CHAPTER 5 — FOUR MINUTES TO SAVE A DEAD MAN
“Copy everything,” Adrian ordered.
Luis plugged a drive into the computer.
“Three minutes forty seconds.”
Milo pointed at the control panel.
“The system is connected to the garage network.”
Adrian looked at him.
“You understand this?”
“My dad taught me how control modules talk to each other.”
The boy crawled beneath the desk and pulled open a wire channel.
“Red line sends the command. Black line sends the confirmation.”
“Can you stop it?”
Milo’s breathing quickened.
“I think so.”
Adrian crouched beside him.
“Don’t guess.”
Milo looked straight into his eyes.
“My dad is in that storage unit.”
Adrian handed him a pair of insulated cutters.
“Then bring him home.”
Luis fought the data purge while Milo traced the wires.
“Two minutes.”
Milo found three red cables.
“Which one?” Adrian asked.
“The real one is warm.”
He pressed his fingers against each cable.
The first was cold.
The second was cold.
The third felt warm.
Milo cut it.
The countdown froze at one minute and twelve seconds.
For half a second, no one moved.
Then the monitors went black.
“Did it work?” Luis asked.
A small green light blinked under the desk.
Milo nodded.
“The signal never went out.”
Adrian exhaled.
Luis removed the drive.
“I saved about seventy percent of the files.”
“Enough to bury them?”
“Enough to start digging.”
Adrian checked his watch.
The board meeting would begin in twenty minutes.
Marcus expected him to be dead by now.
Celeste expected to inherit his voting power.
Neither knew Adrian had survived.
That gave him one advantage.
“Luis, take Milo to Harbor Storage. Use the service roads. Find Jonah.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I have a meeting.”
Milo grabbed Adrian’s sleeve.
“They tried to kill you.”
“And now they think they succeeded.”
Adrian knelt.
“Listen to Luis. Stay close to him.”
Milo’s eyes filled with fear.
“What if my dad isn’t there?”
“Then we keep looking.”
Adrian rose and headed toward the door.
His phone buzzed with a breaking-news alert.
BILLIONAIRE ADRIAN VALE FEARED DEAD AFTER VEHICLE EXPLOSION
Below the headline was a photograph of his sedan burning beside a stone wall.
Adrian stared at the image.
The car had not exploded when Grant crashed it.
Someone had ignited it remotely afterward.
Marcus and Celeste were already selling the lie.
Then another alert appeared.
VALE DYNAMICS BOARD TO PROCEED WITH EMERGENCY SUCCESSION VOTE
Adrian buttoned his jacket.
May you like
“Let them start.”
Because in less than twenty minutes, a dead man was going to walk into that boardroom.
