Chapter 4: The Back Booth
The diner was located off an old industrial stretch of Route 9, where the neon sign flickered with a tired, electric hum that buzzed against the damp asphalt of the parking lot. It was the kind of place where nobody asked questions about who you were or why you were sitting alone in a corner booth at ten o'clock at night. A thick smell of burnt coffee and frying grease hung heavy in the air, masking the bitter taste in my mouth. I sat with my back firmly against the vinyl wall, my eyes scanning the entrance every time the door jingled with a new arrival.
Marcus slid into the opposite side of the booth without a word. He looked older than I remembered—his graying hair was longer, his corduroy jacket worn thin at the elbows, but his eyes were sharp, bright, and instantly alert. He didn't order coffee; he just dropped a heavy, battered envelope on the table and slid his phone across the Formica surface toward me.
"Put it on a clean drive," Marcus said quietly, his voice dropping beneath the hum of the overhead refrigerator. "No cloud syncing. No bluetooth. If they have the software I think they do, they can trace an active network handshake within a three-mile radius of the estate."
I pulled my black smartphone from my pocket, unlocked it with a steady thumb, and plugged a shielded USB-C adapter into the bottom port, linking it directly to the encrypted flash drive Marcus had slid across the table. The transfer bar crept forward with agonizing slowness—twenty percent, forty percent, sixty. Every second felt like an hour spent standing at the edge of a cliff.
"You sure about this, Lisa?" Marcus asked, watching my face in the dim amber light of the diner's wall sconces. "Once this hits the wire service through my old contacts in Chicago, there’s no walking it back. They’ll come after your assets, your name, your history."
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"They already took everything else, Marcus," I replied, my voice remarkably steady as I watched the transfer hit ninety-nine percent. "Now it’s my turn to see what they have left to lose."
The tiny green light on the drive blinked once, twice, and then stayed solid. Complete. I unplugged the device and dropped it directly into Marcus’s open palm, where his fingers instantly closed over it like a vault door. He nodded once, pulled his coat tighter around his collar, and slid out of the booth without finishing his coffee. As he pushed through the glass door into the night, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a clean, prepaid burner phone—the first line of defense in a war I was finally ready to fight on my own terms.
