Chapter 40 - the lock that answered
"Stand back from the door!" I roared, wedging the wrench deeper into the loop and levering my entire body against it until the cast-iron pipe shuddered in its brackets.
With a deafening crack, the mounting bolts on the wall sheared off. The chain slipped loose, rattling down against the concrete floor like loose bones.
I shoved the heavy iron door open.
A blast of stale, humid air hit my face, smelling of rust, wet coal, and ozone. Ahead of me lay a narrow concrete staircase leading down into absolute blackness. The overhead bulb was shattered, shards of glass glittering on the steps.
I pulled out my phone, switched on the flashlight, and hurried down.
"Lily!"
At the bottom of the stairs was a long, low-ceilinged corridor lined with insulated steam pipes that hissed softly in the dark. At the far end, behind a wire-mesh security partition, stood a figure.
It wasn't Evelyn Cross.
It was a man wearing a dark rain jacket, his hood pulled low over his forehead. He had his back turned to me, his hands busy working on the control panel of an industrial emergency vault door.
Sitting on a wooden crate behind the mesh, her wrists bound with heavy plastic zip-ties, was Lily. Her face was pale, a dark bruise swelling along her cheekbone, but her eyes were wide and focused on me.
"Dad, look out!" she screamed.
The man turned around slowly.
The beam of my flashlight hit his face. He was in his mid-fifties, sharp-featured, with cold gray eyes and a jagged scar running along the edge of his jawline where Officer Davis’s baton had broken his jaw seven years ago.
It wasn't a stranger. It wasn't an anonymous accomplice.
It was Julian.
He looked at me with a calm, mocking smile, lifting his right hand to show the electronic transponder in his palm. On his left ankle, the black casing of a cut court-ordered GPS monitor hung loosely, held together with electrical tape.
"You took twelve minutes longer than I calculated, David," Julian said softly, his voice as smooth and steady as it had been when he sat at my dinner table.
"You're supposed to be in Cumberland," I said, my voice shaking with rage as I raised the wrench.
"The state has so many administrative loopholes if you know whose debts to pay," Julian replied, tilting his head toward the iron vault door behind him. "And speaking of debts—the trust fund deadline expires in twenty-two minutes. If Lily doesn't execute the physical biometric scan at the Wilmington branch terminal inside this vault before 2:00 AM, the assets liquidate directly into the offshore escrow account I established before my arrest."
"You're not leaving this room," I said, stepping forward.
Julian didn't flinch. Instead, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, black remote trigger.
Behind me, at the top of the stairs, the heavy service door slammed shut with a sickening, final thud.
The sharp click of an automated electronic mag-lock echoed through the corridor.
May you like
Then, through the darkness of the ceiling grates above us, came the low, rhythmic ticking of an auxiliary relay switch, and Julian’s smile widened until his teeth shone in the light.
"Neither are you," he whispered.
