Chapter 2 - The Voice From Philadelphia
The dial tone hummed like an electric saw.
I couldn't drop the plastic receiver.
My fingers were frozen around it.
"Emily?" Marcus called out softly.
He was standing five feet away by the deep fryer.
His brow was furrowed with genuine concern.
"Who was that on the line, kid?"
"Wrong number," I lied.
The lie tasted like lead on my tongue.
"You're white as a sheet," Marcus stepped forward.
"I'm fine," I snapped, harsher than intended.
I slammed the receiver back onto the metal cradle.
The bell inside gave an ugly ding.
I turned my back on Marcus.
My reflection stared back from the greasy stainless steel prep table.
Wide, terrified hazel eyes.
Hollow cheeks.
Three years of hiding, undone in thirty seconds.
I shoved my hand into my apron pocket.
My fingers brushed against Adrian Moretti’s card.
The card stock was thick.
Embossed with a single telephone number.
No name.
No company logo.
Just seven digits in raised black ink.
“You probably will,” his voice echoed in my head.
Had Adrian made that call?
No.
The voice on the phone was older.
Thicker.
It carried that specific, harsh South Philadelphia cadence.
The sharp vowels.
The dropped consonants.
It was the same voice I heard in my nightmares.
I walked back to the front dining room windows.
The rain was slowing to a toxic drizzle.
Across the asphalt, thirty yards out, sat the car.
A gray Chevrolet Impala.
Old model.
Dented front passenger fender.
The driver had killed the headlights the moment I looked out.
The interior was pitch black.
He was sitting there.
Waiting for my shift to end.
My shift ended at 2:00 AM.
It was 1:28 AM right now.
Thirty-two minutes of survival left.
"Marcus," I said, keeping my voice even.
"Yeah, Em?"
"Can I leave twenty minutes early?"
Marcus paused with a spatula in his hand.
He looked at the empty booths.
He looked at the puddle near the doorway.
"Go," he said quietly. "Take the alley door. The lock's sticky, so kick it
hard."
Marcus didn't ask questions.
That was why I loved him.
He knew what running looked like.
He’d probably spent his own youth running from something ugly.
"Thank you," I whispered.
I tore off my white cotton apron.
I balled it up and tossed it into the laundry bin.
My canvas tote bag was under the register.
Inside was my whole life:
A worn leather wallet.
Eighty-four dollars in crumpled cash.
A copy of my fake Delaware driver's license.
And Danny’s pocketknife.
A silver Case knife with a scratched bone handle.
I gripped the handle inside my pocket.
Its cold metal brought zero comfort.
I pulled on my oversized black thrift-store jacket.
I reached for the matte-white card in my apron.
I tucked it securely inside my denim jeans.
Right against my hip bone.
"Lock up behind me, Marcus," I said at the kitchen threshold.
"Already on it," Marcus replied, his eyes never leaving the floor.
I pushed through the kitchen swinging doors.
Past the towering stack of unwashed pots.
Past the hum of the walk-in cooler.
The rear exit was an iron door painted rusted brown.
A heavy crossbar held it shut.
I lifted the bar.
The metal groaned.
I cracked the door open half an inch.
The smell of wet garbage and diesel exhaust flooded my nose.
The alley was narrow.
Brick walls rose four stories on either side.
To the left: an exit leading to 4th Avenue.
To the right: a dead end blocked by chain-link and dumpsters.
No cars could fit down here.
I slipped through the gap.
The door clicked shut behind me with a sickening thud.
The lock engaged.
I was outside in the dark.
I pulled my hood low over my forehead.
I took five rapid steps toward 4th Avenue.
Crunch.
Behind me.
Near the dumpsters.
A foot stepping onto wet gravel.
My heart vaulted straight into my throat.
I didn't turn around.
Never turn around when you run.
Danny's rule number four.
I broke into a dead sprint toward the streetlights of 4th Avenue.
Heavy bootsteps pounded the asphalt behind me.
Fast.
Closing the gap.
"Stop right there, little bird!" a rough voice barked.
It was the man from the diner hallway.
The one in the denim jacket.
He wasn't thin anymore.
He looked hulking under the shadow of the fire escapes.
I reached the mouth of the alley.
My sneakers hit the wet sidewalk.
I swung around the brick corner, digging my heels in.
A hand caught the fabric of my hood.
The force jerked my head violently backward.
My neck popped with sharp pain.
"Gotcha," he hissed in my ear.
He smelled like cheap menthol cigarettes and wet wool.
I drove my elbow backward with everything I had.
It connected solid with his solar plexus.
He wheezed, losing his grip on my hood.
I spun around, Danny’s pocketknife already flipped open.
The three-inch blade gleamed under the yellow streetlamp.
"Back off!" I screamed.
The man stumbled back half a pace, holding his gut.
He grinned.
His teeth were yellow and crooked.
"Danny's girl," he sneered. "Feisty just like him."
"Who sent you?" I demanded.
My blade was shaking.
I hated that it was shaking.
"You shouldn't have passed that napkin, sweetheart," he laughed darkly.
He reached inside his denim coat.
Not for a phone this time.
The dull black finish of a semi-automatic pistol cleared his leather belt.
"Boss wants you alive," he said, stepping forward. "Mostly."
I took one step back into the street.
A horn blasted.
Bright white light washed over us both.
Tires screamed against the wet pavement.
A roar of twin-turbocharged engines tore through the quiet night.
A massive black vehicle jumped the curb.
It didn't slow down.
It hurtled straight toward the alley mouth.
The man in the denim jacket dropped his jaw.
He raised his gun toward the windshield.
CRACK.
The black SUV rammed his side at twenty miles per hour.
Metal struck bone.
The man flew sideways, crashing hard into a mountain of wet garbage bags.
His pistol clattered across the wet asphalt.
The SUV slammed to an instant halt.
The passenger door flew open.
Smoke spilled from the exhaust.
A man stepped out into the drizzle.
Charcoal overcoat.
Flawless posture.
Steel-gray eyes.
Adrian Moretti.
He looked down at the writhing man in the garbage bags.
Then his gaze shifted toward me.
His eyes swept over the pocketknife in my trembling right hand.
"Get in," Adrian said calmly.
"No," I choked out.
"He has two partners at the corner of 5th," Adrian replied without raising his
voice.
He gestured to the open leather interior of the vehicle.
"And they aren't carrying pocketknives."
A gunshot echoed two blocks away.
A warning shot.
Or an execution.
Adrian didn't flinch.
He held the door open, waiting.
"You have five seconds, Emily Rivers."
Hearing him say my name out loud paralyzed me.
"How do you know my name?" I whispered.
Adrian checked his watch.
"Four seconds," he replied.
Footsteps rounded the distant corner of 4th Avenue.
Two silhouettes appeared beneath the streetlamp.
Guns raised.
I didn't think.
May you like
I lunged forward and threw myself into the back seat of the black Lincoln.
Adrian slammed the door behind me.
