Chapter 8 - The Price of Leverage
"Let's not be dramatic, Mark," the man in the overcoat said, his voice dropping its conversational tone and turning razor-sharp. "Nobody is going to hurt your family. They are simply... relocating to a secure environment while we resolve a minor accounting discrepancy."
"Call off your men," I repeated, taking a hard step forward, my fingers closing around the cold iron handle of the crowbar resting on the workbench. "Right now. Or the only thing you'll find on that drive is corrupted data."
The man studied me for a long, tense moment. The distant sirens of local police—finally responding to the panic call Martha must have managed to trigger before the line went dead—began to wail faintly in the distance, cutting through the damp night air. The sound changed the calculus in the room instantly. Time had just run out for them.
"You think the police are going to save you?" the man murmured, his gaze flicking toward the garage door as the wail of the sirens grew sharper. "The local precinct is the least of your concerns. But fine. We negotiate."
He reached inside his overcoat, pulling out a burner phone identical to the one I had found in Sarah's dresser drawer, and tapped the screen twice before holding it out toward me.
"Call her," he instructed quietly. "Hear it from her own mouth. Then you hand over the flash drive, you get in your truck, and you follow my car to the drop point. Your mother-in-law and the children stay here with my associates until the exchange is complete. If you try to pull any heroics on the highway, the children don't reach the drop point."
The screen of the burner phone lit up, displaying an outgoing call connecting to an encrypted line. A second later, a familiar, exhausted voice crackled through the speaker, halting my breath.
“Mark? Mark, are you there?”
"Sarah?" I cried out, the name tearing raw from my throat. "Where are they holding you? Are you okay?"
“I’m... I’m at the old rail yard off Route 9,” she whispered, her voice trembling violently, punctuated by the sound of heavy static and distant machinery. “They made me call you. Mark, listen to me—do not give them the drive. If they get the unencrypted keys, the whole network goes dark, and they’ll clear every trace. They’ll kill all of us to cover their tracks.”
May you like
"Shut the phone down!" the man in the overcoat snarled, lunging forward to snatch the device from my hand, but I was already moving.
With a primal roar, I swung the heavy iron crowbar in a wide, vicious arc, smashing it directly into the side-view mirror of the nearest vehicle parked outside, while simultaneously driving my boot into the man's chest, sending him crashing backward over a stack of winter tires.
