Chapter 47 - The Setup
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I stared at the silver keycard resting on the polished wood of Evelyn’s desk. It was the only thing standing between my family’s absolute safety and total annihilation.
"Where is the meeting?" I asked, my voice devoid of any emotion.
Evelyn smiled, clearly enjoying the absolute power she held in the room. "There is an abandoned, half-constructed high-rise on 4th and Elm. The developers went bankrupt last year. Marcus owns the holding company. He is waiting for you on the top floor. Alone."
"If he's alone, he's a fool," Julian scoffed.
"Marcus Thorne is never a fool," Evelyn corrected sharply. "He wants the decryption password for the Zurich Ledger. You are the only living soul who has it memorized. He knows you won't give it up if he sends foot soldiers. He wants a gentleman's conversation."
I reached out and snatched the silver keycard from the desk, sliding it into my jacket pocket.
"If anything happens to my wife or my son while I'm gone, Evelyn," I whispered, leaning incredibly close to her face, "I won't rely on the justice system. I will come back here and I will burn this office to the ground with you inside it."
Evelyn didn't flinch. She simply took another sip of her smoothie. "Good luck, David. Try not to bleed on the unfinished concrete."
Julian and I walked out of the towering law firm and back into the cold morning air.
"This is a suicide mission," Julian said as we got back into the minivan. "You walk into that high-rise, and you aren't walking back out. Even if you give him the password, he has no reason to let you live."
"I know," I agreed, staring blankly at the bustling city street.
"So what the hell is the plan?" Julian demanded, slamming his hands on the steering wheel.
I unzipped my heavy jacket and pulled out a small, black electronic device. It wasn't a weapon. It was a localized, high-frequency signal jammer, coupled with a dead man's switch.
"I didn't just bury the ledger in a vault," I confessed, looking Julian in the eye. "I set up a dead man's switch on a highly secure, dark-web server. If I don't input a specific, randomized alphanumeric code every twelve hours, the server automatically decrypts the Zurich Ledger and emails the entire unredacted file to the top fifty investigative journalists in the world."
Julian stared at me, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face.
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"You brilliant, paranoid bastard," Julian laughed softly.
"Thorne thinks he holds all the cards," I said, loading a fresh magazine into my firearm. "But he’s about to realize I rigged the entire deck. Let's go to 4th and Elm."
