Chapter 15 - The Digital Key
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The diner was empty except for a tired waitress mopping the checkerboard floor and a truck driver asleep in a booth. Fiona sat in the furthest, darkest corner, nursing a cup of black coffee. She looked nothing like the radiant woman in the ivory dress from hours ago. Her makeup was smeared, and she was visibly trembling.
Daniel slid into the booth opposite her, opening his laptop. I sat beside him, keeping a guarded distance.
Fiona didn't waste time with apologies. She reached into her designer clutch and pulled out a sleek, black USB drive, sliding it across the sticky table.
“The decryption password is the date of our anniversary,” Fiona said bitterly. “June fourth.”
Daniel plugged the drive in, his fingers flying across the keyboard.
“There’s something else,” Fiona whispered, looking directly at me. Her eyes were wide with genuine terror. “When he was burning the files in the study… he made a phone call. He called a man named Silas.”
Mara gasped sharply from her seat at the end of the table. “Silas is the Dre family’s fixer. He handles problems that lawyers can't make disappear.”
“Matthias told Silas to handle the ‘Evelyn situation’ before morning,” Fiona choked out, a tear spilling over her lashes. “Evelyn, he doesn't just want the property anymore. You embarrassed him in front of his investors. He wants to eliminate you.”
My blood ran completely cold. The physical threat I had feared for three weeks was no longer a theoretical map; it was an active hit.
“The files are unlocked,” Daniel announced, his screen illuminating with thousands of documents. “We have the wire transfers to the zoning commissioner. We have the explicit emails acknowledging the toxic soil. We have him.”
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“We need to go to the FBI field office right now,” Mara insisted, grabbing her coat.
Before we could stand up, the glass windows at the front of the diner violently shattered inward.
