Chapter 4 - The First Class Trap
Ten thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, Mark Vance reclined in his first-class leather seat, sipping a glass of vintage Dom Pérignon.
Beside him, Evelyn adjusted her silk eye mask, a smug, satisfied smile resting on her face. Across the aisle, Mark's eight-year-old daughter from his first marriage, Chloe, was glued to an iPad screen.
"Do you think she’s found the note yet?" Evelyn asked softly, not bothering to lift her mask.
"She’s probably still begging the front desk to let her use the Wi-Fi," Mark sneered, taking a sip of his champagne. "She has no money, no phone, no papers. She’ll have to go to the embassy, cry to some low-level clerk, and figure out how to get a deportation loan. It’ll take her weeks."
"Good," Evelyn snapped. "She was getting too comfortable, Mark. Asking questions about the monthly trust disbursements, looking over your shoulder while you were working. A girl from an orphanage shouldn't be poking her nose into family wealth. You belong with someone from our circle, like Victoria."
Mark nodded, feeling a wave of relief. He had felt trapped by Sienna's quiet, observing eyes lately. Every time he brought home work, she looked at his spreadsheets with a weird, knowing look that made him feel small. Taking her phone and passport had been Evelyn’s idea, but executing it had felt powerful. He had asserted dominance over a woman who had nowhere else to turn.
He reached into his leather briefcase, pulling out the sleek, silver USB drive he had grabbed off Sienna’s desk before they snuck out of the hotel suite at 4:00 a.m.
"What's that?" Evelyn asked, peeking under her mask.
"Her personal backup drive," Mark chuckled. "I took it so she couldn't access backup copies of her birth certificate or old bank accounts. I’m going to plug it into my laptop, clear it out, and use it for work."
He opened his high-end MacBook Pro, slid the silver drive into the USB-C port, and hit enter.
The screen didn't load a file folder.
Instead, the MacBook's screen flashed bright red. A heavy system beep echoed from the laptop speakers, drawing annoyed looks from the other first-class passengers.
"What is that?" Evelyn frowned.
"I don't know," Mark muttered, tapping the trackpad frantically. The cursor was frozen. A series of black command lines began executing at lightning speed across his screen, wiping his local hard drive in real-time.
"Warning," a automated mechanical voice spoke quietly from the computer. "Unauthorized decryption breach detected. Asset location pinged. Countermeasure protocol active."
"What the hell?" Mark gasped, trying to force-restart the computer by holding down the power button. Nothing happened. The screen flickered, showing a glowing logo of a silver eagle over a digital shield—the official seal of the US Cyber Security Task Force.
Below the seal, a single line of text appeared:
PROPERTY OF SIENNA BLAKE. UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE. PREPARE FOR ESCORT UPON LANDING.
Mark’s face drained of all color. The glass of champagne in his hand began to shake.
"Mark?" Evelyn asked, her voice tight with sudden anxiety. "What does that mean? Who is Sienna Blake?"
"That's her maiden name," Mark stammered, his pulse hammering in his ears. "She... she told me she was a retired data analyst for a logistics company."
"Is it a virus?" Evelyn demanded, her voice rising. "Fix it!"
Mark pulled the drive out frantically, but the laptop was already dead, its internal hardware permanently fried by the high-voltage defense payload built into the drive.
At that exact moment, the inflight Wi-Fi screen on his phone—which he had kept in flight mode—lighted up with a cascade of incoming emergency alerts that had managed to bypass the satellite filter.
ALERT: Vance Capital portfolio degraded by 42%. ALERT: Foreclosure notice filed on Beacon Hill Trust. ALERT: Warrants issued for asset seizure.
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Mark stared at his phone, his throat dry, his hands trembling violently.
Five thousand miles behind them, in a private jet currently taking off from Bangkok, Sienna Blake was sitting back in a leather seat, sipping tea, and watching his world fall apart in real-time.
