Chapter 2 - Someone Was Outside the Door
The name was Adrian Vale.
Bastion stared at it as though the letters themselves had betrayed him.
Beatrice looked between him and Tomas.
"Who is Adrian?"
Neither man answered.
"Fantastic. We're doing the mysterious silence thing again."
Bastion closed the laptop.
"My chief financial officer."
Beatrice blinked.
"The man responsible for protecting your money?"
"Yes."
"The man whose credentials appeared nowhere in the authorization chain?"
"Yes."
"And somehow he's the beneficiary?"
"Apparently."
"No."
Bastion frowned.
Beatrice opened the laptop again.
"No?"
"It's too clean."
She pointed at the screen.
"Someone spent months hiding forty million dollars through twenty-three companies, multiple jurisdictions and dormant trusts. Then at the very end they leave the beneficiary's actual name?"
"Maybe Adrian became careless."
"People capable of building this don't become careless on the final page."
Tomas remained near the door.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying somebody wanted us to find Adrian."
Bastion's gaze sharpened.
A new possibility entered the room.
Adrian might be guilty.
Or Adrian might be bait.
Beatrice copied the record onto an encrypted local drive.
"Where is he?"
Bastion looked at Tomas.
"Adrian left the building at six."
"Confirmed?"
Tomas hesitated.
"His car left."
"That's not what I asked."
"No."
Bastion's expression hardened.
Tomas reached for his phone.
Still no network.
Beatrice examined the message Tomas had received.
"How did this arrive if the repeater is down?"
Tomas looked at the screen.
"Internal emergency network."
"Who has access?"
Bastion answered.
"Senior security and executive staff."
"How many?"
"Eleven."
"Good. We're narrowing it down from everyone in Manhattan to eleven people."
Tomas ignored the sarcasm.
"We need to leave."
"Through what?" Beatrice asked. "The elevators are locked and the stairwell cameras are dead."
"Service corridor."
Bastion looked toward him.
"That's supposed to be sealed."
"It isn't anymore."
That was not reassuring.
They left the library.
Bastion walked first.
Beatrice followed.
Tomas remained behind them.
The corridor outside was almost completely dark.
Emergency lights cast narrow pools across expensive carpet.
Beatrice hated how silent everything had become.
A luxury hotel should never be silent.
There should be elevators.
Housekeeping carts.
Air-conditioning.
Distant conversations.
Something.
Instead she heard only their footsteps.
Bastion stopped at an intersection.
"What?"
He pointed toward the wall.
A security camera hung above them.
Its lens had been turned upward.
Manually.
Someone had physically stood there and moved it.
Beatrice swallowed.
"Whoever did this was already on the floor."
"Yes."
They continued.
At the service door, Tomas entered a code.
Red light.
He tried again.
Red.
"Changed," he said.
Bastion took his own keycard.
Red.
Beatrice leaned against the wall.
"So we're locked inside your supposedly impenetrable penthouse."
Bastion looked at her.
"You seem to be enjoying that sentence."
"Immensely."
He almost smiled again.
It vanished when footsteps sounded from the far corridor.
Tomas pulled Bastion and Beatrice into an adjoining sitting room.
They waited.
The footsteps passed.
Beatrice caught a glimpse through the narrow doorway.
A man wearing hotel maintenance clothing.
He carried no tools.
Bastion saw him too.
"Recognize him?" Beatrice whispered.
"No."
"Employee?"
"No."
The man disappeared.
Tomas exhaled.
"We can't stay."
Beatrice looked around.
There was another door.
"Where does that go?"
"Private dining room."
"And after that?"
"Kitchen."
"Kitchen has a freight elevator?"
Bastion nodded.
"Controlled separately?"
Tomas looked at him.
"Yes."
Beatrice smiled.
"Finally, architecture I appreciate."
They crossed through the dining room.
In the kitchen, Tomas restored limited power to the freight lift using a mechanical override.
"Lobby?" Beatrice asked.
"No," Bastion said. "Garage."
"Why?"
"Because whoever controls the building expects us to go downstairs."
"So we're going downstairs?"
"We're going somewhere they don't expect."
The elevator descended.
Beatrice watched the floor numbers.
Forty.
Thirty-nine.
Thirty-eight.
Her shoulder brushed Bastion's arm.
