Chapter 5 - Fire in the Server Room
The concussive blast wave rolled across the manicured lawn, carrying the acrid stench of melted silicon and burning insulation straight toward the front gate where the family and the federal agents stood frozen in shock.
"What the hell was that?" Agent Miller shouted over the sudden wail of the estate's internal fire alarms, drawing his sidearm fully and pointing it toward the billowing black smoke pouring from the second-floor windows of the study.
"The automated shredder script, it must have triggered a thermal overload in the main server rack!" Eleanor screamed, covering her face with her hands as a shower of burning paper embers drifted down through the crisp morning air like dark snow.
"Richard, you absolute idiot, you set the failsafe protocol to incinerate the physical drives if anyone tampered with the local node!" Miller snarled, grabbing Richard by the lapels of his light blue shirt and slamming him against the brick pillar of the gate.
"I didn't program that sequence, Marcus did! He built the security architecture three years ago and locked me out of the admin panel!" Richard choked out, gasping for breath as the agent's grip tightened around his throat.
"Sir! I found the card!" the technician yelled from the drainage ditch, holding up a tiny black square of plastic between his thumb and forefinger, covered in slimy black mud. "It's intact, but the outer casing is cracked!"
"Give me that!" Miller barked, releasing Richard and spinning around to snatch the SD card from the technician's gloved hand, holding it up to the morning light to inspect the damaged plastic housing.
"You can have the card, but it won't work," Leo called out from behind the iron bars, a strange, calm certainty settling over his tear-stained face as he watched the smoke rise from the burning house.
"Why wouldn't it work, kid?" Miller asked, turning his fierce gaze down upon the eight-year-old boy. "We have military-grade data recovery labs that can pull files off a melted hard drive."
"Because the password isn't on the card," Leo said softly, a ghost of a smile touching the corners of his mouth. "Uncle Marcus told me the password is a song, and he only taught the words to me."
"What song, Leo?" Richard pleaded, dropping back to his knees in the mud, his previous corporate arrogance completely burned away by the rising flames behind them. "What song did he teach you?"
"The one you used to sing to us before you started locking doors," Leo whispered, turning his back on his parents and walking slowly away from the iron gate toward the deep woods at the edge of the property, leaving the adults standing in stunned silence as the sirens of the approaching fire trucks wailed in the distance.
Miller looked from the vanishing boy to the burning house, then down at the cracked SD card in his palm, realizing with a cold jolt that the key to the entire multi-million dollar conspiracy was walking away into the trees with an eight-year-old child who held all the cards.
"After him," Miller commanded his men, pointing toward the tree line where Leo's small gray t-shirt was already disappearing into the deep green shadows. "And bring him back before he reaches the main highway."
May you like
Richard scrambled to his feet, ignoring his weeping wife, and sprinted blindly into the dense underbrush after his son, crashing through the brambles as the forest swallowed them both in a suffocating embrace of pine needles and damp earth.
---
