Chapter 2 - THE BLOOD ON THE TILE
“I speak to everyone exactly how they earn the right to be spoken to,” Mara said.
Vincent Calder didn’t blink. For a moment, the tension in the diner was thicker than the grease on the grill. Then, slowly, he unbuttoned his ruined thousand-dollar coat and let it slide off his shoulders.
Beneath it, his white dress shirt was soaked with a dark, spreading stain.
“You’re a waitress,” Dante said, his voice laced with venom. He didn’t take his eyes off the kitchen door, clearly still worried about the black SUV circling the back alley. “You’re not a doctor.”
“I’m a woman who cleans up messes,” Mara shot back, unlatching the metal first-aid box. “And right now, your boss is bleeding on my freshly mopped linoleum. Sit down, Mr. Calder.”
Vincent sat on the vinyl diner stool. He watched her with that same unsettling, calculated interest.
Mara tore open a package of sterile gauze. Her hands weren't shaking. That surprised her. She was twenty-eight years old, drowning in debt, and raising a sixteen-year-old brother entirely on her own. She spent her nights serving burnt toast to drunks and her days dodging eviction notices. She didn't have the luxury of panic.
She peeled back the torn fabric of Vincent’s shirt. The wound was ugly—a deep, jagged groove along his left bicep.
“A bullet graze,” Mara said quietly.
“A disagreement over a real estate contract,” Vincent replied smoothly.
“Must be some property.” Mara pressed the gauze hard against the wound.
Vincent’s breath hitched, just a sharp intake of air through his teeth, but his eyes never left hers. “You have a good eye, Mara.” He read her nametag. “Most people would have frozen. Or screamed.”
“Most people don’t have to pay rent on Friday.”
As Mara reached for the medical tape, her fingers brushed against the heavy wool collar of Vincent’s discarded coat on the counter. She felt something hard. Something that didn't belong in a tailored jacket.
She paused.
“Answer One, Open Two,” her father used to say when they did puzzles together before he died. You solve one problem, you find two more.
Mara slid her fingernail beneath the seam of the collar. She ripped the expensive thread.
“Hey!” the second guard—a stocky man with a broken nose—snapped, stepping forward. “What the hell are you doing to his coat?”
Mara ignored him. She pulled out a small, flat, black plastic disc, no larger than a quarter. A tiny red light blinked in its center.
She tossed it onto the diner counter. It landed with a sharp clack.
Vincent stared at it. The silence in the diner shifted from tense to utterly deadly.
“A GPS tracker,” Mara said softly. “That’s how the blue sedan and the black SUV knew exactly where you were going to stop.”
Dante swore violently, drawing his weapon.
But Vincent didn’t look at the window. He looked at the second guard. The stocky one.
“Silas,” Vincent said. His voice was no louder than a whisper, but it carried the weight of a judge’s gavel.
Silas swallowed hard. He took a step back. “Boss, I swear to God, I didn’t know it was in there. The tailor must have—”
“I haven’t been to the tailor in six months,” Vincent said. “But you handed me my coat when we left the warehouse tonight.”
Mara saw Silas’s hand twitch toward his waistband.
The reversal was instant. The threat wasn't just outside in the rain. It was standing three feet away from the pie case.
“Don’t do it, Silas,” Dante warned, leveling his gun.
But Silas was desperate. He pulled his weapon, aiming wildly at Vincent.
Mara didn’t think. She grabbed the scalding hot coffeepot from the burner and hurled it directly at Silas’s chest. The glass shattered against his shoulder, sending boiling coffee over his face and neck.
Silas screamed, his gun discharging into the ceiling as he stumbled backward.
Dante fired twice.
Silas collapsed onto the black-and-white checkered floor. He didn't move.
The ringing in Mara’s ears was deafening. The smell of gunsmoke and roasted coffee filled the air.
Vincent calmly stood up, pressing the gauze to his arm. He walked over to Silas’s body and knelt down. He reached into the dead man's pocket and pulled out a heavy, tarnished brass key.
“He sold me out,” Vincent murmured. He looked up at Mara. “We have to leave. Now. Before the men outside realize they lost their inside guy.”
Mara backed away, her heart finally hammering. “No. I’m not part of this. You leave. I’m calling the police.”
“If you stay here, they will kill you just to leave no witnesses,” Vincent said, his voice terrifyingly gentle. “I can protect you. But we have to go out the roof hatch.”
Mara shook her head frantically. “I can’t! My brother, Toby. He’s home alone. If they know who I am, if they look me up—”
Vincent held up the brass key. Attached to it was a small leather keychain.
Mara’s breath stopped in her throat.
May you like
It was a custom leather keychain shaped like a baseball glove. The exact one she had bought for Toby when he got his driver’s permit last month.
“Why did my bodyguard have your brother’s keychain, Mara?” Vincent asked softly.
