Chapter 5 - The Encryption Key
The office was spotless. Books were arranged alphabetically on the built-in shelves, and the large mahogany desk was completely devoid of clutter.
Emma walked straight to the wall behind the desk, where a large oil painting of a sailboat in a stormy harbor hung in a gilded frame. She swung the painting forward on its hidden hinges, revealing the heavy steel digital safe built into the wall stud.
Beside the safe sat Grant's velvet-lined watch box.
Emma opened the glass lid of the box, lifting out Grant's favorite gold chronograph watch. Nestled underneath the black velvet cushion was a dark blue, encrypted security key card bearing the Sentinel Systems corporate logo.
She grabbed the key card, her heart pounding against her ribs.
Next, she pulled Nolan’s encrypted USB flash drive from her coat pocket. She sat down at Grant's desktop terminal, waking the screen.
ENTER ADMINISTRATOR PASSWORD.
Emma took a deep breath. Grant was a man of strict routine, but he was also deeply arrogant. He believed no one in his house possessed the technical intelligence to bypass his security.
She typed in his master corporate passphrase—a string of numbers representing his date of hire followed by his favorite classical composer: 041215MOZART.
ACCESS GRANTED.
Emma quickly inserted Nolan’s USB drive into the high-speed port and swiped the blue security key card through the external reader beside the monitor.
The screen flashed bright green, and a cascade of encrypted code began to stream down the display at terrifying speed.
DECRYPTING AUDIT LOGS...
FILE RECOVERED: SENTINEL_KILLSWITCH_PROTOCOL.EXE
FILE RECOVERED: MARSH_FINANCIAL_TRANSFERS.PDF
FILE RECOVERED: REEVES_TERMINATION_PLAN.DOCX
Emma's eyes widened as she opened the financial transfer document. It detailed a series of offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands held jointly by Grant Whitaker and Dr. Celia Marsh. Over the past eighteen months, over twelve million dollars had been funneled into these accounts from untraceable foreign medical hardware vendors.
They weren't just planning to blackmail the hospital system. They were actively preparing to sell the remote access codes to an international cyber-crime syndicate.
Emma pulled up the upload interface, attaching all the decrypted files to an email addressed directly to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cyber Crime Division in Washington, D.C., as well as the State Attorney General’s private task force.
She hovered her mouse over the SEND button.
Suddenly, her cell phone buzzed on the desk.
It was an unknown number.
Emma picked it up, her hand trembling. "Hello?"
"Emma," Nolan’s voice came through the speaker, low and urgent. "You need to leave the house immediately."
"Nolan? What happened? I have the files! I'm ready to send them to the FBI!"
"It's a trap, Emma," Nolan rasped, his voice filled with dread. "I just accessed the hospital's internal security logs from this basement terminal. Grant didn't just order the cremation. He knew the weight on the bier was wrong."
Emma felt a wave of ice freeze the blood in her veins. "What?"
"The crematorium's automated intake system flagged the discrepancy twenty minutes ago," Nolan explained frantically. "Grant already knows the coffin contained sandbags, not my body. He knows someone in the morgue helped me!"
Before Emma could respond, she heard the heavy sound of a car door slamming shut outside in the driveway.
She tiptoed to the office window, pulling back the sheer white curtain.
May you like
Grant’s black sedan was parked right behind her car, blocking the driveway.
Grant stepped out of the driver's seat, holding a heavy iron tire iron in his leather-gloved hand, a terrifying, violent expression carved onto his face.
