Chapter 7 - The Lower Level
The utility basement smelled of grease, old brick, and cooling copper pipes. Julian instantly pushed Claire and Liam behind the massive cast-iron cylinder of an auxiliary boiler.
“Stay down,” Julian ordered, breathing hard, his hand gripping an iron wrench he had scavenged from the floor.
Above them, silence settled over the opening of the laundry chute. Claire held her breath, her hand resting gently over Liam’s mouth to muffle the child’s shallow gasps. Blood pounded in her ears like a war drum.
A shadow darkened the chute opening above. A pair of scuffed leather dress shoes appeared, dangling briefly before dropping down into the basement with a heavy, controlled landing.
Claire raised the wrench she had pulled from a toolbox near her feet, but Julian caught her wrist.
Richard stepped out of the shadows. His knuckles were torn and bleeding, his tailored suit jacket ripped at the shoulder seam, but he held Marcus’s semi-automatic weapon in his right hand.
“He won't be getting up,” Richard said quietly, wiping a smear of dark blood from his cheek with the back of his forearm. “We have four minutes before the local substation responds to the silent gunshot alarm I triggered on Marcus’s radio.”
“Then we don't have much time,” Julian said, pointing down the narrow subterranean hallway. “The vault door is open. Look at the floor.”
A thin trail of wet footprints led through the fine layer of dust on the concrete corridor, heading straight for the server archives. The heavy steel door at the far end stood ajar, glowing with the rhythmic green and blue indicators of the server racks within.
Richard approached the threshold first, the pistol held low and ready. “Evelyn,” he called out into the hum of the cooling fans. “Step away from the consoles.”
A soft, manic laugh drifted from behind the server racks.
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Evelyn emerged from behind the central tower. She had discarded her high heels, standing barefoot on the cold concrete. In her right hand, she held a handheld industrial demagnetizer, hovering directly over the primary server banks that housed the unencrypted backup drives.
“You’re too late, Richard,” she said, her voice trembling with manic triumph. “One press of the trigger, and the electromagnetic pulse fries every solid-state drive in this room. Julian stays dead on paper. And you become the sole suspect in Marcus Vance’s homicide.”
