Chapter 10 - THE SECOND TRANSMISSION
The cold weight of suspicion tightened like a steel band around my chest. I kept my boot firmly planted on Julian’s chest, but my thumb pressed the button on my tactical radio headset.
“Em? Status report,” I commanded, my eyes locked on Julian’s grinning, blood-streaked face.
Silence crackled over the comms channel for three agonizing seconds.
Then Emily’s voice came through—not from her usual headset frequency, but through an automated system warning prompt.
*“Warning. Primary offline bunker synchronization interrupted. External override detected from an unknown proxy node.”*
Julian’s grin widened into an ugly, triumphant smirk. “You thought your mountain bunker was impenetrable, Daniel? Twelve years ago, when you handed over administrative control of Apex Security, you forgot one tiny detail. You never revoked the master supervisory override key assigned to the founding board members.”
“Who?” I demanded, pressing the barrel of my pistol an inch closer to his head. “Who else had the master key?”
“Someone much closer than you think,” Julian choked out, water splashing around his shoulders as he tried to laugh. “Someone who watched you pack your bags for that cabin, someone who knew every single move you were going to make before you even drove out of your driveway.”
Before I could press him further, a sharp, piercing alarm shrieked from the portable terminal I had left on the catwalk above—transmitting directly through our encrypted tactical relay.
Emily’s voice broke through the comms, breathless and laced with absolute terror.
“Pop! Get out of the tunnel! Right now!”
“Em, what is it?” I barked into the radio, my heart slamming against my ribs. “Talk to me!”
“The data wasn't just being purged... it was being mirrored!” Emily cried out, the sound of rapid keystrokes echoing in the background. “The BVI shell company accounts... they weren't transferring money *to* Victor. They were transferring money *from* your personal retirement funds into an active federal indictment account registered under your own name!”
The blood drained entirely from my face.
Frame-up.
It wasn't just about stealing a real estate trust fund or covering up an old man’s murder. The entire elaborate scheme—from Victor kidnapping Emily to the forged power-of-attorney documents—was meticulously engineered to make federal investigators believe *I* was the criminal mastermind behind a massive international money laundering ring, using Victor as a frontman.
And the person holding the master supervisory key was the only one with the clearance to execute it from the inside.
“Marcus!” I roared into the radio channel, abandoning Julian in the water as I turned and sprinted back toward the concrete stairwell leading up to the catwalk. “Marcus, where are you?!”
No response.
Only a low, rhythmic static hiss filled the comms channel.
I burst through the heavy metal door at the top of the stairwell, rushing back into the cavernous space of the warehouse.
The catwalk was empty.
May you like
Victor Hale was gone.
And standing in the center of the floor beside Emily’s open laptop, holding an encrypted satellite transmitter to his ear, was a man I had trusted with my life for fifteen years.
