Chapter 2 - The Ghost in the Rain

The sudden, suffocating darkness changed everything. The silence was absolute, save for the relentless drumming of the rain against the roof and the heavy, ragged breathing of the people trapped inside.

"Clever girl," the male hitman's voice echoed through the dark, smooth and menacing. "But you just trapped yourselves in a box. There's no back exit to this kitchen. I checked before we sat down."

Julian was pressed flat against the floorboards near the front counter. His heart pounded so fiercely he thought the killers would be able to track him by the sound alone. He needed a weapon, an advantage, anything. He slowly, agonizingly, crawled his hand across the linoleum until his fingers brushed against the thick, heavy shards of the broken coffee mug. He gripped a large, jagged piece, the sharp ceramic cutting into his palm, slick with his own blood.

A flash of lightning illuminated the diner for a fraction of a second.

In that microsecond, Julian saw the female hitman standing only ten feet away, her gun raised, slowly sweeping the room. She was wearing night-vision contacts, or she was simply that good at adjusting to the dark. He had to move before she found the kitchen and found his father.

"Marcus is going to burn for this," Julian called out, throwing his voice toward the front door, away from his actual position. "I sent the ledgers to a journalist in New York. If I die tonight, they go live tomorrow."

It was a bluff. A desperate, wild bluff. The ledgers—a small, encrypted USB drive—were zipped into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He hadn't sent them to anyone. He had spent the last three days trying to find a safe internet connection that Marcus's hackers couldn't trace.

"Nice try, Julian," the woman purred. "But we know you have them on you. You're too paranoid to trust them to the cloud. You want to hand-deliver them to the feds. That’s why you came here. You wanted to say goodbye to daddy before you walked into the lion's den."

She fired a shot into the darkness, the bullet ripping through the counter just inches from Julian's leg.

In the kitchen, Clara squeezed Arthur’s hand tightly. "I'm going to get us out of here, Arthur," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

"Don't leave him," Arthur wheezed, his grip surprisingly strong. "Help my son."

Clara looked around the dark kitchen. She remembered the large canisters of commercial cooking oil stacked near the fryers. If she couldn't fight them, she could turn the diner into a trap. Moving completely by memory, Clara crept across the dark kitchen. She found the heavy plastic jug of oil, unscrewed the cap, and began pouring it silently across the smooth tile floor leading into the kitchen entrance.

Another lightning flash. Clara saw the male hitman creeping toward the kitchen doorway, his gun drawn.

She held her breath, crouching behind the counter.

The man stepped onto the kitchen tile. His leather shoe hit the thick layer of cooking oil. His leg shot out from under him instantly. He went down hard, his head violently slamming against the sharp metal edge of the prep table with a sickening CRACK. His gun clattered across the floor. He didn't get back up.

"Silas?" the woman called out sharply from the dining room, her voice tight. "Silas, report."

Silence.

Julian used her distraction. He lunged out from behind the booth, closing the distance between them in three desperate strides. He tackled her around the waist, driving her into the front window. The glass webbed and cracked but held. The woman snarled, dropping her gun and pulling a combat knife from her belt.