Two killers walk into a greasy spoon. One says to the other-

  What started as a sheet metal taco stao an auto shop was now a fully built restaurant, its wide windows covered in fluorest advertisements for specials that never went away, and a small drive-through window punched into the side. Truckers and office workers sat side by side under humming fluorest lights, pressed against walls covered in framed neers and fake memorabilia. Cheap cooking oil smoked on hash browns, and sts of coffee and ba floated by in little pockets.

  A blonde woman in a navy trench coat sat he front window, arms folded, legs crossed, coiled like a snake. Her coffee steamed untouched oable and she watched the door with prepared disappoi.

  A bck SUV pulled up to the fractured t ramp out front. A broad man in a Burberry trench over an Adidas tracksuit got out of the ter door and smiled like the world had rolled into his trap. He made it halfway to the entrand remembered the cigarette dangling from his mouth. He took o kiss-you-goodbye drag and flicked it away. The smoke g to his head as he stepped through the door.

  “Good m sir. Table or booth?” the hostess called to him. He pointed and walked towards the blonde woman, who watched him with a look like disgust but less passionate.

  “M,” he said in a low tohat told everyone around to stop listening. His SUV parked in a spot just outside the window and a tall thin man in a charcoal suit stepped out of the driver’s door and lit a cigarette. The blonde womahat if a bomb went off, he would just shrug and take another drag. She sighed and looked back across the table.

  “Good m. I’m Theresa,” said Lindsey, green eyes sharpened uhick brown eyebrows. She had a soft round face, held in a trolled pose of pt, with a strong enough to make it work. The man took off his sungsses and blinked his fshing brow her.

  “o meet you, Theresa. I’m Machi,” said Philip, smiling.

  Lindsey squeezed her coffee cup in a way that let him and anyone else still watg know she wao throw it at him.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Wait...”

  He held up his hand and spun around as the waitress walked up behind him.

  “Four scrambled eggs, four pieces of white buttered toast, f ass pieces of ba, and a pot, like the whole damn pitcher, of coffee. Thanks.”

  He turned around and the waitress scratched on a notepad.

  “Write while you walk, babe.” She grimaced and marched off. He smiled and reached over the table for Lindsey’s cup.

  “You never drink your coffee.”

  “I don’t see the point,” she said. He ughed and his bulging cheekbones jumped on his face.

  “No fun at all. Here.”

  He handed her a phone. She tur on with her thumbprint and pulled up a file beled Paul. It gave his home address, employer, favorite bars and clubs, work schedule, and friends (the smallest portion). There was also a bd white photo and some handwritten notes in the margins.

  “What’s all this shit on the sides?”

  “That’s my notes.” He leaned ba his seat proudly and stretched. His wide chest tested the zipper oracksuit.

  “I ’t read it. Is she sure about his job? It doesn’t seem like he would go for it.” Acc to the file, he worked at a rge insuranpany as a shift supervisor. Usually, they were venture capitalists or something.

  “They made sure,” said Philip. He gru the end of his stretd brought his hands together oable.

  “They?”

  “Yea, Mom and, uh, Rochelle. Went in together while he was out.” He fihe coffee ahe cup down at the edge of the table.

  “So, he’s not up?”

  “No.” He looked back towards the kit. A few people who had been staring at them looked away hurriedly and he smiled at the side of their heads.

  “Then he’s being watched,” Lindsey said. Philip, seeing no sign of his food, leaned forward over the table.

  “Probably. That’s what my notes said.” He poi the phone.

  “Any clue who’s c him?”

  “No idea. I don’t think they’re anyone big time, though.” Lindsey was about to tell him what his assumptions were worth to her when the waitress came up from the kit. She set dowe of eggs, ba and toast, the pot of coffee, and a smaller pte with three pancakes.

  “Pancakes?”

  “They e with all breakfast bos,” the waitress said icily.

  “Does it t as a bo? Thought it was, like, à carte.” She was already gone, so he looked at Lindsey instead. “I guess since I ordered so much?”

  “Was there something else or I leave you to your food?” She had tried to get him to just leave the goddamned phone somewhere else, but he had said he was ‘already on the road’. She had been trained not to meet up unless absolutely necessary. The boss had told her Philip was old school, but every job so far had her doubting it.

  He pulled his jacket off a hang on the back of the seat. A few of the truckers who had been watg from a booth started talking quietly about the obvious shape of body armor under his tracksuit. He unrolled the silverware from the napkin and cleared his throat.

  “Have you seen Monkey? She hasn’t touched base yet.”

  Lindsey let the silence grow before she spoke, low and sharp.

  “Who?”

  Philip realized his blunder. “God dammit, Beth, or whatever. Our driver?”

  Liayed quiet.

  “Fine, well, if you hear anything, just let me know.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yea. No! You know where the new guy is on this?” he pointed with his knife and dripped syrup oable.

  She just gred at him, so he sighed and started f his food.

  “All right, whatever. It’d be o know. Like there’s microphones in the silverware or some shit.”

  Outside the diner, Liopped o the man in the charcoal suit and preteo check her phone.

  “The less words that e out of his mouth, the better.” She said just loud enough for him to hear. He smiled and flicked a butt on the ground.

  “You haven’t seen him work,” he said to the wind. She gnced up at the sky and walked off across the parking lot. Last night's rain had broken into thin fragments of clouds, and a bright ring of silver m reached over the banks and fast-food pces like an explosion frozen in the air. It was one of those electric days where every sound carried for miles. What a day to die.