Chương 3 - The Ghost
The man in the hallway raised his hand to knock again.
Meline did not wait for him to shatter the lock.
She unlocked the deadbolt herself, pulled the door open violently, and grabbed the armed man by his tie.
She yanked him forward into the apartment, using his own momentum against him.
She delivered a brutal strike to his throat with her elbow, causing him to drop the weapon.
The second man lunged into the doorway with a heavy baton raised above his head.
Meline ducked under the swing, pivoted sharply, and drove the hilt of her knife into his ribs.
He grunted in pain and stumbled backward into the hallway wall.
She picked up the dropped pistol from the floor and aimed it squarely at the first man’s chest.
"I suggest you leave before I wake my mother," Meline whispered, her voice dangerously calm.
The two men stared at her in absolute disbelief.
They had been sent to intimidate a helpless waitress, not to engage a highly trained operative.
The man clutching his ribs cursed under his breath and pulled his partner toward the stairs.
"Mr. Caldwell said you would regret crossing him," the injured man spat before running down the steps.
Meline slammed the door shut and locked it, her mind racing with terrible possibilities.
Preston was escalating the situation faster than she had anticipated.
She could not keep Evelyn in this apartment for another night.
Meline ran to her encrypted laptop and opened a secure communication channel she had not touched since Beirut.
She typed in a deeply classified frequency, hoping her former intelligence handler was still monitoring it.
The screen flickered for a few tense seconds before a text box opened.
"Who is this?" the anonymous user typed.
"It is Meline," she typed back. "I need an emergency safehouse in New York immediately."
There was a long, agonizing pause on the other end of the connection.
"Meline Ross died in a car bomb in Lebanon three years ago," the user finally responded.
"I survived, and I need your help, Arthur," Meline typed frantically.
May you like
The cursor blinked steadily on the dark screen.
"Arthur retired two years ago," the anonymous user replied. "But whoever you are, you have ten minutes to get out of that building before it explodes."
