The Last Order

Margaret is the perfect ghost. For ten years, she's worked the graveyard shift at Ray's City Diner, a fossil of chrome and grease in a city that never stops moving. She's seen the powerful, the desperate, and the criminal, all through the steam of a coffee pot. She knows their faces, their habits, and their secrets—and she's kept them all buried in the "Background." But at 4:00 AM, the background breaks. When a high-level federal witness stumbles into her diner fleeing a professional hit, Margaret makes a choice that violates every rule of her invisible life. In a single heartbeat, she transitions from a waitress to a variable the Valenti crime family never accounted for. Leading the hunt is Kael, a "logistics" specialist who treats murder like a clean ledger. He views the world as a theater and Margaret as a stagehand who has overstepped her mark. But Kael is about to learn that ten years of observing the city's shadows has made Margaret more dangerous than any soldier. From the claustrophobic tunnels of the New York subway to the freezing vaults of an industrial warehouse district, Margaret must use the "Standard Service"—the tools of her trade and the geography of the mundane—to survive a night that refuses to end. The shift is over. The check is due. And Margaret is the only one left to clear the table.