Chapter 1 - The Name Behind Forty Million Dollars
Beatrice Abbott slammed her hand over the glowing laptop and whispered, "Someone killed the power."
Bastion Mercer crossed the library and grabbed the brass door handle.
A tiny scratch marked the metal beneath his thumb.
Three straight lines.
Bastion stopped breathing.
Someone from his inner circle had been there.
The emergency lights came on three seconds later.
They were dim strips along the floor, barely strong enough to paint the library in cold blue shadows. Manhattan glittered beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, indifferent to the darkness forty stories above the street.
Beatrice remained beside the desk.
She was forty years old, plus-size and full-figured, with a substantial frame she had spent half her career being told to hide beneath conservative jackets and forgiving colors. Tonight she wore the royal-blue dress she had changed into after spilling coffee over her work clothes twelve hours earlier.
She had intended to work for another thirty minutes.
That had been four hours ago.
Now forty million dollars and possibly her life stood between her and sleep.
"Bastion."
"Don't move."
"I wasn't planning on dancing."
His head turned.
Even in the darkness she could see the irritation in his face.
Good.
Irritation was better than fear.
For three days, she had watched people around Bastion Mercer behave as if one wrong sentence might cause the temperature to drop ten degrees. Bastion never needed to shout. He possessed the unnerving stillness of a man accustomed to being obeyed before he finished speaking.
Beatrice had discovered almost immediately that this quality did not work on her.
She pointed toward the laptop.
"The file was opening."
"I know."
"And now we're standing here staring at a door."
"Because somebody is standing on the other side of it."
That silenced her.
A faint sound came from the hallway.
Not footsteps.
Fabric brushing wood.
Someone was close.
Bastion turned the deadbolt.
Click.
Beatrice stared at him.
"Your secured floor."
"Yes."
"Your private elevator."
"Yes."
"Your guards."
"Yes."
"And somebody is outside the door."
His jaw tightened.
"Apparently."
"That's comforting."
"I wasn't trying to comfort you."
"You're doing an excellent job."
The handle moved.
Slowly.
Someone tested it once.
Beatrice's humor disappeared.
Bastion stepped between her and the door.
He wasn't touching her. He didn't need to. His body became a wall.
"Back away."
"Bastion—"
"Beatrice."
There was something different in his voice.
Not command.
Concern.
She stepped backward.
The handle stopped moving.
Silence returned.
Bastion took out his phone.
No signal.
He looked at the screen.
Beatrice noticed.
"Mine too."
She lifted her phone.
Nothing.
"They cut the internal repeater," he said.
"You have an internal repeater?"
"This floor is designed to remain connected when the rest of the building isn't."
"And somebody disabled it?"
"Yes."
"How?"
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Someone with access.
Someone trusted.
Someone close.
The same conclusion that had appeared on Beatrice's laptop moments earlier.
She turned toward the computer.
Its battery had kept it alive.
The spinning icon was gone.
A white notification box occupied the center of the screen.
DECRYPTION INTERRUPTED.
Bastion saw it too.
"Can you recover it?"
"Probably."
"How long?"
"If you keep asking me questions, longer."
For the first time that night, the corner of his mouth almost moved.
Beatrice returned to the chair.
Her hands remained steady as she reopened the local cache.
That surprised her.
Two nights earlier, she had been chased through an alley by two men demanding the encrypted drive in her bag.
She had been terrified then.
She remembered wet pavement beneath her heels.
A car turning too quickly.
A voice behind her shouting for her to stop.
She remembered reaching the crowded avenue and realizing her hands were shaking so badly she could barely unlock her phone.
Bastion had arrived eleven minutes later.
She still didn't know how.
He had looked at her torn sleeve and asked only one question.
"Do they have the drive?"
Beatrice had wanted to slap him.
Instead she had said, "Nice to see you're worried about me."
His expression had changed.
"They don't have you either."
That sentence had followed her into the hotel.
Now she understood something she had refused to acknowledge then.
Bastion hadn't been worried about the drive.
The laptop beeped.
Beatrice leaned closer.
"What?"
"I recovered the transaction package."
Bastion returned to her side.
Twenty-three shell companies filled the screen.
Beatrice had spent weeks tracing them.
Each company appeared legitimate if examined individually. Shipping contractors. Warehouse management firms. International freight consultants. Equipment leasing companies.
Together, they formed a machine.
Small transfers left Mercer Logistics.
The transfers became consulting fees.
Those fees became overseas payments.
Those payments moved again.
And again.
Until the money disappeared into a dormant corporate trust registered years earlier.
Forty million dollars.
Not stolen in one spectacular transaction.
Disassembled.
Hidden.
Reassembled.
"Whoever built this understood your accounting controls," Beatrice said.
"You already told me."
"I'm telling you something different now."
She opened the access logs.
"The person didn't bypass your controls."
Bastion looked at her.
"They used them."
She enlarged seven authorization records.
"Every suspicious transfer had legitimate internal approval. No forged credentials. No obvious intrusion. Whoever did this didn't steal access."
"They had access."
"Exactly."
Bastion stared at the names.
Seven executives.
Seven people trusted with high-level financial authorization.
Beatrice watched his face.
Nothing.
