Chapter 2 - The Target on Her Back
Evelyn stared at Marco, her heart pounding against her ribs like a trapped bird. The terminal surrounding them was cold, sterile, and echoing with the soft chime of delayed flight announcements.
“A photo of me?” she whispered, her voice barely carrying over the hum of the ventilation system. “How could my picture be inside his private medical kit before the plane even left New York?”
“Because this wasn't an accident, Ms. Foster,” Marco said, grabbing her elbow and steering her away from the floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the tarmac. “It was a setup. Someone planned for Antonio to have a medical crisis mid-flight. They placed the poisoned medication in his bag so his security team would administer it during an emergency at thirty thousand feet.”
“And the photo?”
“It means whoever planned this knew you were on this flight,” Marco muttered, his eyes darting across the terminal, scanning the handful of stranded passengers and airport staff. “They anticipated every variable. Except one.”
“What variable?”
“You actually saved him without using his personal kit,” Marco replied. “You used the aircraft’s standard medical supplies. You broke their timeline.”
A cold sweat broke out across Evelyn’s back. She was just a flight attendant. She made twenty-four dollars an hour, lived in a modest two-bedroom apartment in Queens, and spent her weekends visiting her younger sister in nursing school. She didn’t belong in a world of high-stakes assassination, shadowy Italian cartels, or billionaire mob bosses.
“I’m going to the airport police,” Evelyn declared, pulling her arm back from Marco’s grip. “I’m going to tell them everything.”
“The airport police cannot protect you,” Marco said, his tone deadly serious. “If Victor Vitelli—Antonio’s uncle—has compromised his personal medical kit in New York, he has people inside international law enforcement agencies as well. The moment you file a statement with local authorities, your location goes live on an international police database. They will find you before sunrise.”
Before Evelyn could argue, her phone buzzed in her purse.
It was an unknown number. She looked at Marco, who immediately signaled her not to answer. But the screen flickered with an incoming text message instead.
Ms. Foster. Do not trust the men in suits around you. Step into the restroom near Gate 4. If you refuse, your sister Clara’s dorm room at NYU will be visited in ten minutes.
Evelyn’s breath hitched. Clara. Her twenty-year-old sister.
“What is it?” Marco asked, noticing her sudden paleness.
“Nothing,” Evelyn lied, her instincts kicking into survival mode. She couldn’t risk Marco’s men escalating the situation if they thought it was a trap. “I... I need to use the restroom. The stress is getting to me.”
Marco looked at her intently for three endless seconds before nodding. “Two of my men will stand outside the door.”
Evelyn walked briskly toward the restroom near Gate 4, her legs feeling like lead. She pushed open the heavy door, her mind racing. The tile room was empty, illuminated by harsh white fluorescent tubes.
A stall door at the far end clicked open.
A woman stepped out. She was wearing a high-visibility airport staff vest over a black turtleneck, her dark hair pulled back into a tight bun. She carried a cleaning caddy, but her posture was entirely wrong for a janitor—poised, balanced, and lethal.
“Evelyn Foster,” the woman said in a flat American accent. “Drop your purse on the floor.”
“Who are you?” Evelyn demanded, backing up against the paper towel dispenser. “How do you know my sister?”
“Clara is currently sleeping in her dorm room, completely untouched,” the woman replied smoothly, pulling a silenced hand-pistol from beneath the towels in her cleaning caddy. “For now. That depends on whether you walk out the service door behind me.”
“You’re the one who poisoned Antonio,” Evelyn realized aloud. “You set this up.”
“Antonio Vitelli is an obstacle to a multi-billion-dollar restructuring of European logistics,” the woman said coldly. “He was supposed to die over the Atlantic. A sad, tragic heart attack at thirty-seven thousand feet. Clean. Untraceable. But you had to be a hero.”
The woman raised the weapon, pointing the black cylinder directly at Evelyn’s forehead.
“Now, turn around and step through the service door.”
Evelyn’s mind raced. Six years of cabin crew safety training flooded her brain. In a pressurized cabin, when a passenger became violently aggressive, you didn't reason with them—you neutralized their leverage.
Evelyn reached up as if to put her hands behind her head, but instead, she slammed her palm into the emergency fire alarm box mounted on the tile wall beside her.
BAM!
The glass shattered. A deafening, high-pitched screech filled the restroom, accompanied by blinding strobe lights.
May you like
The woman flinched for a fraction of a second.
That was all Evelyn needed. She grabbed the heavy metal soap dispenser mounted on the wall, ripped it from its fixture with pure, adrenaline-fueled strength, and swung it with all her weight straight into the woman’s wrist.
