THE GLASS ASSASSIN: SECRETS OF TABLE 14

The smell of burning rubber and cordite filled the crushed cabin of the SUV.

My ears were screaming, a high-pitched whine drowning out the sounds of the industrial yard. Glass dusted my apron like macabre snow.

"Stay down," Keller hissed, blood trickling from a cut above his left eyebrow.

He didn't wait for Victor’s men to advance. Keller kicked his door open and rolled out into the darkness, firing three rapid shots over the hood of the wrecked car.

A man screamed in the dark.

Gunfire immediately returned, chewing through the SUV’s doors, tearing the leather seats to shreds. I curled into a tight ball in the footwell, covering my head, praying the engine block would stop the armor-piercing rounds.

Answer One: Victor hadn't let us escape Halcyon. He had tracked us. Rourke wasn't going to let Keller's treason or my existence go unpunished.

Open Two: How did Victor know we were coming to this specific industrial yard in Queens?

The shooting paused.

"Keller!" Victor yelled, his voice echoing off the corrugated steel of the shipping containers. "You’re outgunned. Rourke wants the woman. Hand her over, and maybe we don't blow your knees off."

I looked at Keller, who was crouched behind the front tire. He ejected a spent magazine and slammed a fresh one home. He looked at me, his eyes cold and calculating.

I knew that look. He was doing the math. My life against his.

"Don't do it," I whispered, my voice trembling. "If Rourke gets me, Julian kills my daughter. And you never find out who killed your sister."

Keller stared at me for a long, agonizing second.

Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, silver object.

He tossed it onto the floorboard next to my hands.

It was a vintage pocket watch.

"Take it," Keller ordered over the distant sirens.

"What is this?" I asked, picking up the cold metal.

"It's a dead man's switch," Keller said grimly. "Pop the back casing."

My hands shook as I dug my thumbnail into the tiny groove on the back of the watch. With a soft click, the silver plate popped off.

There wasn't a clock mechanism inside. Instead, a tiny micro-SD card was taped to the metal.

"What is this?" I demanded.

"It’s Rourke’s entire offshore routing history," Keller said, peaking around the tire. "Every bribe. Every dirty contract. I’ve been copying his hard drives for six months. If I die, that gets sent to the Feds. Rourke knows it. It's the only reason I'm still breathing."

A stunning reversal washed over me.

Keller wasn't just committing treason tonight. He had been planning to destroy Rourke’s empire for half a year.

"Why give it to me?" I asked, my heart pounding.

"Because Victor doesn't want to capture me," Keller said, a dark smile touching his lips. "Victor wants to kill me. He tracked my car using a GPS spoofer. He’s going to execute me right here and tell Rourke I resisted."

Keller looked me dead in the eye.

"You want your daughter back, Evelyn? You take that SD card. You find Julian’s ledger. You make the trade. And when Mia is safe, you burn Rourke to the ground."

Before I could argue, Keller stood up.

He didn't surrender. He charged into the open, firing wildly toward Victor’s position, drawing every ounce of their fire.

"Run!" Keller roared.

The night exploded into deafening violence. Bullets sparked against the pavement.

I didn't freeze. I scrambled out of the passenger side, keeping low, the pocket watch clutched tightly in my fist. I ran blindly into the labyrinth of shipping containers, the darkness swallowing me whole.

Behind me, the gunfire abruptly stopped.

A heavy, sickening silence fell over the yard.

I pressed my back against a rusted blue container, my chest heaving, tears streaming down my face. Keller had sacrificed himself to give me a chance.

I forced myself to breathe. I had to focus. I had the SD card. I had the burnt ticket pointing to Montauk.

But I needed Julian's ledger.

The ledger I had hidden eleven months ago before staging my death.

I slipped through the shadows, avoiding the main roads, until I reached a dimly lit subway station. I paid in cash, boarding a train headed toward Brooklyn.

My old neighborhood.

An hour later, I was standing in front of a dilapidated Catholic church in Greenpoint. St. Jude’s. The parish where I had been baptized. The parish where I had buried an empty casket under the name Evelyn Vance.

I bypassed the front doors, slipping through a broken wrought-iron gate into the graveyard behind the church.

The rain began to fall, turning the dirt to slick mud.

I found the headstone quickly. A modest, gray granite marker.

Evelyn Vance. Beloved Wife and Mother.

Julian had paid for the stone. A monument to his own supposed grief.

I dropped to my knees in the mud. I reached behind the heavy stone base, my fingers digging into the soft earth. I found the loose brick I had placed there almost a year ago. I pried it free.

Inside the hollow space was a heavy, waterproof lockbox.

I pulled it out, my hands trembling. The ledger was inside. The key to Julian’s empire. The price for my daughter’s life.

I stood up, wiping the mud from my jeans. I had everything I needed to go to Montauk.

But as I turned to leave the graveyard, a shadow detached itself from the side of the church.

A figure stepped into the moonlight, holding an umbrella in one hand and a suppressed pistol in the other.

"I knew you'd come back here eventually, Evelyn," a voice said.

I froze, the lockbox heavy in my arms.

It wasn't Julian. It wasn't Victor.

The man holding the gun was the one person in the world I trusted.