Chapter 4 - The Second Visitor
The download progress bar on the computer screen blinked stubbornly: 68%... 71%...
"Cancel the download," Sarah hissed, rushing into the subterranean office and grabbing my arm. "David, we have to get out of here. If someone else is in the house—if it's one of his associates—we'll be trapped down here like rats!"
"If I cancel now, the cache clears, and we lose the master index," I replied, my eyes locked on the monitor. 84%... 89%...
From upstairs, muffled by the thick concrete foundation and the heavy pantry door, came the sound of heavy footsteps moving across the living room floor.
Tap. Tap. Heavy thud.
It wasn't a light step. It sounded like two people. Or someone carrying heavy gear.
"Sarah, listen to me," I said, turning away from the desk and grabbing her by both shoulders, forcing her to look into my eyes. "Take the flashlight. Go back to the bottom of the stairs. If anyone comes down here who isn't me, you lock that steel door from the inside and you call State Police—not local dispatch, State Police. Do you understand?"
"And you?" she demanded, her voice cracking with panic. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to find out who just walked into our house."
I drew the 9mm pistol from my waistband, thumbed the safety off, and stepped past the desk into the shadow of the server racks.
Upstairs, the voices began.
"I'm telling you, Vance left his secure comms unit active at the office," a rough, gravelly voice echoed down the stairwell. "The boss is furious. If the state audit hits his accounts before we clean out the server farm, we're all going down."
"Check the basement access," a second, colder voice replied. "Marcus always kept the primary backup drives down in the bunker."
My breath hitched.
Vance. The corporate secretary from Carter Holdings—or rather, a local shell company fronting for Marcus’s financial network. They weren't just random thugs; they were part of the inner circle.
And they were heading straight down the stairs.
97%... 99%... COMPLETED.
The small LED light on my USB drive flashed green. I yanked the drive from the port, slipped it into my pocket, and slid behind a floor-to-ceiling metal filing cabinet right beside the open steel door.
Clack-clack-clack.
Heavy tactical boots descended the concrete steps.
Two men appeared in the doorway. Both wore black windbreakers with reinforced tactical vests, their faces partially obscured by baseball caps pulled low over their brows. The lead man held a suppressed HK USP pistol at a low ready, scanning the room with professional precision.
"Clear," the second man muttered, stepping into the room. "Wait... look at the desk. The terminal is active."
The lead man froze. He raised his weapon higher, his eyes darting across the dark corners of the bunker.
"Somebody was just here," he hissed. "The drive is missing from the main bay."
"Search the perimeter!"
Before the second man could turn toward the server racks where I was hiding, I stepped out from the shadows.
"Drop the weapon," I said, leveling the 9mm straight at his chest.
The man gasped, spinning around, but his reflexes were fractionally too slow. The lead man, however, didn't hesitate. He whipped his suppressed pistol upward, aiming right for my head.
I pulled the trigger first.
Thwip.
The suppressed round caught the lead man in the shoulder, spinning him backward into the metal shelving with a metallic crash. His weapon clattered across the concrete floor.
The second man froze, his hands hovering in the air, his eyes wide with sudden, absolute terror as he stared down the barrel of my gun.
"Don't move," I snarled, stepping forward and kicking his weapon across the room. "On your knees. Now!"
He dropped slowly to the floor, interlocking his fingers behind his head.
From the shadows near the back of the bunker, Sarah appeared, holding a heavy iron wrench she must have grabbed from the utility rack. She was shaking, but her eyes were lethal.
"David," she breathed, looking at the wounded man groaning on the floor. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," I said, keeping my weapon trained on the kneeling man. "Call the State Police. Tell them we have two armed intruders in our private basement, and give them the badge number of Officer Miller who was here twenty minutes ago. Tell them we have reason to believe local law enforcement has been compromised."
Sarah nodded, pulling her cell phone from her pocket with trembling fingers.
May you like
As the sirens began to wail in the distance—faint at first, but growing louder by the second as they tore through the rain-slicked suburban streets—I looked down at the USB drive clutched tightly in my fist.
The game Marcus thought he was winning was finally over.
