Like most, the door on her building appeared relatively unencumbered with security. There was only a solitary knob and deadlock on the flat metal slab, but looks can be deceiving. If some miscreant had been able to make it this far, their triumph would have ended here.

Unlocking the door, Bennett stepped into the antechamber, the light above her head awakening as she locked the door behind her and moved toward the next. This one had a steel frame filled with concrete and rebar, and its thickness equaled almost a foot. Bennett placed her hand on the screen on the wall, the biometric scanner reading every line on her palm to confirm she belonged. A second later, the metal rods around the edges of the door retracted from their keepers, and Bennett walked inside the warehouse she had owned for nearly a century.

Over time, changes were made, but it still appeared like all the others from the outside. It looked like a standard metal building with a standing seam roof and windows covered in wire. It was dented in places and rusted in others, for those were the details needed to make it blend. Inside the metal shell, however, another building had been constructed. Its walls were masonry, and each block had been filled with concrete. Its roof consisted of panels of steel welded at all the seams, and while the windows were placed to match the others, the glass was opaque and four inches thick.

***

The bell over the door announced Gus’s arrival in the diner. He sidled over to the glass-fronted display case to peruse the selection, and once he’d made his choice, he perched himself on a vinyl-covered stool at the counter.

“How ya doing tonight, Gus?” Rosie O’Connor said, placing a cup of coffee in front of the man.

“Can’t complain,” he said, spinning the cup to grab the handle. “How ‘bout you slice me up a piece of cherry and another of apple. That should do me tonight.”

“Coming right up,” Rosie said, setting the coffee pot off to the side. “Feel free to pour yourself another. You want some ice cream with the apple?”

“Yeah, that’ll work. Thanks, Rosie.”

Gus looked around as she walked away, and other than two truckers in the corner booth scarfing down their burgers and fries, the restaurant was empty and quiet. He’d been coming to Rosie’s Diner for almost ten years now, and little had changed. The booths were still covered in cracked green vinyl, and the blades of the ceiling fans drooped with age. Condiments remained captive in rectangular baskets on the tables and counter, and laminated menus protruded from all of them. And behind the small opening across from the counter, Gus could see Willie, the cook, pacing in his stained apron while he waited for closing time to arrive.