Chapter 21 - The Dead-Man’s Switch
The red LED light on the small aluminum casing blinked in the silence of the beachfront room, a steady, hypnotic pulse that held the entire room hostage.
Viktor Vance’s finger hovered near the trigger of his rifle, his knuckles whitening against the matte-black finish. For three seconds, nobody breathed. The wind howling off Lake Michigan rattled the floor-to-ceiling glass panes, but inside, the air was completely frozen.
“You’re bluffing,” Viktor repeated, though his voice lacked its previous venom. A thin sheen of sweat had broken out across his forehead. “You don’t have a satellite uplink out here. The signal gets blocked by the dune ridge.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Viktor,” I replied, my thumb resting firmly against the pressure pad of the transmitter. My voice was dangerously calm, stripped of all panic. “My security chief, Michael Reed, has an automated script running on a server in Zurich. If he doesn’t receive a ping from my satellite tracker every thirty minutes, the entire database—including the offshore routing numbers for Evelyn’s laundering network and the payoffs made to the district attorney—auto-publishes to every major news outlet and federal server in the country. We have twelve minutes left on the timer.”
Viktor looked over his shoulder toward the hallway. His mercenaries shifted uncomfortably, their weapons dipping slightly. They weren't soldiers of a fanatical army; they were mercenaries on a payroll, and dying for Viktor’s corporate ego wasn't in their job description.
“Lower your weapons,” Viktor spat out through clenched teeth, motioning to his men.
The four guards hesitated for a fraction of a second before lowering the barrels of their rifles.
Claire—or rather, Elizabeth Moretti—stepped out from behind the armchair, her hands still cradling her seven-month pregnancy. Her face was pale, drawn tight with exhaustion and shock, but her eyes burned with an intense, calculated clarity. She looked at Viktor with a coldness that made even the ruthless crime lord flinch.
“You brought us out here to use us as bait, Viktor,” Elizabeth said, her voice cutting through the ambient hum of the room like a scalpel. “You told me Daniel would come running like a dog, and that we’d trap him here while the Feds dismantled what was left of his name. But you never planned to let us walk away, did you? The helicopter you had parked on the pad behind the ridge... it’s fueled for one person.”
Viktor didn’t blink, but the slight twitch in his jaw betrayed him. “Don’t be absurd, Elizabeth. We’re partners.”
“We were never partners,” she whispered, stepping closer to me until her shoulder brushed mine. The familiar scent of her—lavender and rain—cut through the tension of the room. “We were tools you used to settle a twenty-five-year-old grudge against Moretti’s legacy.”
I kept my eyes locked on Viktor, my thumb never leaving the switch, while my free arm reached out, pulling Elizabeth slightly behind my frame, shielding her from any sudden movement.
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“It’s over, Viktor,” I said quietly. “Drop the rifle and get on your knees. If you move an inch past that, I let the timer run out, and we all go down in flames.”
Viktor stared at me, hatred and defeat warring in his eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he let the rifle slide from his grip. It hit the hardwood floor with a dull, heavy thud.