That bothered her.
"Do you suspect one of them?"
"I suspect everyone."
"Healthy workplace."
"It has advantages."
"Apparently not forty million advantages."
He looked at her.
She smiled sweetly.
"Too soon?"
"Very."
A sound came from the door.
Both turned.
Two knocks.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Bastion didn't move.
Then a man's voice came through the wood.
"Mr. Mercer?"
Beatrice whispered, "Know him?"
"Security."
"That's reassuring."
"No."
The single word chilled her.
Bastion approached the door without opening it.
"Name."
"Caleb."
Bastion's expression changed slightly.
Beatrice noticed.
"What's your employee number?" Bastion asked.
Silence.
Then:
"Sir, there's been a power failure. We need to move Ms. Abbott."
Bastion looked at Beatrice.
She could read the answer in his face.
Wrong.
"Where is Tomas?" he asked.
Another pause.
"Downstairs."
Bastion said nothing.
The man outside tried again.
"We need to move now."
Beatrice quietly closed the laptop.
The footsteps retreated.
Bastion waited until they disappeared.
"Who's Tomas?"
"My head of security."
"And Caleb?"
"Doesn't exist."
Beatrice felt the cold move across her shoulders.
"Wonderful."
Bastion walked to a bookshelf.
He removed three books.
Behind them was a small steel panel.
Beatrice stared.
"Please tell me that's a secret minibar."
He entered a code.
"You're very calm."
"I'm compensating."
"For what?"
"Wanting to scream."
That made him look at her.
For several seconds neither spoke.
The steel panel opened.
Inside was an emergency satellite phone.
Bastion lifted it.
No power.
He examined the battery compartment.
Empty.
Beatrice stood.
"Someone removed it."
"Yes."
"Before tonight."
"Yes."
"So somebody expected you might come here during an emergency."
Bastion's eyes hardened.
Beatrice suddenly understood why the forty million frightened him.
This wasn't theft.
It was preparation.
Money for something larger.
Someone wasn't merely robbing Bastion Mercer.
Someone was preparing to replace him.
She returned to the laptop.
"I need the beneficiary."
"Beatrice."
"If we leave without that name, we lose our advantage."
"Someone is trying to get into this room."
"Which makes me think the name is fairly important."
He stared at her.
"You are the most stubborn woman I've ever met."
"Your employees seem afraid of you. Somebody has to provide balance."
She reopened the corrupted file.
Twenty percent.
Thirty-two.
Forty-eight.
Bastion stood beside her.
"Why did your firm tell you to stop?"
The question surprised her.
"What?"
"The audit. Your partners told you the discrepancies weren't material."
"Some did."
"But you continued."
"Numbers don't become honest because somebody senior tells me to stop looking."
"That's not what I asked."
Beatrice glanced at him.
There were answers she usually kept buried.
Years of meetings where people interrupted her.
Years of clients assuming the thinner woman beside her was the senior accountant.
Years of being told she was brilliant followed by suggestions about becoming more "presentable."
She had learned to use underestimation as camouflage.
"They expected me to quit," she said.
"Who?"
"Everybody who ever thought making me uncomfortable would make me smaller."
His eyes dropped briefly toward her.
Not judging.
Understanding.
Beatrice straightened.
"I don't shrink."
"No," Bastion said quietly. "You don't."
The loading bar reached eighty-seven percent.
Then someone knocked again.
Not the fake security guard.
Three knocks.
Pause.
Two knocks.
Bastion's head snapped toward the door.
"What?"
Beatrice whispered.
He raised one finger.
Three knocks.
Pause.
Two.
Bastion unlocked the deadbolt.
"Are you insane?"
"It's Tomas."
"You know that from knocking?"
"Yes."
He opened the door two inches.
A broad-shouldered man stood outside.
Blood marked the collar of his shirt from a small cut near his temple, but he was upright.
"The floor's compromised," Tomas said.
"How many?"
"Unknown."
"Elevators?"
"Locked remotely."
"Stairs?"
"Camera feed is dead."
Bastion opened the door enough to admit him.
Tomas looked at Beatrice.
"They came for her."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"Because they ignored everything else."
The laptop beeped.
All three turned.
100%.
Beatrice hurried to the desk.
The encrypted beneficiary record opened.
A corporate registration appeared.
Trust number.
Transfer authorization.
Beneficiary identifier.
Then a name.
Beatrice read it once.
Her stomach dropped.
Bastion came behind her.
"What is it?"
She didn't answer.
He leaned toward the screen.
His entire body went still.
For the first time since she had met him, Beatrice saw genuine shock in Bastion Mercer's face.
Then Tomas whispered behind them.
"That's impossible."
Beatrice turned toward him.
Tomas was staring at the screen.
But he wasn't shocked anymore.
He was terrified.
Bastion noticed too.
"Tomas?"
The security chief backed toward the door.
His phone suddenly vibrated.
One message appeared.
Tomas read it.
His face lost all color.
Then he looked directly at Beatrice.
"They know she opened the file."
A second message arrived.
Tomas slowly raised the phone.
There were only four words on the screen.
May you like
BRING HER DOWNSTAIRS. ALONE.
And beneath the message was the name Beatrice had just uncovered...
