CHAPTER 5: THE DEAD MAN’S SWITCH
CHAPTER 5: THE DEAD MAN’S SWITCH
The morning sun did not bring warmth; it only exposed the vulnerability of my glass fortress.
By noon, Detective Vance called me from the precinct. His voice lacked its previous triumph.
“Rachel, we have a situation,” Vance said, the background noise of the station buzzing through the line. “Mark’s corporate accounts are vanishing. Every time our cyber unit tries to freeze an offshore fund, the money disappears into a different routing number.”
“It’s a automated script,” I said, typing furiously on my laptop. “A dead-man's switch. The moment his handcuffs clicked shut, the network began deleting the paper trail.”
“It’s worse than that,” Vance warned. “The high-profile lawyers who arrived to post his bail aren't local. They represent Vanguard Holdings—a shell company tied to international shipping fraud. They are pushing for an emergency bail hearing. He could be out by tonight.”
My hands began to shake.
If Mark got out, he wouldn't run. He would come back for the physical hard drives hidden inside the structural vault of the house—the only evidence that could tie Vanguard Holdings to the murder of his previous business partner.
I closed the laptop and stood up.
I had to find that vault before the lawyers found a loophole.
I walked down to the basement, past the wine cellar, into the concrete server room. The air was freezing, chilled by massive industrial cooling units. I pulled back the metal paneling behind the main server rack, exposing a biometric safe that required a dual-key combination.
May you like
Mark had one key. I had the other.
But as I reached for the keypad, the lights in the server room suddenly died.
