Chapter 3 - Erasing the Paper Trail of Kings
At 0615 hours, the morning fog hung low over the manicured lawns of Fairview Elite University. The campus was silent, save for the hum of an electric maintenance cart in the distance.
In the administrative quadrangle, inside the gothic oak-paneled office of Dean Alistair Vance, a very different morning was unfolding.
Dean Vance, a portly man of fifty-eight with silver hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, and an expensive tweed suit, was pouring his third cup of single-origin Colombian roast. On his desk sat a heavy, mahogany-framed photograph of himself shaking hands with Victor Holbrook and Arthur Kensington at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the university’s new eight-million-dollar sports complex.
The heavy solid-oak door to his office was locked. Or at least, it had been locked five seconds ago.
Without a sound, the deadbolt retracted with a faint click.
The door swung inward slowly.
Dean Vance looked up, his mug hovering an inch from his lips, irritation flaring on his face. "Excuse me? The administrative wing is closed to students until eight—"
He stopped.
Standing in the doorway was a man who looked like an apparition of death itself. I stepped into the room wearing a black tactical trench coat, my eyes completely cold, fixed upon his throat. Behind me, Marcus Brody stepped inside, his massive frame completely filling the doorway, and turned the heavy brass deadbolt with a soft, final snap.
"Dean Vance," I said evenly.
Vance scrambled backward, spilling hot coffee across his polished mahogany desk. "Who... who are you? How did you get in here? This is a private university facility! I will call campus security immediately!"
He reached for the red emergency button on his desk intercom.
Marcus moved like a striking viper. In less than half a second, his massive hand slammed down on top of Vance’s wrist, pinning it to the desk with enough downward pressure to make the wood creak.
"I wouldn't touch that button, Dean," Marcus whispered, leaning down until his scarred cheek was inches from the dean’s face. "The campus security network was disconnected from the city grid four minutes ago. You are speaking to the ghosts now."
Vance let out a high-pitched squeak of terror, his face draining of all color. "What do you want? Is this a robbery? I have five thousand dollars in the office safe—take it! Just don't hurt me!"
I pulled a high-back leather chair opposite the desk, sat down, and folded my hands over my knee.
"My name is Alexander Vance," I said calmly. "Though my daughter knows me as Alexander Sterling."
Vance’s eyes widened behind his gold-rimmed glasses. The panic in his expression morphed into something far more dangerous: guilt.
"Sterling..." he stammered, trying desperately to regain his academic composure. "The... the young lady from the chemistry department. Mr. Sterling, I understand you are upset. What happened to Chloe was a tragedy, an unprovoked street crime by unknown vagrants—"
BAM.
Marcus slammed his open palm onto the desk. The thick oak split down the center with a loud crack, sending the porcelain mug shattering to the floor.
"Do not lie to the Commander," Marcus said, his voice dropping into a subterranean register that vibrated the glass windows. "Lie again, and I will remove your fingers one by one."
I reached into my pocket, pulled out a small black flash drive, and placed it gently on the cracked wood before the trembling dean.
"At 2302 hours last night," I said, "your university IT director, under your direct verbal order, accessed the security server banks in the basement of the Science Pavilion. You deleted forty-eight minutes of 4K surveillance footage capturing the brutal assault on my daughter. At 2315 hours, you transferred seventy-five thousand dollars from an offshore account owned by Kensington Development Holdings into your personal brokerage account at Credit Suisse."
Dean Vance’s breath came in ragged, hyperventilating gasps. "How... how could you possibly know that? Those servers are military-encrypted..."
"Your encryption was designed by Holbrook Defense Dynamics," I replied smoothly. "My communications officer wrote the original source code for that firewall fifteen years ago when Holbrook was just a sub-contractor for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. You are using a lock we built, Dean Vance. You never had a key we couldn't turn."
"Please..." Vance wept, tears streaming down his flabby cheeks. "You don't understand the pressure I was under! Victor Holbrook threatened to pull forty million dollars in research grants! Arthur Kensington chairs the board of trustees! They told me if I didn't clean up the mess their sons made, they would ruin me! They would destroy this university!"
"And so you decided to destroy a nineteen-year-old girl instead," I said.
"I didn't know they were going to hurt her that badly!" Vance cried, dropping to his knees on the Persian rug. "They told me it was just a minor scuffle! I swear to God, I didn't know!"
"Stand up," I commanded.
Vance scrambled back to his feet, trembling so violently his knees knocked together.
"You have two choices, Dean Vance," I said, leaning forward. "Option One: You refuse to cooperate. In five minutes, my technical team will release the unedited footage of the assault, alongside the financial records of your offshore bribes, directly to the Department of Justice, the state attorney general, and every major news network in North America. You will be arrested on federal racketeering, obstruction of justice, and felony evidence tampering charges before noon. You will spend the next twenty-five years in a federal penitentiary."
Vance swallowed hard, his chest heaving. "And... and Option Two?"
"Option Two: You open your computer right now. You sign the emergency expulsion orders for Chad Kensington, Brantley Sterling, and Wyatt Holbrook. You sign the sworn affidavit admitting to the destruction of evidence under duress from their parents. And you hand over the uncorrupted master server backup drive stored inside that wall safe behind your portrait."
Vance stared at me in shock. "How do you know about the wall safe?"
Marcus leaned in, his smile cold and terrifying. "The Commander knows what you had for breakfast three weeks ago, Dean. Open the safe."
Vance didn't hesitate for another second. He scrambled behind the large oil painting of the university’s founder, swung the frame aside, and entered a six-digit code into the digital wall safe.
He pulled out a heavy, black encrypted hard drive and placed it into Marcus’s outstretched hand.
"There..." Vance gasped, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. "That’s the raw uncompressed optical recording. It captures the entire assault from three separate angles. It shows Chad Kensington throwing the first punch. It shows Brantley Sterling holding her arms behind her back. It shows Wyatt Holbrook kicking her in the face while she was down."
Marcus’s jaw clenched so hard the tendons in his neck stood out like steel cables. He looked at me, waiting for the command to break the dean in half.
I stood up, adjusting my coat.
"You did the right thing, Dean Vance," I said calmly.
Vance let out a ragged breath of relief. "Thank you... thank you, Commander Sterling. Am I safe now? Will you protect me from Holbrook?"
I reached the doorway and paused, looking back over my shoulder.
"You are not safe, Dean Vance. I said you had two options to avoid dying in this room today. But justice does not accept compromises."
I looked at Marcus. "Upload the files to the Department of Justice."
"Already sent, Commander," Marcus replied with a grin.
"No! You promised!" Vance shrieked, rushing toward the door.
Marcus casually extended his left arm, placing his palm against the dean’s chest, and shoved him backward with enough force to send him sprawling over his broken desk.
"We promised not to destroy you right now," Marcus said coldly. "The FBI will be here in eight minutes. I suggest you pack your toothbrush."
We walked out of the administrative hall into the brisk morning air.
As we stepped onto the quad, my tactical earpiece clicked with Hayes Montgomery’s smooth voice:
May you like
“Commander, Phase Two is live. The New York Stock Exchange has just halted trading on Kensington Holdings. Arthur Kensington’s private jet has been grounded on the tarmac by the FAA. Shall I drop the hammer on the Senator?”
"Drop it, Hayes," I answered into the mic. "Strip every feather off that bird."
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