Chapter 11
Elena moved swiftly back through the yards, keeping to the shadows until she reached her own driveway. Her vehicle—a reliable gray sedan—was parked safely inside the locked detached garage. She unlocked the side service door, slipped inside the dark interior, and punched the garage door opener. The metal door rose with a low, mechanical rumble that sounded deafening in the quiet night.
She slid into the driver's seat, started the engine, and backed smoothly out into the driveway, closing the garage door behind her before heading down Maple Lane toward Fourth Street. The old municipal substation sat on the industrial edge of town, a derelict concrete-block building surrounded by a high chain-link fence topped with rusted barbed wire. It had been decommissioned by the city years ago, but underground utility vaults beneath the structure still connected directly to the county’s primary fiber-optic trunk lines.
As she approached the desolate location, Elena turned off her headlights, letting the pale moonlight guide her vehicle along the unpaved access road. She parked a hundred yards away behind a dense thicket of overgrown pine trees, cutting the engine and rolling her window down an inch to listen.
The substation was bathed in an eerie amber glow from a single flickering security light above the rusted metal entry door. Parked right beside the loading bay was the same black sedan with tinted windows that had visited Arthur's house earlier that day.
Elena grabbed her industrial flashlight, slipped her phone into her coat pocket, and stepped out into the biting wind. She moved with deliberate caution, keeping low against the corrugated metal siding of the warehouse until she reached the side personnel door. It was unlocked, left ajar by an inch, emitting a faint hum of heavy electrical transformers operating far below ground level.
She pushed the heavy door open just enough to slip inside. The interior was a cavernous, dusty industrial shell filled with discarded piping and defunct control panels. In the center of the room, a rusted steel staircase descended into the subterranean utility vaults below.
From down the stairwell came the sound of raised voices—one of them sharp and demanding, the other strained, raspy, and immediately recognizable.
"I told you, I don't have the encryption keys," Marcus gasped, his voice tight with pain. "They're on Elena’s server. Not mine."
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"Then we'll pay Mrs. Vance another visit as soon as we finish with you," the suit replied coldly. "Unless you cooperate right now."
Elena gripped the heavy flashlight in her right hand, checked the charge on her phone, and began descending the iron stairs into the dark vault below.
