Chapter 5 - Midnight Run
The black armored Mercedes G-Wagon hit the West Side Highway at ninety miles per hour, its twin-turbo V8 roaring against the howling winter storm. Snow pelted the reinforced windshield in thick, blinding sheets, but Larkin drove with the icy detachment of a man running a simulation.
Beside him in the passenger seat, I had kicked off my torn silk gloves. On my lap sat an encrypted Panasonic Toughbook laptop connected to the vehicle's satellite downlink.
My fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard with practiced speed, the green terminal text reflecting in the dark lenses of my smoky eyes.
"Status?" Larkin asked, not taking his eyes off the icy asphalt as he drifted the heavy SUV through a slick curve near 14th Street.
"They breached the forty-first floor five minutes ago," I said, reading the data logs streaming from our corporate servers. "They took the freight elevator using an administrative maintenance override. That means someone in building security was on Marcone’s payroll."
"Names?"
"Marcus Wright. Day shift supervisor," I replied without looking up. "He just received a wire transfer of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to a credit union in Bogota."
Larkin’s jaw tightened. "Handle the financial trail. I’ll handle Marcus."
"Already done," I said calmly. "I triggered an automated fraud freeze on the receiving account. His wire is suspended for seventy-two hours pending anti-money laundering review. Marcus Wright is currently working for free."
Larkin glanced sideways at me, a brief, incredulous shake of his head breaking through his lethal focus. "Remind me never to audit your taxes, Miss Woods."
"You couldn't afford my rates, Mr. Steves."
A sharp ping sounded on the laptop screen. A schematic of the forty-second floor popped up, pulsing with red intruder markers.
"They're outside the primary vault," I said, my voice dropping into tactical precision. "They're attempting a brute-force decryption on the outer door. It's a dual-authentication lock. It requires two cryptographic keys entered within ten seconds of each other."
"Mine is in my head," Larkin said, tapping his temple. "The second key was supposed to be generated by my primary server in Zurich."
"Your Zurich server was compromised three days ago," I told him, looking up from the screen.
Larkin’s head snapped toward me. "What?"
"I detected an unauthorized packet sniffer on the Swiss gateway on Tuesday," I explained, leaning back against the leather seat. "I didn't know who planted it, so I quietly redirected the secondary authentication handshake to a localized private server hidden in the air duct behind my cubicle."
Larkin stared at me as he ran a red light at Canal Street, tires sliding briefly on a patch of black ice before gripping the road again.
"You built a shadow server behind your desk?"
"Behind the filing cabinet that holds your dry-cleaning receipts," I corrected him. "Nobody ever looks behind the dry-cleaning receipts. The point is, Larkin, they can't open that vault from the outside. Not without my machine."
A rare, genuine laugh tore from Larkin’s chest—a rich, dark sound that seemed entirely out of place in a car racing toward a firefight.
"You are a terrifying woman, Penelope," he said, his voice laced with unadulterated admiration.
"I was a quiet woman until you invited me to a party," I shot back, a faint smile touching my lips. "You created this monster, Larkin. Now you have to live with it."
"I have every intention of living with it," he murmured, his tone shifting into something thick with unspoken promises. "Assuming we survive the next twenty minutes."
The Financial District loomed ahead like a forest of black obelisks against the falling snow. The glass tower of Steves Global Logistics rose into the low-hanging clouds, its upper floors dark, silent, and treacherous.
Larkin killed the headlights three blocks away, coasting the massive SUV into the subterranean loading dock beneath the building. The roll-up security gate was half-open, held in place by a heavy steel crowbar jammed into the tracks.
Inside the concrete bay, an idling black van with tinted windows stood parked near the service elevator. Two men armed with submachine guns stood guard near the rear doors.
"Stay down," Larkin ordered, reaching into the compartment beneath the center console and pulling out two tactical handguns with carbon-fiber suppressors. He checked the slide on the first, racked it with a sharp clack, and handed it across the console.
To me.
I looked at the weapon, then up at his steel-gray eyes.
"You know how to use this?" he asked softly.
I took the pistol from his grip. My hand was steady. I ejected the magazine, checked the spring tension, slapped it back into the well with the heel of my palm, and released the slide.
"My father was a Marine sniper before he was an invalid, Larkin," I said quietly. "I was shooting bullseyes at twenty-five yards before I learned how to balance a ledger."
Larkin’s eyes flared with something feral and utterly captivated.
May you like
"God," he breathed, leaning in so close his lips nearly brushed mine. "Where have you been hiding for three years?"
"Right under your nose, boss," I whispered back. "Let's go take our building back."
