Chapter 12 - The Chief Engineer
Z
I leaned toward the microphone on my desk, my fingers gripping the edge of the mahogany wood so hard my knuckles turned white. “Vance... you were my father’s best friend. He trusted you with his life.”
“And that was his fatal mistake,” Vance replied through the speaker, a bitter, twisted smile touching his lips on the screen. “Arthur was a visionary, but he was stubbornly righteous. When he discovered the steel substitutions on Project Ironclad, he was going to turn us all in. He didn't care that it would ruin the company. He didn't care that it would destroy my career.”
“It was Richard Sterling’s scheme, wasn't it?” I demanded, keeping my voice as steady as possible while slyly pressing the silent emergency alert on my phone under the desk to ping Lena. “You helped Richard and Judith launder the money through the steel suppliers.”
“Richard was the brain, Judith was the facilitator, and Blake was the useful idiot,” Vance scoffed, pacing in front of the massive concrete pillars of the courthouse basement. “But I was the one who made it physically possible. I signed off on the forged metallurgical reports. I guaranteed the inspectors looked the other way. And when your father caught on, I was the one who provided Judith with the pharmaceutical-grade digitalis.”
A wave of nausea washed over me. The man who had sat at my father’s funeral, who had squeezed my hand and promised to help me protect his legacy, was the true executor of his murder.
“Why reveal yourself now, Vance?” I asked, fighting to keep him talking while tracking Lena’s location on my phone screen—her GPS dot was already moving rapidly toward Caldwell headquarters.
“Because you’re making too much noise with your little redemption crusade,” Vance sneered. “You think you’ve cleaned up Caldwell Restoration, but if I release these metallurgical reports to the Department of Justice tomorrow morning, the city will condemn the courthouse, arrest you as the current CEO, and sue Caldwell into total liquidation. The company will cease to exist by noon.”
“What do you want?” I snapped.
“Fifty million dollars transferred from Caldwell’s offshore reserve accounts into a private trust in Dubai by 2:00 a.m.,” Vance stated coldly. “Along with the original physical ledgers your father hid in the mountain safe. Once the money and ledgers are in my hands, the real blueprints vanish forever, and Project Ironclad remains buried.”
“I don't have fifty million in reserves!” I argued, trying to buy time.
“Don't play games with me, Erin!” Vance shouted, stepping closer to the camera. “I know about the private trust fund your father set up for you. You have two hours. Bring the hard drive and the physical ledgers to the lower level of the Project Ironclad site—alone. If I see a single police officer, I leak the files to the press and detonate the structural warning alarms, triggering an immediate federal lockdown that will put you in handcuffs before sunrise.”
The screen went black. The terminal shut down completely.
My phone buzzed in my hand. It was a text from Lena: I’m in the lobby. Coming up.
Thirty seconds later, Lena burst into my office, her gun holstered but her expression dead serious. “I saw the emergency alert. What happened?”
“It wasn't just Richard and Judith,” I whispered, looking up at her with fire in my eyes. “Vance Miller poisoned my father. And he’s holding the entire foundation of this company hostage with a forged steel scandal at the courthouse.”
Lena listened intently as I explained Vance’s ultimatum and the fifty-million-dollar extortion demand. When I finished, her eyes narrowed with sharp tactical precision.
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“He thinks he has you cornered because he expects you to play defensively like a victim,” Lena said, her voice dripping with resolve. “He doesn't realize you’ve spent six months learning how to crush predators.”
“We aren't giving him a single dollar, Lena,” I said, opening my desk drawer and pulling out the encrypted hard drive containing my father’s master files. “We’re giving him a trap.”
