Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Kitchen
Alara stood in the center of her apartment, her knuckles white around the hilt of the tactical knife.
Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. On the sofa, little Leo stirred, letting out a faint, restless whimper. Alara immediately crouched by the couch, resting her palm gently on the baby's chest, humming a soft, wordless lullaby she remembered from her childhood. Leo settled back down, his tiny hand curling tightly around her pinky finger.
Down below, through the narrow, uninsulated wooden floorboards, the quiet metallic clatter of the diner's kitchen reached her ears.
Two men were moving through the dark. She could hear the heavy thud of tactical boots against the linoleum she had bleached just an hour ago.
"Check the pantry," a rough voice muttered downstairs, spoken in a thick Eastern European accent. "Dmitri said he tracked the blood trail to the back alley."
"The floor smells like bleach," a second voice growled. "Someone wiped it. He was here."
Alara's breath hitched. They had found the bleach. She had thought she was being thorough, but professionals knew what bleach meant—it meant an attempt to hide evidence.
"Search upstairs," the first voice ordered. "If the girl who works here saw him, put a bullet in her head and burn the building."
Fear, cold and sharp, flooded Alara's veins. She looked down at the knife in her hand, then at the two sleeping babies on her couch. She wasn't a soldier. She was a former nursing student working double shifts at a grease-diner to clear her deceased mother's medical debt. But as the footsteps began to approach the base of the apartment stairwell, something inside her snapped into place.
She walked silently to the kitchen, grabbed a heavy iron skillet from the stove, and stepped into the shadowy corner beside the apartment entrance.
In the dark stairwell, there was no sound of gunfire. Jack was a silent killer.
Through the crack beneath the door, Alara saw the faint flicker of a flashlight beam. Then, the sound of a heavy body hitting the wooden steps with a muffled crack—the sound of a snapping neck.
A moment later, the handle of her apartment door turned.
Alara raised the iron skillet over her head, her muscles coiled like springs.
The door swung open. A tall figure stepped into the threshold, holding a suppressed pistol.
Alara brought the heavy skillet down with all her strength.
"Alara, stop!" a low voice hissed.
Jack caught the base of the heavy iron skillet mid-air with his bare left hand. The impact reverberated up Alara's arms, but Jack didn't even flinch. He pushed the pan down gently, stepping inside and pulling the door shut with his heel.
His face was splattered with fresh blood, none of it his own. In his right hand, he held two silenced weapons he had stripped from the mercenaries downstairs.
"You have good instincts," Jack said, his breathing heavy as he leaned against the doorframe, hand pressed tightly over his fresh wound. "But terrible form."
"Are they..." Alara choked out, dropping the skillet onto the braided rug.
"Dead," Jack said bluntly. "Two scouts from the Rostov Syndicate. Which means their main strike team isn't far behind. They were using a regional cell tower to pinpoint my satellite ping."
He walked over to the couch, picking up the tactical bag and slinging it over his shoulder.
"We have to move. Now."
"Move where?" Alara demanded, grabbing a blanket and wrapping Stella securely against her chest. "It’s three in the morning! The city is crawling with your enemies!"
"I have a safehouse in Brooklyn," Jack said, pulling the double baby carrier back over his chest. He gently slid Leo into his pocket. "It's fortified. Off-grid. But I can't drive us there in my condition. I'm losing my field of vision."
He swayed slightly, his eyelids fluttering. The physical exertion of taking down two armed mercenaries while suffering from a massive gunshot wound had pushed his body past its human limits.
Alara caught him before his knees hit the floor, supporting his massive frame with every ounce of strength she possessed.
"Alright, 'Jack,'" she breathed, taking his heavy arm and draping it over her shoulders. "I'm driving. Where are your keys?"
"In my pocket," Jack rasped, his icy eyes fixing on hers through a haze of pain. "Black sedan parked two blocks south. Under the overpass."
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"Let's go," Alara said. She locked Stella against her front, secured Leo in Jack’s carrier, grabbed her own purse, and stepped over the corpse lying in her stairwell without looking down.
She had crossed the line. There was no turning back now.
