Chapter 25 - The Price of Blood
Nathan stepped past the vault threshold like a ghost, his weapon raised, every muscle in his body coiled to strike.
Inside the thirty-by-twenty-foot concrete room, bathed in the blue glare of four dozen server blades, stood three men. Two were private contractors clad in sterile black load-bearing gear, suppressed submachine guns slung across their chests. The third man, seated at the primary administrative terminal, was Raymond Cross—Nathan’s chief technology officer and the man who had designed the estate's impenetrable firewall.
Tied to an upright steel conduit in the corner of the room, his wrists bound with heavy industrial zip-ties, was ten-year-old Toby. A dark bruise bloomed across the boy’s temple, but his eyes were wide, defiant, and burning with fury.
"Dad!" Toby cried out.
"Hostile!" the mercenary on the left shouted, swinging his weapon up.
Nathan didn't negotiate. He fired three rounds in rapid succession. The double-tap caught the first contractor directly in the chest plate, staggering him backward, while the third round punched through his throat, severing the carotid artery in a violent spray that painted the glowing server racks crimson.
The second contractor dove for cover behind the central mainframe, his suppressed weapon spitting a stream of nine-millimeter rounds that sparked wildly off the reinforced concrete floor inches from Nathan’s feet.
Nathan threw himself behind an open steel safe, the concussive snaps of bullets chewing through the metal casing above his head.
"Cross!" Nathan roared over the gunfire. "You were with me when we went public in New York! I paid for your daughter’s leukemia treatments!"
"And Arthur offered me twenty million in untraceable bearer bonds to wipe your father’s ghost from the cloud!" Raymond Cross screamed back from behind the terminal, his hands flying across the keyboard with manic desperation. "You were going to go down anyway, Nathan! When the DOJ saw what Harold did to the Mercer family, Caldwell Industries would have been liquidated under RICO statutes! I have a family to feed!"
From the hallway entrance, a sudden blast shattered the relative quiet of the firefight.
Vanessa had picked up the fallen contractor’s submachine gun. She didn't hesitate; she stepped into the open doorway, braced the stock against her hip, and emptied the entire thirty-round magazine in a sweeping arc across the mainframe where the second mercenary was pinned.
Sparks, shattered glass, and hydraulic fluid erupted in a blinding storm. The contractor shrieked as rounds punched through the server chassis, piercing his armor from the side. He collapsed in a heap of tangled cabling and smoking circuitry.
Raymond Cross raised his hands instantly, trembling violently in his swivel chair. "Don't shoot! Nathan, please! The transfer is stopped! I canceled the purge!"
Nathan stepped from behind the safe, his face carved from granite. He walked straight up to Cross, ripped the flash drive from the terminal’s USB port, and slammed the heavy slide of his 9mm across the CTO’s jaw, knocking him senseless to the floor.
Nathan moved to Toby, dropping to his knees. His hands shook as he pulled his pocketknife and sliced through the zip-ties binding his son’s wrists.
"Toby," Nathan choked out, pulling the boy into an iron embrace. "I’m sorry. God, Toby, I’m so sorry."
Toby buried his face into his father’s shoulder for two seconds, his small frame shaking, before he pulled back, pointing a trembling finger toward the emergency ventilation shaft at the rear of the vault.
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"Dad... Arthur didn't stay upstairs," Toby gasped, wiping blood from his cheek. "He came down through the dumbwaiter shaft while you were fighting in the hall. He took the hard copy from the floor safe. He’s going for the helipad."
***
