Chapter 18 - The Trap on the Forty-Second Floor
“You knew we were coming,” I said, gritting my teeth as the security guards shoved me forward into the open elevator lobby.
“Of course we knew you were coming, Ms. Carter,” Sterling replied, walking beside me with the casual arrogance of a cat playing cornered mice. “When a federal magistrate and a disgraced former intelligence officer start moving like ghosts across the Midwest, people notice. We simply left the front door unlocked so we could welcome you properly.”
The elevator doors chimed, opening to reveal Ethan standing inside the cab, surrounded by two more tactical guards holding assault rifles to his head. They shoved Ethan out onto the carpet beside me, forcing us both to our knees.
Sterling stepped past us, entering the server room where the empty server racks hummed with hollow indifference. He turned around, leaning against the edge of a mahogany desk, and gestured with his gold-rimmed pen.
“You thought you could walk into Vanguard Plaza, upload a data packet, and bring down a multi-trillion-dollar conglomerate with a civil petition and some stolen municipal ledgers?” Sterling laughed softly, shaking his head in pity. “The men who built this firm don't rely on physical hard drives in a Manhattan skyscraper, Ms. Carter. Our data is decentralized across a dozen encrypted satellite nodes orbiting three hundred miles above your head.”
“Then why wipe the local servers?” I demanded, glaring up at him from the floor. “Why stage an empty room?”
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“To lure you out into the open,” Sterling said simply. “Your father and Judge Harrison are currently sitting in an abandoned rail-maintenance depot in Indiana, correct? Well, right about now, our tactical intervention teams are arriving to ensure that neither of them ever files another legal document.”
My stomach dropped. The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow—the Manhattan raid wasn't an interception; it was a distraction.
