Chapter 9 - The Ghost in the Security Room
The rain-slicked wooden planks of Pier 14 groaned under the weight of running boots. Thunder crashed directly overhead, illuminating the dark expanse of the Blackwood River in sudden flashes of jagged light.
Victor sprinted along the narrow pier, heading toward a dark speedboat tied to the furthest piling. In his hand, he clutched the hard drive containing the evidence of his crimes.
"STOP!" Daniel's voice roared through the storm.
Victor spun around at the end of the pier, drawing his firearm. But before he could pull the trigger, Daniel tackled him at full speed. Both men hit the wet wooden deck hard, sliding across the slippery planks toward the cold, churning water below.
The gun flew from Victor's grip, slipping off the edge of the pier and splashing into the dark river.
Victor growled, throwing a heavy right punch that struck Daniel squarely in the jaw. Daniel gasped as pain shot through his face, but he didn't back down. He grabbed Victor by the lapels of his heavy coat, driving his knee forcefully into the enforcer's midsection.
"That's for Eleanor!" Daniel screamed, slamming Victor against a massive wooden piling.
Victor choked, but managed to slip a long hunting knife from his boot holster. The silver blade flashed in the dark. He slashed wildly at Daniel, ripping open the sleeve of Daniel's coat and leaving a shallow bloody gash across his forearm.
"Your wife died like a rat in a pool, Vance!" Victor laughed maniacally, raising the knife for a lethal strike to Daniel's chest. "And you're going to join her!"
Before the blade could descend, a crisp gun shot rang out.
*BANG!*
The bullet shattered Victor's right shoulder blade. He shrieked in pain, dropping the knife as he stumbled backward toward the edge of the pier.
Maya stood thirty feet away, her service weapon raised, smoke rising from the barrel.
"Step away from him, Victor," Maya commanded, her voice like cold steel. "It's over."
Victor clutched his bleeding shoulder, panting heavily. He looked down at the hard drive resting near Daniel's feet, then up at the dark, turbulent waters of the river.
"It's never over..." Victor growled through blood-stained teeth.
With a sudden, violent twist, Victor threw himself backward off the pier, plunging into the roaring, pitch-black current below.
Daniel scrambled to the edge, shining his tactical light onto the water, but the heavy current swallowed the scarred man instantly. There was no sign of him surfacing.
Maya ran up beside Daniel, quickly inspecting his arm. "Are you alright, Mr. Vance?"
"I'm fine," Daniel panted, picking up the black hard drive from the wet deck. The casing was scuffed, but intact. "We have the drive."
Ten minutes later, back inside the warehouse, Lauren Vance was brought out in heavy steel handcuffs, flanked by two federal agents. Her hair was matted, her face smeared with mascara and dirt, her arrogant posture completely destroyed.
She looked at Daniel with wide, desperate eyes as they walked her toward a waiting police cruiser.
"Daniel! Please!" she sobbed, her voice ringing with pitiful desperation. "They forced me! Victor threatened to kill me if I didn't help them! I did it to protect us! You have to believe me!"
Daniel walked up to her slowly, holding the drive in his hand. He looked down at his disgraced wife with absolute disgust.
"You pushed my son down the stairs, Lauren," Daniel said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "You watched my wife drown. You don't get to ask for mercy."
"Daniel, no! I love you! Please!" Lauren shrieked as the agents shoved her into the back seat of the cruiser and slammed the door shut.
Maya walked up to Daniel, holding a tablet connected to the recovered laptop. "Mr. Vance... our tech team managed to bypass the encryption on the hard drive. We found something else."
Daniel looked at the screen. "What is it?"
"The missing forty-seven seconds from today weren't the only frames deleted," Maya revealed, scrolling through a complex directory of hidden files. "Someone's been manipulating Vance Manor's security feeds for over four years. And the command node wasn't coming from Lauren's phone."
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Daniel frowned. "Then where was it coming from?"
Maya looked up into Daniel's eyes, her expression heavy with grave news. "From inside Vance Enterprises corporate headquarters... from the office of your Chief Financial Officer, Richard Sterling."
