Chapter 7 - The Cornered Rats
The Fort Worth facility was a nondescript, windowless brick building situated in an industrial park near the airport. It housed the secondary data backups for Hale Construction—every contract, internal email, and financial transfer from the last fifteen years was stored on the dark blue server racks inside.
When I arrived at 9:15 p.m., the heavy steel security door at the back of the building was slightly ajar. A sleek silver sedan sat in the parking lot with its engine idling.
I checked my phone. Detective Miller was ten minutes away.
I couldn't wait ten minutes. If Vivian initiated a hard magnetic wipe on the primary servers, months of electronic evidence would be permanently lost.
I slipped through the back door, my heels making no sound on the industrial concrete floor. The air inside was cold, humming with the loud, constant whir of cooling fans.
Down the main hallway, lights were flickered on inside the server control room.
I reached the doorway and stepped quietly into the room.
Marcus stood at a master console, franticly typing commands into a terminal keyboard while sweat poured down his face. Beside him, Vivian was dumping physical paper files into a metal trash can, spraying them with lighter fluid.
"It’s taking too long!" Vivian hissed, her voice frantic and pitched high with hysteria. "Just trigger the emergency wipe!"
"I'm trying!" Marcus yelled back, his fingers flying across the keys. "The system is asking for a double-administrator override key! The old man changed the encryption passwords before his accident!"
"He didn't change them, Marcus," I said softly from the doorway.
Vivian gasped, spinning around so fast she dropped her lighter onto the concrete floor. Marcus snapped his head toward me, his eyes bloodshot and wild.
"You," Vivian choked out, her face twisting into a terrifying mask of rage. "You just won't die, will you?!"
"The override key was encrypted using my mother’s maiden name," I explained, stepping slowly into the room, keeping my hands visible. "My father set up these servers ten years ago to protect the company from corporate espionage. He knew that if anyone ever tried to wipe this system, they would need the one piece of information you never bothered to learn about him."
Marcus abandoned the keyboard and pulled a heavy metal crowbar from the maintenance bench beside him. His breathing was ragged, his knuckles white around the iron bar.
"Give us the password, Izzy," Marcus growled, taking a threatening step toward me. "Give us the password right now, or I swear to God I’ll smash your head against this concrete floor."
May you like
"Marcus, don't," I said, maintaining absolute stillness. "Look at yourself. You're holding a weapon in a server farm. The police are outside."
"They're not outside yet!" Vivian shrieked, picking up the bottle of lighter fluid. "Give us the password, Isabella! Give it to us, or we burn this entire room to the ground with you inside it!"