She moved slightly.
So did he.
Neither commented.
At thirty-four, the elevator stopped.
The lights flickered.
Tomas swore.
The doors opened.
Nobody was there.
Then a phone rang.
Not theirs.
A phone sat in the center of the empty hallway floor.
Bastion stared at it.
Beatrice said, "That's subtle."
The phone continued ringing.
Bastion stepped out.
"Bastion."
"Stay."
"You're developing an annoying vocabulary."
He picked up the phone.
"Mercer."
A distorted voice answered.
Beatrice couldn't hear the words.
But she saw Bastion's face.
"What do you want?"
Pause.
His eyes moved toward Beatrice.
"No."
Another pause.
Then:
"She's not part of this."
Beatrice's stomach tightened.
The voice spoke longer.
Bastion listened.
Finally he said, "You have five minutes."
He ended the call.
"What did they say?" Beatrice asked.
"Nothing useful."
"Bastion."
"They want the drive."
"And?"
"That's all."
She stared at him.
He stared back.
"You are a terrible liar."
Tomas looked away.
Beatrice stepped closer.
"What else?"
Bastion's voice dropped.
"They said if I give them you and the drive, the problem ends."
Beatrice's face became still.
"And what did you say?"
"No."
"Without negotiating?"
"There's nothing to negotiate."
Something warm and dangerous moved through her chest.
She ignored it.
"That's surprisingly decent."
"Don't sound so shocked."
"I've known you three days."
"And insulted me for most of them."
"You survived."
The freight elevator began moving again.
At the garage, Bastion led them toward a black sedan.
Tomas checked beneath it and opened the doors.
Beatrice stopped.
"Wait."
"What?"
She looked across the garage.
Bastion followed her gaze.
A second black sedan sat near a concrete pillar.
"That's Adrian's car," he said.
Beatrice's pulse quickened.
"You said his car left at six."
"It did."
"Then how is it here?"
Nobody answered.
They approached.
The driver's door was unlocked.
Inside, Beatrice found a parking receipt.
Time stamped 8:43 p.m.
The car had returned.
"Adrian came back," she said.
Tomas checked the trunk.
Empty.
Bastion opened the passenger compartment.
A leather portfolio rested beneath the seat.
He pulled it out.
Inside were financial documents.
Beatrice took them.
Her eyes moved rapidly across the pages.
"These are copies of the shell-company records."
"Why would Adrian have them?" Tomas asked.
Beatrice turned the final page.
A handwritten note appeared at the bottom.
B.M. DOESN'T KNOW.
Bastion stared.
"His handwriting?"
"Yes."
Beatrice looked closer.
Another line had been written beneath it.
Different ink.
Different handwriting.
HE WILL SOON.
A noise echoed through the garage.
Tomas turned.
The lights went out.
Again.
Bastion grabbed Beatrice's wrist.
Not painfully.
Just enough to guide her behind a concrete pillar.
A car engine started somewhere in the darkness.
Headlights flashed.
The vehicle accelerated.
Tomas shouted.
Bastion pulled Beatrice farther back.
The car sped past them and smashed through the garage exit barrier.
Then disappeared.
Emergency lighting returned.
Something had been thrown from the vehicle.
A white envelope lay on the concrete.
Beatrice approached it.
Her name was written across the front.
BEATRICE ABBOTT.
Bastion said, "Don't."
She picked it up anyway.
Inside was a photograph.
Beatrice looked at it.
Her blood turned cold.
It showed her entering Mercer Logistics six weeks earlier.
Another photograph showed her leaving her apartment.
Another showed her grocery shopping.
Another showed her sitting alone in a café.
Someone had been following her before she ever discovered the missing money.
Then she reached the final photograph.
Bastion took it from her.
His expression changed.
The photograph had been taken years earlier.
Beatrice was younger.
Standing beside a man she hadn't seen in nearly a decade.
Her former mentor.
The accountant who had taught her how to trace offshore money.
A man who had supposedly died eight years ago.
On the back, somebody had written:
ASK BEATRICE WHO TAUGHT HER.
Bastion slowly looked at her.
Beatrice couldn't speak.
Because she had just noticed something else in the photograph.
May you like
Her dead mentor wasn't looking at the camera.
He was shaking hands with Adrian Vale...
