Chapter 6 - The Spider in the Penthouse
“He tracked me,” Maya whispered, her face draining of color, the old terror rushing back into her eyes. “He must have someone watching St. Ambrose. When I didn't show up at my usual squatter spot, he put the pieces together.”
“Thomas,” I said into the wall panel, keeping my voice utterly devoid of panic. “How long until the elevator reaches the penthouse?”
*“Ninety seconds, sir. Building protocol won’t let me deny a primary board director without a formal security freeze, and he brought two armed escorts from firm security.”*
“Acknowledge his arrival. Tell him I’m in the library. Then lock down the service stairs.”
I turned to Maya and Sophie.
“Maya, take Sophie into the secondary bedroom behind the pantry. There is a panic room built behind the linen shelves. The code is Sophie’s birthday. Get inside, lock the door from within, and do not make a sound until I come for you.”
“No,” Maya said, her chin coming up with sudden, ferocious defiance. “If he searches the place and finds me in a hole, he wins. He’ll call the Chicago Police Department, report me as a runaway trespasser, and confiscate this drive before you can even open the files. You need the decryption key, Daniel. The drive is double-blinded. My father wrote the wrapper algorithm; Eleanor wrote the hash. Without my father’s passphrase, the drive will zero itself after two failed attempts.”
I looked at the girl. She was sixteen years old, weighed barely ninety pounds, and had been living on the concrete for over a year. Yet she was standing her ground against the man who had murdered her father.
“Can you decrypt it right now?” I asked.
“Give me five minutes with an offline terminal,” she said.
“Take Sophie into the study,” I ordered. “Use the air-gapped Bloomberg terminal behind the mahogany screen. Do not connect to the local area network. Sophie, you stay glued to Maya’s side. Understand?”
Sophie nodded fiercely. “I’m helping her, Dad.”
The chime of the private elevator echoed through the foyer just as Maya and Sophie slipped through the study’s hidden service door.
I smoothed the lapels of my cashmere sweater, exhaled slowly, and stepped out onto the marble corridor to greet the man who had murdered my family’s peace.
Marcus Croft stepped into the foyer with the practiced, effortless arrogance of old Chicago money. He was fifty-two, impeccably groomed, wearing a bespoke charcoal Savile Row suit beneath a cashmere trench coat. His hair was silvered at the temples, his smile polished to a clinical shine. Behind him stood two burly men in nondescript dark suits—the kind of corporate security contractors who had spent their twenties in state intelligence agencies.
“Daniel,” Marcus said, opening his arms as if to embrace me. “Forgive the ungodly hour. But our compliance officers at St. Ambrose flagged an incident this afternoon outside the gates. Security reported you were involved in a physical altercation on the sidewalk with a vagrant?”
I didn't return the embrace. I stood rigid in the center of the foyer, hands in my pockets.
“An altercation? Hardly, Marcus. A homeless teenager was helping Sophie with her mathematics homework. I gave the girl some money and sent her on her way.”
Marcus’s smile remained fixed, but his eyes—pale blue, cold, and predatory—narrowed by a millimeter.
“Is that so?” Marcus took off his leather gloves, slapping them rhythmically against his palm. “Because my security detail at the school pulled the street footage, Daniel. The girl dropped a bag. One of our associates recognized her. It was Arthur Vance’s delinquent daughter.”
He took two slow, deliberate steps toward me.
“You brought her here, didn't you?”
“And if I did?” I asked, my voice dangerously low. “Arthur was our partner for a decade, Marcus. His daughter was starving in the gutter outside our school. Should I have left her to freeze?”
“She is a criminal, Daniel!” Marcus snapped, the mask of urbane sophistication slipping for a fraction of a second. “Arthur Vance stole forty million dollars from our foundation! He ruined our public standing! His daughter is unstable, radicalized by her father’s disgrace. For all we know, she’s here to extort you, or worse, harm Sophie!”
Marcus gestured to the two guards behind him.
“I brought our private security detail to sweep the premises. We’re going to take the girl into protective custody and hand her over to the Cook County authorities where she belongs. For Sophie’s safety, Daniel. Eleanor would have wanted me to protect your daughter.”
The sound of Eleanor’s name on his lying lips was the final spark.
“Do not speak my wife’s name in this house,” I whispered.
Marcus paused, his eyebrows arching in mock surprise. “Daniel... you look unwell. The grief is clouding your judgment again. Step aside. Let my men search the apartment.”
“If your men take one step past that archway,” I said, looking directly into the eyes of the two security guards, “I will hit the panic button that triggers an immediate federal dispatch for an armed home invasion. You may own the St. Ambrose board, Marcus, but Harrison Global’s residential security protocol is routed through the Department of Homeland Security’s executive protection division. Try me.”
The two guards hesitated, their eyes darting to Marcus.
Marcus chuckled softly, though the vein in his temple was pulsing violently. “You always were melodramatic, Daniel. What did she tell you? What fairy tales did the little gutter-rat whisper in your ear?”
Before I could answer, the heavy double doors of the study clicked open.
Maya Vance stepped out into the hall.
She wasn't hiding. She had Sophie by the hand, and in her other hand, she held my wireless iPad, its screen illuminated with thousands of lines of green and white decrypted data.
May you like
“She didn't tell him fairy tales, Croft,” Maya said, her voice ringing through the cavernous penthouse with absolute clarity. “She showed him the Guernsey accounts.”
***
