Chapter 7 - A Web of Lies
Evan, Grace, and Daniel followed Claire up through the hotel's rear freight elevator, bypassing the grand lobby where emergency police cruisers were already assembling outside the glass doors. Daniel was pale and clutching a fractured wrist, but his eyes were clear for the first time in years. The harsh brush with death had stripped away every trace of his entitled, reckless arrogance.
""Evan,"" Daniel muttered, looking down in profound shame. ""I never meant for this to happen. I thought Peter Cho was helping me consolidate my debts. When I realized he was working with Vance to rob your family and frame Grace, I tried to back out, but they shoved a gun in my mouth. Grace gave me that badge so I could reach the server room and delete the false logs Peter planted against her.""
""Save your explanations for later, Daniel,"" Evan said evenly, though the venom had drained from his tone. ""Right now, you stay close to Claire. We have a traitor on the top floor to dismantle.""
Claire checked the hotel’s surveillance feed on her mobile device. ""Peter Cho is currently inside the executive penthouse suite on the forty-second floor. He told the hotel staff that you were safely evacuated to a secondary safe house and that he has full command over all digital assets. He's currently initiating the data mirror transfer to an untraceable server in Zurich.""
Evan tightened his grip on the biometric cold-storage briefcase he had recovered from the vault. ""He thinks I'm dead, or at least trapped in the basement with Vance. He doesn't know Vance failed.""
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""He has four loyal mercenaries guarding the penthouse vestibule,"" Claire warned. ""Standard tactical assault will take twenty minutes to coordinate with Boston SWAT, and by then, the data transfer will be finished, bankrupting your holding firm.""
""Then we don't use standard tactics,"" Grace spoke up, her voice regaining its sharp, brilliant clarity. She wiped the blood from her cheek and pulled Evan’s backup smartphone from his pocket. ""Peter thinks he holds all the cards, but he forgot that I wrote the encryption algorithm for your firm’s digital security framework two years ago. He has the hardware, but I hold the kill-switch passphrase. Give me five minutes with a terminal, and I can lock him inside that room until the authorities arrive.""
