Chapter 20
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We didn't go back to the estate. Liam insisted it was too predictable. Instead, he drove us to a secure, anonymous safe house he maintained in the industrial district of Denver—a converted loft with reinforced steel doors and blast-proof windows.
Once inside, Liam set up his heavy encrypted laptop on the steel kitchen island and plugged in Evan’s flash drive.
A password prompt appeared on the screen.
"He encrypted the drive with AES-256 military-grade encryption," Liam noted, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. "If we guess wrong three times, the drive will automatically wipe itself clean. We only get three shots, Claire."
I stared at the blinking cursor, feeling the immense weight of the moment. The lives of everyone who would ever drive over the Silver Creek Bridge depended on me knowing my husband’s mind.
"He wouldn't use our anniversary or Lily's birthday for something this dangerous," I reasoned, pacing the floor. "He knew Vanguard might try to guess those if they caught him. He would use something only he and I understood."
"Think back to the weeks before he died," Liam encouraged, standing back to give me space. "Did he say anything unusual? A phrase? A joke? A favorite book quote?"
I closed my eyes, desperately searching my memories of Evan's final days. He had been so stressed, barely sleeping. I remembered waking up one night to find him sitting in the dark living room, holding a small, framed poem we had bought on our honeymoon in Greece.
"Ithaca," I whispered, opening my eyes. "It was his favorite poem by Cavafy. About the journey being more important than the destination. The last line... 'Wealthy with all you have gained on the way.'"
I stepped up to the keyboard. My hands shook as I typed the phrase, removing the spaces and capitalizing the first letters.
WealthyWithAllYouHaveGained
I hit enter.
The screen froze for a terrifying second, then flashed green. The file directory opened, revealing hundreds of highly technical PDF documents, structural blueprints, and raw data spreadsheets.
Liam let out a low whistle of pure admiration. "You did it, Claire."
He opened the master summary file. There, in undeniable black and white, was the original, unedited stress test data for the Vanguard concrete blend. The graphs clearly showed catastrophic failure at sub-zero temperatures.
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Appended to the file was an email chain. Julian Cross explicitly ordering the data to be altered, citing massive budget overruns.
"This is premeditated mass murder for profit," Liam said, his voice cold. "We have the gun, the bullet, and the fingerprints. Tomorrow, we burn Julian Cross to the ground."
