Chapter 9 - The Race to St. Jude
The armored SUV roared out of the hidden service tunnel beneath the estate grounds, its heavy all-terrain tires chewing through the mud of the access road before slamming onto the paved highway. Julian kept his foot buried in the accelerator, the speedometer needle sweeping past ninety miles per hour as the vehicle hurtled toward the city’s financial district. In the back seat, Clara was manually ventilating Leo with a pediatric bag-valve-mask, her rhythm steady and unwavering despite the violent sway of the car.
Beside her, Marcus lay bound hand and foot with heavy zip-ties, blood trailing from his broken nose onto his tailored lapels.
""You won't get past the vault doors,"" Marcus gasped, coughing as the vehicle swerved violently around a sharp mountain turn. ""St. Jude Depository requires biometric authorization from two living board members. Even with that key card, you need my retinal scan and Arthur’s private cryptographic key. Arthur is dead, Julian. You are driving toward a stone wall.""
""Arthur gave Clara the access files before he died,"" Julian barked over his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the rain-slicked highway. ""He knew what you were planning months ago.""
""Arthur was paranoid!"" Marcus spat back. ""He hid the seed keys on an air-gapped drive that disappeared from his hospital room the night he passed!""
Clara glanced up from Leo’s tiny, pale face. Her expression was devoid of any emotion, cold as absolute zero. ""It didn't disappear, Marcus. Arthur swallowed the micro-capsule before your doctors could administer the final sedative. I recovered it during his post-mortem prep before your private coroner touched his body.""
Marcus stared at her, the blood draining from his face until he looked more like a corpse than the dying child beside him. ""You... you desecrated his body?""
""I protected his son,"" Clara replied, squeezing the ventilation bag with methodical precision. ""Something his own blood refused to do.""
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The high-rise skyline of the city tore through the midnight fog, dominated by the massive granite monolith of the St. Jude Depository. The building was designed like a fortress, its lower ten stories constructed from solid reinforced concrete without external windows, holding the private wealth of the world’s most powerful families.
Julian killed the vehicle's sirens as they approached the underground delivery entrance. He rammed the heavy steel gate at sixty miles per hour. The reinforced barrier groaned, hinges tearing from the concrete pillars with a shriek of bending metal, and the SUV smashed into the subterranean staging bay, sending security personnel scrambling for cover amidst spinning lights and deafening intrusion alarms.
