be in so much trouble, oh my god.”

Is that your concern when a guy punches a child? That she toppled a sunglass stand?

“Phone the security office after I’m gone,” the not-enforcer spoke, “My supervisor will take it out of my pay.”

Heh. Unless Coil’s people (assuming that is who these people work for) intercept the call, she’s gonna be rather confused when she finds out there’s no enforcer matching his description working in the area.

“Oh my god,” the cashier spoke, hands over her mouth, oblivious to his words.

“He-” Lisa began to speak, then grunted and choked as she was heaved up to her feet by the back of her shirt.  The not-enforcer twisted the fabric of her shirt until his hand was knotted up in it, the collar tight against her throat.  “He’s not…”

Honestly, even if you did get that out, I’m not sure Daniella would be able to do any good.

She gave up before going any further with her protests.  It didn’t matter.  Nobody would believe her.  A ratty young teenager from the poor part of town, being paranoid about the cops?  Nobody would step in for her, here.

That too.

Which could only mean one thing.  She looked back at the enforcer that was getting closer to her.

Working with the ‘boyfriend’; Not an enforcer.  Ex-military.  Has gun.

Wait, so who are these people then? Coil’s soldiers?

To top it off, the girlfriend was leaving the changeroom, talking cheerfully to her boyfriend as he pulled a dress off a rack.  Her hand was too close to her oversize bag, which was open.  That one was a gimmie.  A team of three, each with guns, all of whom were after her.

Well, turns out Lisa was wrong about who was the target here.

Trap.

Yes, power, we got that. :p

Her retreat stopped when she saw the man that was entering the store.  Maroon uniform, cap, belt.  One of the enforcers from the Boardwalk.  Shit.

Welp. Either Daniella finally stopped calling coworkers, or Lisa is just fresh out of luck today.

She glanced at the cashier.  She didn’t need her power to read the girl’s look of surprise and relief to know that the girl hadn’t made the call.  Bad luck?  She looked at the enforcer.

The latter, then.

So what does your look say about this guy?

Moving with purpose, going out of his way to avoid looking at her; most definitely coming for her.

Her being Lisa? I had expected these italicized power segments to use second person if referring to Lisa, but I guess not.

Had it been the girl she’d scared off, Tasha?  Probably not.  Did it matter?  She turned and looked for another exit.  The boyfriend with the smartphone was standing up, saying something to his girlfriend in the changing room, walking towards the clothes rack.

One way or another, this guy had known she was there, although I guess he could’ve just spotted her from outside.

Placing himself in way of exit, position of hand; preparing to draw on her if she gets too close to making a run for it.  In cahoots with the enforcer.

Ahhh.

Well, this is quite the pickle, isn’t it.

She looked back to the man.  Shoes were nothing special.  No logos or brand names on anything he wore, that she could see… but he was using his left hand on the touchscreen of his phone.

I guess that’s a detail that could give her something useful.

Southpaw; tendency to go for numbers on left side of keypad, eight, then four, seven, then one or three.  One.  8471.

Nice work.

Good.  And his wallet…

Southpaw, confident; wallet in left jacket pocket.

Makes sense. So was the code so that she can access his phone after stealing it?

He was distracted.  She abandoned the coat rack and approached the man, being careful to stay directly behind him, in his blind spot.  His jacket was unbuttoned, and the end with the pocket was draped beside him on the bench, the pocket facing her.  Easy grab.

Finder’s keeper’s… o:)

Wallet in left jacket pocket; intended to help mask presence of gun holstered at left hip.

…whoops. Best make sure he doesn’t catch you. Or better yet, nab the gun too.

She turned a hundred and eighty degrees on the spot and walked back the direction she’d come.  Concealed gun?  Not worth it.

Yeah, that’s fair.

She stopped.  Needed to get back on track.  Just needed a starting point to get at the stuff he’d keep secret.  Confidence, military.  How would he pick a four digit number?

Wait, is she trying to get into a safe of his, or something similar? He doesn’t seem to be the boss of this shop, so it seems more likely that she’s here because he is than anything else.

Confident and military trained; goes out of his way to keep numbers random.

People suck at being random, but with a little help from a computer, we can do alright.

Kind of ironic, that.

Looks early thirties; born late 70’s.  Tendency to go with higher number to start.  8 or 9, mid-range number like four, five or six, then high, low, no repeating numbers.

That narrows things down a bit. If we assume he’s sticking to this tendency and assume 7 counts as a high-range number and 0 is available, that takes the possibilites down from 10000 to 48, if my math is correct.

Dressing in darker jacket, pants, trimmed beard, conservative; number will be even-even-odd-odd or odd-odd-even-even.

Let’s see:
For the first pattern, there’s 8{4 or 6}{7 or 9}{1 or 3}.
For the latter one, we have {7 or 9}582.

That leaves 10 combinations. Lisa is already 1000 times more likely to get it right by picking randomly between the possible combinations than she’d be without this knowledge.

“Something else,” she murmured to herself, as the flow of information began to slow.  If it slowed enough, it meant that there weren’t enough points of reference to generate new data, it could even mean her power would start supplying information based on speculation or falsehoods.

Interesting. So if she’s operating on false premises, Tattle might even get further false info from her power, then?

She chanced a look at the cashier, but the girl was studiously ignoring her, for the time being.

I guess she really doesn’t want to try confronting the girl that sent her coworker running.

No, she had to focus on the essential detail: the girl behind the counter wasn’t calling security.  This was good.  And given the other bits of information Lisa had picked up, she could be sure the cashier would probably be calling other coworkers before getting someone to kick her out of the store.

Good to know!

Which meant Lisa could do what she came here to do.  She turned her attention to the man that sat on the leather covered bench by the change rooms.  Thirty-something, wearing fashionable clothes and a nice jacket that was perhaps a bit too big for him, hair recently cut.

Hello there.

He waited with his attention on his smartphone, while his girlfriend or wife tried on something.  Deserving of a little more scrutiny.

It doesn’t sound like Lisa knows this guy all that well.

Expensive clothes, expensive phone; wealthy.
Confident, patient despite being in a position many guys hated; mature, adult.

But she’s about to.

Clothes style match his personal tastes, not the type to dress according to girlfriend’s tastes. Tall, athletic: exercise habits developed in military but not currently enlisted this ties into confidence and patience he’s used to waiting and-

And there it goes again.

Her power is kind of like me when I try to be an amateur teacher of a subject I care about – prone to dropping way more information on the poor student than they can handle at once.