Chapter 6 - The Federal Wire
The brass handle of the cloakroom door jiggled violently as the master key attempted to force the deadbolt from the outside. Daniel acted on pure instinct. He reached into his inner tuxedo pocket, pulled out the sleek, unbranded second phone, and pressed it into Victoria’s trembling palm.
“If this is another trap, Victoria, I swear I’ll let Henderson take you,” Daniel whispered fiercely, his eyes locked onto hers.
“It’s not,” she breathed, her thumbs flying across the glass screen in a blur of coded inputs.
She tapped a hidden icon, and a green indicator light blinked furiously at the top of the display. She held the phone to her ear, pressing the speaker button just low enough so only Daniel could hear the static-laced dial tone. After three agonizing rings, a clipped, professional voice answered on the other end.
“Task Force Delta. State your authorization code.”
Victoria pressed her mouth close to the receiver. “This is Agent Vance, undercover asset Vanguard-Four. Operation wedding interference has been compromised. Target location St. Clair Hotel, basement level exit corridor. We have a hostile takeover in progress by Arthur Sterling’s syndicate.”
The voice on the other end paused for a fraction of a second before responding with crisp urgency.
“Copy that, Vanguard-Four. We have tactical units positioned three blocks away. Stand by for breach.”
The line went dead with a sharp click. Victoria lowered the phone, exhaling a long, shuddering breath as she looked up at Daniel. The heavy wooden door shuddered under a massive physical blow from the hallway. Someone was trying to ram it open.
“They’re coming,” Daniel said, grabbing a heavy wooden coat rack from the corner and positioning it wedge-style beneath the brass doorknob.
“We need to get to the laundry chute behind the linen closet,” Victoria said, pulling up the heavy lace hem of her wedding dress and tying it hastily into a knot around her waist to ease her movement. “It drops straight down into the hotel’s subterranean service tunnels. It’s our only way out before Henderson breaches this room.”
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Daniel nodded, assessing the structural layout of the cloakroom. A small utility access panel was hidden behind a velvet curtain on the far wall. Without hesitation, Daniel drove his heel into the wooden panel, splintering the latch and revealing a dark, echoing vertical shaft.
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