Chapter 5 - Whispers in the Boardroom
"Julian," I said, stepping between him and the girls, my body shielding Sophie and Maya entirely. My hand hovered near my coat, though I had no weapon. My mind, usually calculated and analytical, was racing at light speed, evaluating angles, distances, and cover.
"Don't do anything dramatic, Daniel," Julian sighed, raising the pistol just an inch, the black muzzle pointing directly at my sternum. "I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours cleaning up the mess you created by dragging this stray into the light." He flicked his cold, predatory eyes toward Maya. "I told Elena that taking foster children under her wing was a dangerous sentimental indulgence. She was a brilliant quantitative mind, but she lacked the stomach for governance."
"You murdered her," I said, every word tasting like ash in my mouth. "You cut the lines on her car. You murdered the mother of my child."
Julian’s face didn't register a flicker of guilt. Only mild, aristocratic irritation.
"Elena discovered that our automated arbitrage algorithms were siphoning capital from the municipal pension funds before the state executed its debt restructuring. It was a four-billion-dollar play, Daniel. It secured Harrison Global’s liquidity for the next thirty years. She wanted to walk into the federal prosecutor’s office with a flash drive and destroy everything we spent a decade building."
"It was theft, Julian! It was treason!"
"It was finance!" Julian snapped, his voice rising, revealing the psychotic arrogance beneath his polished facade. "The world doesn't run on your pathetic moral architecture, Daniel! It runs on leverage! Elena couldn't understand that. She thought math was poetry. I taught her that math is a weapon."
Behind me, Maya took a slow, silent step to the left, positioning herself behind the heavy steel bumper of a city sanitation truck. Her hand reached down into the pocket of her coat.
"And you," Julian said, turning his gaze toward Maya. "The little gutter rat who thought she could hide what belongs to me. Where is the drive, Maya? Tell me, and I’ll ensure you and the child have a very comfortable, very permanent home in a private facility in Switzerland. Force me to ask again, and I’ll bury you both in the foundation of the new tower on Wacker Drive."
"The drive isn't in Switzerland," Maya said. Her voice didn't waver. It was astonishingly, terrifyingly steady. "And it isn't in the rail depot either."
Julian smiled thinly. "A bluff. You’re sixteen. You’re terrified."
"I survived three years on the South Side while you were sipping scotch at the Chicago Club," Maya said, taking another half-step, her eyes darting to the ceiling above Julian’s head. "You think you understand systems, Mr. Vance? You don't know shit about systems."
"Is that so?" Julian sneered, leveling the pistol at her head.
"You forgot about the fire suppression system in Sub-Basement 3," Maya said coldly. "Elena told me about it. High-pressure halon gas. Triggered by heat... or an open circuit."
Before Julian could process her words, Maya whipped her arm out from her coat.
She didn't have a weapon. She had a six-inch industrial flare she had snatched from the emergency kit inside the freight elevator.
She struck the striker cap against the concrete floor.
A blinding, roaring gout of magnesium-white fire erupted in the dark garage, illuminating the shadows with terrifying brilliance. Julian flinched, shielding his eyes from the blinding glare.
Maya didn't throw the flare at Julian. She threw it straight up, into the exposed sensor cluster of the industrial fire-suppression intake vent directly above his head.
The system reacted instantly.
A deafening klaxon wailed through the garage, and an explosive, pressurized cloud of white chemical fire-retardant and freezing halon gas blasted from the overhead nozzles directly onto Julian, knocking him to his knees, blinding him, and choking the air from his lungs.
Julian screamed, firing blindly into the fog, the suppressed gunshots *chuffing* harmlessly into the ceiling concrete.
"RUN!" I roared.
I scooped Sophie into one arm, grabbed Maya by the collar of her oversized sweater with the other, and hurled them into the back of the armored Suburban. I threw myself into the driver’s seat, slammed the ignition button, and floored the accelerator.
May you like
The twin-turbo V8 roared to life. The heavy armored truck tore across the concrete, smashing through the wooden security barrier, and exploded out of the underground ramp into the rain-slicked, neon-lit labyrinth of downtown Chicago.
***
