Chapter 10
Before Valeria could utter a single word into the receiver, the elevator doors slammed shut with a sickening, mechanical finality. The safety sensors she had manually triggered moments before were completely overridden as the car lurched upward with sudden, violent velocity, carrying the explosive device straight toward her third-floor apartment.
“Miller!” Valeria screamed over the sound of grinding cables and screeching metal.
“Stay back!” Miller bellowed, drawing a heavy-duty tactical flashlight from his belt with his left hand while reaching for his sidearm with his right. The emergency backup generator kicked in a fraction of a second later, flooding the pitch-black lobby with a harsh, sickly amber glow from the overhead fire safety strips.
Miller sprinted toward the stairwell door located directly beside the elevator shaft, throwing his shoulder against the heavy metal latch with brute force. The door banged open against the concrete interior wall.
“Follow me, Miss Sterling! Do not stop running!” Miller ordered, his military training taking over completely.
Valeria didn’t hesitate. She abandoned her designer handbag on the marble floor, lifted the hem of her maroon sleeveless dress—wait, no, she was wearing her white blazer over her green top and tailored trousers today—and dashed after the security guard into the concrete stairwell. The echoes of their footsteps ricocheted off the cinderblock walls like rapid-fire gunshots as they climbed upward toward the third floor.
Every muscle in her legs burned, but adrenaline kept her moving. The elevator had already reached the third floor; she could hear the metallic chime ringing faintly through the concrete walls just above them, followed by a dull, muffled thud as the car doors opened into her private landing.
Miller reached the third-floor landing first, drawing his firearm and throwing his body flat against the reinforced drywall beside the heavy fire door. He used his elbow to push the door open just enough to peer out into the residential hallway.
The third-floor hallway was dead silent. The emergency lights here were flickering erratically, casting long, dancing shadows across the patterned runner rug. At the end of the corridor, directly in front of the double oak doors of Valeria’s apartment, a small, glowing red light blinked rhythmically from the handle of the light grey designer handbag that had somehow been transported up the elevator shaft without a human hand touching it.
“Clear,” Miller muttered under his breath, stepping out into the hallway with his weapon raised, his eyes scanning every dark corner. He motioned for Valeria to stay back behind the heavy fire door.
Valeria stepped out anyway, her chest heaving as she caught her breath. Her eyes locked onto the light grey designer handbag resting right on her welcome mat. The thermal trigger on the bag was pulsing faster now, shifting from a slow amber blink to a rapid, urgent crimson strobe.
“Miller, the thermal trigger… it’s speeding up,” Valeria warned, her voice tight with terror.
Miller approached the bag cautiously, kneeling down on one knee while keeping his flashlight trained on the zipper seam. He pulled a small diagnostic scanner from his utility belt, pressing its magnetic base against the side of the handbag to read the encrypted frequency.
“It’s not a bomb, Miss Sterling,” Miller said, his brow furrowing in intense concentration as the scanner screen flickered with green data text. “It’s a localized data-siphon beacon. It’s actively copying the hard-drive contents of every connected smart device inside your apartment over a closed-circuit Wi-Fi bridge.”
Valeria froze. Her apartment contained her home office workstation, where she had been reviewing the unredacted digital ledgers of Sterling Development’s historical foundation assets—the very documents Harrison Thorne needed to legally invalidate her father’s land patents.
“They’re downloading the land patent archives right now,” Valeria realized, horror washing over her.
“Not if we cut the main breaker,” Miller stated decisively, rising to his feet. He sprinted toward the utility closet located beside her front door, using a master key to pop the padlock.
He ripped open the electrical panel box, his fingers gripping the heavy master circuit lever to plunge the entire apartment into total digital darkness.
Before his hand could pull the switch down, the heavy oak door of Valeria’s apartment swung inward with a slow, agonizing squeak, revealing a tall, imposing figure standing in the pitch-black foyer holding a silver flash drive in his outstretched hand.
May you like
It was Harrison Thorne himself.
***
