Chapter 13 - The Safehouse in the MountainsThe safehouse nestled in the hills above Geneva was a fortress disguised as a luxury chalet. Thick stone walls, bulletproof glass, and a private panic room made it an impenetrable sanctuary.
I paced the hardwood floor of the main living room, rocking Eli back to sleep while Gabriel stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down at the winding mountain road below through a pair of tactical binoculars.
"Rostov’s men pulled back when the Swiss federal tactical police arrived," Gabriel said quietly, lowering the binoculars. "They know they can't take this chalet by force without triggering an international military response."
"So they're going to starve us out or try to cut off our digital access," I said, setting the sleeping baby down in a makeshift crib in the corner. I walked over to the dining table, where my encrypted laptop was hooked up to a secure satellite uplink. "If Rostov wants those European asset keys, he's going to try to hack into our terminal remotely."
Gabriel turned from the window, walking slowly toward me until he stood right behind my chair. He placed his hands on the backrest, leaning in close. "Can he do it?"
"Only if he has the master encryption password," I replied, typing a rapid sequence of commands into the terminal. "Which is protected by dual-factor biometric authentication tied directly to my thumbprint and your voiceprint."
A slow, dangerous smile curved the corner of Gabriel's mouth. "Then he’s locked out permanently."
"Not necessarily," I said, my expression turning grim as a red warning light flashed on the screen. "Look at the routing logs. The intrusion isn't coming from outside the firewall. It's coming from an internal terminal inside our own Chicago headquarters."
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Gabriel’s smile vanished. "Who's still in the Chicago office?"
"Only one person had secondary administrative access to the Geneva server cluster," I whispered, the pieces falling into place with terrifying clarity. "Your corporate legal counsel, Marcus Vance—Julian’s younger brother."
