Chapter 6 - Shadows at the Perimeter
My eyes dropped to the black pistol lying on the damp concrete between my boots.
It was an untraceable 'ghost gun'—no serial numbers, no manufacturer marks. If I picked it up, if my fingerprints touched that frame, Sheriff Kincaid’s deputies wouldn't even wait for a command before opening fire.
They’d shoot me dead in this cellar, claim I was a armed, deranged addict who broke in to murder my family, and the whole story would be buried in a closed file before sunrise.
"Pick it up, Leo," Arthur repeated, taking one step closer, his chrome revolver steady in his grip. "Make it easy on everyone. Eli will be raised by Julian. He’ll have a trust fund. He’ll go to private school. He’ll never have to know what a pathetic mess his father was."
"No," I said quietly.
I didn't reach for the gun.
Instead, I took the black leather ledger, jammed it into the front of my heavy denim jacket, and pulled the zipper up to my chin.
"What are you doing?" Julian barked, stepping forward with the crowbar raised.
"Eli jammed his shoe in that door for a reason," I said, looking my father dead in the eye. "He wanted me to finish what he started."
I didn't run toward the laundry room door.
I threw my shoulder against the heavy steel vault door, swinging it shut with all my strength.
"Wait! No!" Arthur yelled.
The steel door slammed shut with a deafening CLANG, the magnetic locks engaging as the frame cleared the alcove.
I was locked inside the subterranean vault.
Outside the thick steel door, I heard Julian shouting, followed by the muffled thump of the crowbar striking the reinforced frame. But a vault built to store federal tax records and off-the-books cash wasn't going to break under a crowbar.
I stood in the darkness of the vault, my heart hammering like a drum.
I clicked on my flashlight. The air inside the room was limited—maybe two hours of oxygen if I kept my breathing steady. But the vault had an independent power line connected to the server rack.
I walked over to the desk, grabbed the hardwired Ethernet cable plugged into the server, and pulled out my smartphone.
I used a USB-C adapter from my pocket—something I carried every day for my work at the water plant—and plugged the hardwired internet connection directly into my phone.
I had full service.
My phone screen lit up with three missed calls from Officer Vance and a message from Sarah Jenkins:
The Sheriff just pulled up to the hospital. He’s trying to serve an emergency removal order for Eli right now. Where are you?!
I didn't call Vance. I opened my phone’s secure camera app, activated the high-resolution document scanner, and laid the black ledger flat on the metal desk.
Page by page, I began photographing every single entry in the book.
Page 1: The Master Shield Agreement. Page 2: The $45,000 bribe to the Zoning Board. Page 3: The $120,000 payment to Sheriff D.K. (Kincaid). Page 4: The offshore trust accounts in the Cayman Islands registered under my old alias.
By the time I reached page twenty-four, I heard the faint, dull vibration of a drill pressing against the vault's exterior lock from the laundry room outside.
Julian was trying to drill out the deadbolt.
"You have twenty minutes, Julian!" I screamed through the steel door. "Make it count!"
I opened my email client, attached all twenty-four high-resolution images, and entered three addresses:
The Special Agent in Charge at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s regional field office in Richmond.
The Chief Investigative Reporter at the State Gazette.
Sarah Jenkins at Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
I hit SEND.
The screen showed a small blue progress bar: Uploading 1 of 24... 5 of 24... 12 of 24...
Outside the door, the drilling stopped abruptly.
Then came a sound that made my blood run cold.
It wasn't a drill. It was the loud, metallic hiss of a pressurized hose being inserted through the air vent near the ceiling.
A sharp, sweet chemical smell began pouring into the small concrete vault.
May you like
Engine exhaust. They had connected a generator hose to the intake vent.
They weren't trying to drill me out. They were going to suffocate me inside the vault, wait for the gas to clear, retrieve the ledger, and burn my body in the woods.
