Chapter 4 - The Diner Booth
The neon sign of the 24-hour diner on Wabash buzzed with a low, rhythmic electric hum, casting a sickly pink glow over the slushy pavement outside. Inside, the place smelled of stale coffee, fried grease, and old bleach. It was nearly 1:30 AM, and the only other patrons were a pair of exhausted cab drivers sharing a silent booth near the register and a weary waitress wiping down the counter with a gray rag.
I slid into a vinyl-cushioned booth in the very back corner, pulling my coat tight around me as I tucked my back into the angle of the wall where I could see both the front door and the kitchen. My hands were still cold, but my skin was burning with adrenaline.
Every time the door chimed, my shoulders jerked upward. Was it Greg? Had he managed to pry open the back door and figure out where I went? Or worse—had Dominic Vale’s men already intercepted the word?
I pulled the small metal flash drive out of my pocket and set it down on the formica table, staring at its matte-black surface. It looked so insignificant. Just a few gigabytes of silicon and plastic. Yet it represented the rot at the foundation of one of the most powerful criminal empires in the Midwest.
A shadow fell across the table.
I flinched, my hand instinctively darting toward the drive, but stopped when I looked up.
A tall man in his late forties stood beside the booth. He wore a rumpled gray trench coat over a wrinkled button-down shirt, silver-streaked dark hair pushed back messily from his forehead, and deep, dark circles under sharp, intelligent eyes. He looked like a man who hadn't slept a full night since the turn of the century.
“Cassie Vance?” he asked quietly, his voice low and raspy.
“David Garza?” I whispered back.
Without waiting for an invitation, Garza slid into the opposite side of the booth, his eyes immediately dropping to the flash drive on the table. He didn't touch it yet. Instead, his gaze rose slowly to meet mine, studying me with an intensity that rivaled Dominic Vale’s—though without the malice.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Ms. Vance,” Garza said softly, pulling a small, battered notebook from his coat pocket. “Walking into a hornets' nest and walking out with the stinger.”
“Caleb gave it to me,” I said defensively. “I didn't ask for it.”
“Nobody asks to get pulled into a war with the Vales,” Garza replied, resting his forearms on the table. “They just wake up one morning and find themselves in the middle of one. Tell me exactly what happened tonight. Every detail.”
I didn't hold back. I told him about Dominic’s cruel game at Bellamy’s, about Caleb signing his silent accusation across the table, about the midnight meeting in the alley, and finally, about Greg catching us and trying to shake me down for information.
Garza listened in absolute silence, his pen flying across the pages of his notebook with rapid, practiced strokes. When I mentioned Greg’s name, Garza’s pen paused for a second.
“Greg Miller?” Garza murmured, raising an eyebrow. “Manager at Bellamy’s?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“I know everyone who takes money from Dominic Vale,” Garza said grimly. “Greg is small-time. If he knows you have that drive, he won't go to the police. He’ll go straight to Frank Vance—Dominic’s chief enforcer. Which means you can't go back to your apartment tonight, Cassie.”
A cold dread pooled in my stomach. “My apartment is five blocks from here.”
“And it’s the first place they’ll look,” Garza said flatly. “If Greg figures out where you live, or if Dominic’s men lean on him hard enough, they’ll be waiting at your front door before dawn. You’re coming with me.”
“To where? Your office? Your house?”
“To a place where the Vales don't control the security cameras,” Garza said, reaching down and carefully picking up the flash drive off the table. He slipped it into an inner pocket of his trench coat with surgical precision. “And on the way, I’m going to tell you something about the man you’re trying to take down—something Caleb probably didn't tell you.”
I froze, staring across the table at the journalist. “What are you talking about? What didn't he tell me?”
Garza leaned forward, lowering his voice until I had to strain to hear him over the hum of the diner's neon sign.
“You think Caleb is just a victim in all of this, don't you? A deaf kid abused by a monster father, finally seeking justice for his mother’s murder fourteen years ago.”
“He showed me the bank records,” I said defensively.
“Oh, the records are real,” Garza agreed grimly. “Dominic did kill his wife. The gas leak was a rigged pipe, and the payoff to the contractor is right there in the ledger. But Caleb didn't just stumble across those records last week, Cassie.”
My breath caught in my throat. “What do you mean?”
“Caleb didn't find them by accident,” Garza said, his eyes locking onto mine with chilling clarity. “He’s known where they were for three years. He didn't leak them earlier because he was waiting for the right moment of maximum leverage. Tonight wasn't an impulsive cry for help at a steakhouse table. It was the opening move in a calculated corporate coup.”
The diner around us seemed to fade away into absolute stillness. Every assumption I had built over the last twelve hours—every ounce of sympathy that had made me take that flash drive in the dark alley—suddenly fractured down the middle.
“A coup,” I whispered.
“He’s not just trying to put his father away for murder,” Garza said, tapping a finger against the table. “Caleb is orchestrating a hostile takeover of the entire Vale organization from the inside out. And he just used you as the bullet.”
Before I could process the staggering weight of those words, the bell above the diner’s front door chimed cheerfully.
May you like
I snapped my head around to look toward the entrance. A heavy-set man in a dark wool coat had just stepped inside, shaking snow off his shoulders. He didn't look at the menu. He didn't look at the counter waitress. His cold, calculating eyes swept slowly across the empty room—and locked directly onto our booth in the back.
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