Chapter 2 - The Shadows in the Kitchen
The heavy footsteps outside the pantry door slowed to a deliberate, calculated crawl.
Marin did not breathe. She pressed herself flat against the steel shelving, the sharp edges of dry-storage canned goods biting into the fabric of her faded cotton uniform. Beside her on the unwashed linoleum, Asa Thornton remained motionless, but his grip on her wrist felt like iron.
Even now, bleeding through his clothes with his face drawn tight in agonized lines, his instincts were terrifyingly intact. He slid his left foot back an inch, shifting his weight with the silent, fluid grace of a stalking predator. With his free hand, he reached into the inner lining of his shredded suit coat. The gun was gone—Marin had kicked it away on the kitchen floor—but his long fingers closed around a short, wickedly curved tactical blade concealed in his waistband.
“Check the dry storage,” a gravelly voice ordered from the center of the kitchen.
“There’s blood by the freezer,” a second voice replied. “Dripping toward the walk-in. He’s hemmed in, Vance. He’s not getting out.”
Julian Vance. Marin’s pulse hammered behind her temples. Even she knew that name. Julian Vance was Asa Thornton’s senior lieutenant, the smooth-talking front man who handled city council meetings and zoning permits while Asa managed the syndicate’s darker machinery. If Vance was here holding a suppressed weapon, looking for Asa in a grease-stained basement, this wasn’t an attack from a rival South Side gang.
It was an execution from within.
Through the crack between the door and the frame, Marin saw the beam of a high-powered flashlight cut through the kitchen’s gloom. It swept past the industrial dishwashers, reflected off the overhead copper pots, and caught the trail of crimson smeared across the tile.
The flashlight stopped. Right at the heavy wooden door of the pantry.
Asa pulled her down slightly, leaning his mouth toward her ear. His breath was freezing—literally cold, carrying the faint scent of ozone and copper. “When they turn the handle,” he whispered, so faint it was like rustling paper, “get behind the shelving.”
“You can’t take two armed men,” she murmured back, her chest tightening with panic. “You can barely sit upright.”
“I don’t need to take two,” Asa said coldly. “I only need to kill the first one before he fires. You take his gun.”
Marin swallowed the bitter taste of bile rising in her throat. She was a maid. She scrubbed toilets and scraped congealed marinara off countertops for pennies to keep a collection agency from seizing her deceased mother’s belongings. She did not take guns from dead men.
The footsteps drew closer. Three feet. Two feet.
A shadow fell over the frosted glass panel set into the pantry door. A leather-gloved hand closed around the brass knob. The latch gave a low, metallic click.
Marin looked at the heavy five-gallon drums of industrial cooking oil stacked on the shelf directly above the door. Her hands were shaking violently, but her brain—sharpened by twenty-seven years of navigating emergencies alone—locked onto the lever mechanics.
“Don’t move,” she breathed.
Before Asa could stop her, Marin stood up, reached with both arms, and used every ounce of leverage in her slight frame to shove the uppermost rack forward.
The steel shelf groaned. The welds gave way with a sharp *crack*. Three massive, heavy-gauge steel cans of peanut oil tipped over the lip and plunged through the door just as it swung inward.
The impact sounded like a car door slamming shut. A man cursed violently as forty pounds of metal and oil struck his chest, driving him back onto the slick kitchen floor. He fired blindly into the ceiling, the suppressed gunshot making a muffled *thwip-thwip* that sent plaster raining down into the soup stations.
“Kill him!” Vance’s voice barked from behind the steam tables.
Marin didn’t wait. She grabbed Asa beneath the collar of his suit jacket and hauled him forward with a ferocity she hadn’t known she possessed. “Service elevator,” she snapped. “Now!”
Asa didn’t argue. The cold rage in his gray eyes was instantly replaced by lethal efficiency. As they tumbled out of the pantry, he planted his boot into the neck of the fallen gunman, crushing the man’s windpipe with a sickening snap before stooping fluidly to snatch the man’s dropped Glock 19.
A round chewed through the wooden doorframe inches from Marin’s cheek, sending wood splinters into her neck.
Vance was advancing from the front prep line, firing two-handed through the haze of drifting drywall dust.
Asa raised the stolen weapon, returned two rapid, perfectly placed shots that forced Vance to dive behind the stainless-steel prep table, and then shoved Marin through the swinging swinging double doors into the dark corridor beyond.
The freight elevator was locked for the night with an iron accordion gate, but the linen laundry chute was not. It was a wide, galvanized steel hatch used to drop dirty banquet tablecloths down into the sub-basement incinerator room, which opened directly onto the alley behind the hotel.
“In,” Asa rasped, his knees buckling beneath him. His face was gray. The burst of adrenaline was already dying, and the knife wound under his ribs was pumping dark, heavy blood down his pant leg.
“You’re out of your mind,” Marin gasped, pulling open the hatch. “It’s a twenty-foot drop into canvas carts!”
“Better than a bullet from Vance,” he said through gritted teeth.
He grabbed her waist and dragged her with him into the dark metal chute.
They slid down the slick galvanized surface together, gravity snatching the breath from Marin’s lungs. They hit the mountain of heavy linen below with a bone-jarring crash. Pain tore through Marin’s shoulder, but she didn’t stop moving. She scrambled out of the cart, dragging Asa by his arm.
He was significantly heavier now, a dead weight sliding across the concrete floor. The sub-basement was bitterly cold, the smell of damp brick and old boiler ash heavy in the air.
At the end of the narrow maintenance corridor stood a rusted fire door leading out to the rear alley. Marin threw her weight against the push bar. The door groaned open against two feet of fresh January snow.
A blast of sub-zero Chicago air slammed into them.
Across the alley, parked beneath a flickering halogen streetlight, sat Marin’s dented 2008 Honda Civic, covered in a six-inch blanket of fresh white powder.
“Keys,” Asa grunted, coughing weakly. A speck of dark crimson flecked his lip.
“Front pocket,” she said, her teeth chattering as the freezing wind sliced through her thin work shirt.
She half-carried, half-dragged him across the slush, praying with every frantic heartbeat that the old engine would turn over. If the battery failed tonight, they were dead in the snow.
She shoved Asa into the passenger seat, slammed the door, and scrambled into the driver’s side. She jammed the key into the ignition and turned it.
The starter whined. Once. Twice.
“Come on,” she begged, slamming the dashboard with her palm. “Please. Not tonight.”
On the third crank, the engine roared to life with a rattling shudder.
Marin slammed the car into reverse just as the fire door swung open behind them. Julian Vance stepped into the snow, his overcoat flapping in the gale, raising his weapon with steady, methodical precision.
Marin floored the gas. The tires spun on the black ice, caught traction, and the Civic fishtailed wildly out of the alley, clipping a green city dumpster before rocketing onto Michigan Avenue.
Behind them, Vance did not run. He lowered his gun, pulled a phone from his pocket, and watched the taillights disappear into the blizzard.
In the passenger seat, Asa’s head fell back against the headrest. His eyes were half-shut, his skin taking on the sickly bluish tint of someone who had drowned in frozen water.
“Don’t you dare die in my car,” Marin whispered, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
Asa’s lips moved faintly. “Where are you taking me?”
May you like
Marin looked in the rearview mirror at the empty, snow-blinded street. “Somewhere they think you’d never go.”
***
