Chapter 9: Breaking the Perimeter
Ten minutes had passed since Miller disappeared into the treeline. The minutes dragged like hours as Elena watched the distant guard booth through the side mirror. The patrol vehicle—a white pickup truck with company logos scrubbed from the doors—pulled away from the main building and began its slow, methodical loop toward the western fence line.
This was her window.
Elena turned off the SUV engine, killing the headlights completely. She slipped out of the vehicle, keeping low behind the tall grass as she jogged parallel to the perimeter fence. Her running shoes crunched softly on the dry twigs, the sound magnified a hundred times in her own ears.
She reached the drainage culvert Miller had mentioned—a concrete pipe about four feet in diameter, partially choked with dry reeds and mud. Without hesitating, she ducked her head, dropped to her hands and knees, and crawled into the dark, damp interior of the pipe. The air smelled of stagnant water and rust.
Crawling fifty yards through the culvert felt like navigating a subterranean maze, but as she emerged at the far end, she found herself in the subterranean utility basement of the main administration building. Dim emergency lights flickered overhead, casting long, erratic shadows across exposed copper pipes and concrete support pillars.
A set of steel maintenance stairs led upward toward the ground floor. Elena climbed them slowly, her heart pounding against her ribs like a trapped bird.
When she pushed open the heavy fire door at the top of the stairs, she stepped out into a cavernous open-plan office space. Desks were piled high with discarded cardboard boxes, shredded documents, and overturned swivel chairs. In the center of the room, a light shone from an enclosed glass conference office.
Voices echoed softly through the quiet room.
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"I told you to wire the remaining funds to the Cayman account before noon," a sharp, unfamiliar male voice demanded—a voice dripping with cold corporate authority. That had to be Marcus Vance.
"The transfer is blocked until the primary server syncs," Clara’s voice replied, sounding distinctly more anxious than she had at the bus station. "We need David’s biometric authorization to override the firewall."
