Chapter 10 - Playing with Fire
They dragged me down the service elevator before the fire consumed the top
floor.
They threw me into the back of a black cargo van.
My hands were zip-tied behind my back.
My mouth was taped shut.
Through the tinted windows, I watched the penthouse tower burn against the
Manhattan night sky.
Flames devoured the top three floors.
My chest tore apart with agony.
Alessandro was up there.
He was wounded.
He was trapped in the inferno.
He’s dead, a cold voice whispered in my mind. You killed him.
Tears burned my cheeks, washing away the dried soot.
The van drove for thirty minutes, crossing into the industrial wasteland of the
Brooklyn waterfront.
We pulled into Dock Fourteen.
Giant shipping containers towered into the fog like rusted iron skyscrapers.
The icy wind from the Atlantic whipped against the concrete.
They dragged me into a vast warehouse at the edge of the pier.
Inside sat a single steel shipping container.
Container seventeen.
A folding table stood beside it, illuminated by harsh work lights.
On the table was an open satellite laptop.
Ambassador Vaneau walked in, removing his leather gloves.
A mercenary sliced the tape off my mouth and cut the zip-ties on my wrists.
I fell onto a metal chair, rubbing my bleeding wrists.
“You have five minutes, Sophie,” Vaneau said, pointing at the laptop.
“Five minutes for what?” I spat.
“Your father was clever. When he realized I was using his diplomatic
credentials, he locked Container Seventeen with a biometric cipher.”
Vaneau opened the container’s electronic lock console on the laptop screen.
It demanded an encryption passphrase.
“He encoded it using the Fox sequence,” Vaneau explained, his eyes cold and
dead.
“He told me before he fled that only his daughter possessed the key.”
“I’ll die before I give you anything,” I said.
Vaneau smiled, pulling a silver lighter from his pocket.
He lit it, watching the small flame dance in the drafty air.
“Your father died coughing blood in a four-hundred-dollar apartment, Sophie.”
“He died thinking he had failed you.”
“Inside Container Seventeen is two hundred million dollars in bearer bonds and
unregistered diamonds.”
“The real relief fund.”
Vaneau leaned in, his face inches from mine.
“Give me the cipher, and I will give you twenty million.”
“You can walk away to Paris. New name. New life.”
“Or I can throw you into the harbor with fifty pounds of concrete tied to your
ankles.”
I looked at the screen.
The blinking cursor was waiting.
Remember the light behind the star.
My father hadn't designed the cipher to protect the money.
He had designed the cipher as a dead-man's trigger.
If entered incorrectly three times, the military-grade tracking beacon inside
the container would ignite an alert across every naval and federal database on
the Atlantic seaboard.
And if entered with the reverse key...
It would wipe the accounts completely.
I placed my trembling fingers on the keyboard.
“I know the key,” I whispered.
Vaneau grinned, satisfied.
May you like
“Good girl.”
Suddenly, the warehouse doors blew off their hinges with a thunderous roar.
