Chapter 14 - Midnight at Joliet
At 12:43 a.m., Arthur Vance’s phone began ringing.
He answered half asleep.
“What?”
A man shouted over the sound of alarms.
“Mr. Vance, we’ve got a systems failure at Joliet!”
Arthur was out of bed before the sentence ended.
“What kind?”
“Automated gate controls, fuel authorization, routing servers—everything dropped simultaneously.”
Arthur’s stomach tightened.
“Switch to backup.”
“We did. Backup failed too.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Tell that to forty-two loaded trailers trapped inside the east yard.”
Arthur grabbed his trousers.
“Shut down all vehicle movement. Nobody drives until manual traffic control is established.”
There was a pause.
“Too late.”
Arthur froze.
“What happened?”
“One truck already moved.”
Twenty-three miles away, driver Malik Johnson was guiding an eighteen-wheeler toward the east exit when every overhead traffic indicator suddenly turned green.
Malik frowned.
That was wrong.
The northbound lane had been green two seconds earlier.
Then the crossing gate lifted.
Another tractor-trailer rolled toward the intersection from Malik’s right.
Both drivers had been given clearance.
Malik slammed on the brakes.
Thirty-eight tons of freight screamed across wet pavement.
The other driver saw him and hit his brakes too.
The two trucks stopped less than six feet apart.
Malik sat frozen behind the steering wheel.
Then he grabbed his radio.
“SHUT THIS YARD DOWN!”
By the time Arthur arrived at 1:28 a.m., the entire terminal was illuminated by emergency lights.
Malik stood beside his truck talking to security.
Arthur rushed toward him.
“You okay?”
Malik nodded.
“Ask me again after my heart gets out of my throat.”
Arthur looked at the six-foot gap between the trucks.
Someone could have died.
Dozens of people could have died if the failure had occurred during morning dispatch.
The facility’s IT director approached.
“This wasn’t a hardware failure.”
Arthur stared at him.
“What?”
“Someone remotely accessed the traffic-management server.”
“From outside?”
The director hesitated.
“Not exactly.”
Arthur felt something cold move down his spine.
“The credentials belong to Leonard Pike.”
By three thirty, Rachel, Sarah, and Agent Sloan were standing inside the terminal’s operations center.
Rachel wore jeans under a long wool coat, her hair pulled back hurriedly.
She looked through the glass at the rows of parked trucks.
“Was anybody hurt?”
“No,” Arthur said. “Because Malik caught it.”
Rachel nodded toward Malik.
“Full paid leave for him and the other driver tomorrow.”
Arthur almost smiled.
“Already approved.”
Agent Sloan turned toward the IT director.
“When were Pike’s credentials used?”
“12:39 a.m.”
“Where was he?”
“We don’t know.”
Sarah checked her phone.
“I do.”
Everyone looked at her.
“His wife posted photographs from a charity event downtown tonight. Pike is visible in one at 12:31.”
Arthur frowned.
“So someone stole his credentials.”
“Or he shared them,” Sloan said.
Rachel looked at the system logs.
“What would Grant gain from causing an accident?”
“Pressure,” Sloan replied. “A serious industrial accident creates lawsuits, regulatory inspections, lender panic.”
“Uncertainty,” Rachel said.
Sloan nodded.
Exactly.
At sunrise, the FBI executed a search warrant on Leonard Pike’s corporate office.
By eight thirty, Pike himself arrived at headquarters surrounded by attorneys.
He demanded a meeting with Rachel.
Sarah refused.
Rachel overruled her.
Ten minutes later, Pike entered the conference room looking gray.
“You think I caused that failure,” he said.
Rachel remained standing.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Did you hire someone to follow Maya?”
Pike’s face collapsed.
“Yes.”
Arthur stepped forward.
“You son of a—”
Rachel raised her hand.
“Why?”
Pike sat.
“Grant Ward approached me.”
“When?”
“Seven weeks ago.”
“Before the title claim.”
“Yes.”
He wiped sweat from his forehead.
“He said Rachel was eventually going to push the company into some nonprofit fantasy. He said the board needed people willing to protect shareholder value.”
Rachel laughed once.
“You hired a private investigator to protect shareholders?”
“I was supposed to determine whether Maya had any legal interest in the Vance Trust.”
“You could have asked.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Pike looked ashamed.
“Grant paid me.”
Arthur’s face hardened.
“How much?”
“Three hundred thousand.”
Silence.
Pike rushed forward.
“But I did not sabotage the terminal. I swear. Grant asked for my corporate login two weeks ago. I refused.”
Sloan leaned toward him.
“Then how did he get it?”
Pike looked down.
“I gave his consultant temporary access to my laptop during a financial presentation.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
Rachel stared at Pike.
One selfish decision.
One arrogant assumption.
It was Victor all over again.
“How much access did Grant obtain?” she asked.
Pike whispered, “I don’t know.”
Sloan’s phone rang.
She answered, listened, then looked directly at Rachel.
“We found something.”
“What?”
“Surveillance footage from the terminal perimeter.”
Sloan turned her screen.
A black SUV had entered the service road at 11:52 p.m.
The driver’s face was unclear.
But the passenger was unmistakable.
Elise Ward.
Rachel stared.
“Elise is in Europe.”
“Apparently not anymore,” Sloan said.
At that exact moment, the operations-center television interrupted its financial broadcast.
BREAKING NEWS.
Authorities had arrested Elise Ward less than twenty miles from Joliet.
May you like
And according to the first report, she had not been trying to escape.
She had been trying to reach Rachel.
