"He has the resources to find it. Check the perimeter."
"Copy that."
I hang up the phone.
I turn to Audrey. She is standing perfectly still, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She understands the shift in the room. The tactical victory just mutated into a physical threat.
"Get your coat," I tell her, walking toward the metal desk to grab the encrypted laptop. "We are leaving."
"You said this place was a bunker," she argues, though she is already moving toward the sofa to grab her jacket. "You said we were safe here."
"We were safe when Preston thought he could win the corporate war." I shove the laptop into a tactical bag. "He just lost everything. He is a cornered animal, Audrey. And cornered animals do not run. They attack."
I grab my own coat, pulling it on over my shoulders.
My phone vibrates in my hand.
It is Grant.
I hit accept. "Is the car ready?"
"Malcolm."
The voice on the other end of the line is not Grant.
It is Preston.
The blood in my veins turns to absolute ice. I stop moving. The silence in the loft turns deafening.
"Father," I say.
Audrey freezes halfway to the sofa, her coat dangling from her hand. She looks at me, the terror instantly returning to her eyes.
"You are a very thorough man, Malcolm," Preston says. His voice is perfectly calm, lacking the frantic panic that consumed Simon. It is the voice of a man who has already accepted his own destruction and is merely tying up loose ends. "You flagged my passport. You froze my accounts. You handed my legacy to the federal government."
"Where is Grant?" I ask, my voice dead.
"Your head of security is currently unconscious in the alley behind your warehouse," Preston replies smoothly. "He is alive. For now."
I close my eyes. A violent, murderous rage spikes in my chest, so intense it physically hurts.
"What do you want, Preston?"
"I want you to look out the window, Malcolm."
I open my eyes. I walk toward the narrow, frosted window at the front of the loft. I don't stand directly in front of the glass. I stand to the side, angling my body to look down at the street below.
A black SUV is parked directly in front of the warehouse doors.
Four men in heavy tactical gear are standing around the vehicle. They are not carrying sidearms. They are holding automatic rifles.
"You have two options," Preston says through the phone. "You can stay in that loft, and my men will breach the doors. They will kill you, and they will kill the woman standing next to you."
I don't speak. I calculate the structural integrity of the steel doors. They will hold for exactly four minutes against a tactical breach.
"Or," Preston continues, his voice dropping to a cold, absolute whisper, "you can walk downstairs. Alone. You get in the back of my car, and we take a drive. If you do that, the girl lives."
He is offering me a trade. My life for hers.
