Chapter 4 - Whispers in the Basement Dark
"He said that if you ever tried to sell the house to the men from the bank, I had to press the power button on your office computer three times while holding the emergency backup drive," Leo recited in a dull, mechanical monotone, his eyes fixed on the distant line of trees at the edge of the property.
"Richard, what is he talking about? What backup drive?" Eleanor demanded, spinning around to face her husband with absolute panic etched into every line of her face. "Did Marcus set up a dead-man's switch on the main corporate server?"
"He didn't just set up a switch, Eleanor, he mirrored the entire hard drive to an off-site cloud vault that activates automatically if the local node goes offline for more than twenty-four hours," Richard ground out between clenched teeth, his hands clawing at his short dark hair in sheer desperation.
"And the twenty-four-hour timer runs out at midnight tonight, doesn't it, Mr. Vance?" Agent Miller asked smoothly, stepping closer and leaning down to meet the boy's eye level. "Which means if we don't recover that SD card and the decryption phrase from your son right now, every single transaction your foundation made over the last ten years goes public to every news outlet in the country."
"We need to get him inside the house, away from these agents, and talk to him like a family," Eleanor said, her voice dropping into a desperate, cajoling purr as she reached through the iron bars again, this time trying to stroke Leo's wet messy brown hair.
"Don't touch me!" Leo flinched violently away from her hand, pressing his back harder against the cold metal bars until they left red impressions on his thin shoulders. "You locked Uncle Marcus in the dark room for three days without water just because he wanted to give the money back to the people who lost their homes!"
"That is a vicious lie fabricated by a mentally unstable man who wanted to ruin our lives!" Eleanor screamed, losing her temper completely as her face contorted in rage before she caught herself and looked nervously at Agent Miller.
"Mentally unstable people don't usually leave encrypted backup drives buried in children's toys with multi-factor authentication keys," Miller observed dryly, signaling to one of the technicians who was now walking up the drive carrying a specialized electronic scanning wand.
"You're not taking my son anywhere without a child welfare worker present, Miller, I know my rights under state family law," Richard snapped, stepping physically between the federal agent and the gate.
"State law doesn't apply when a minor is material witness to an act of corporate terrorism, Mr. Vance," Miller replied without breaking his stride, gesturing for the technician to sweep the drainage ditch area where the SD card had landed.
The technician clicked on the handheld wand, and within seconds, a high-pitched electronic beep began to emanate from the device, growing faster and louder as the wand passed over a clump of wet weeds near the mouth of the concrete culvert.
"Sir, I'm getting a high-density silicon reading right here in the silt," the technician called out, kneeling down in the mud and pulling a pair of heavy-duty rubber gloves from his pocket.
"Dig it out, carefully, we cannot afford to corrupt the sector headers on that card or the decryption sequence will lock permanently," Miller ordered, watching intently as the technician began sifting through the dark, foul-smelling sludge at the bottom of the drain.
Leo watched the technician's gloved fingers disappear into the murky water, his small heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird, knowing that if they pulled that card out, his father's empire—and his family—would crumble into absolute dust.
"Dad, please just tell them the truth," Leo whispered softly, his lower lip trembling as he looked up at Richard one last time. "Tell them where the rest of the money went."
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Richard opened his mouth to speak, but before a single word could escape his lips, a deafening explosion echoed from the back of the estate as the primary server room windows blew outward in a shower of flying glass and black smoke.
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