Chapter 13
Laura forced herself to stand tall, refusing to let Vincent see the terror that was threatening to paralyze her. She raised her arm, holding the encrypted hard drive high in the air so he could see it clearly in the dusty shafts of light.
"I have what you want, Vincent," Laura called out, her voice echoing through the hollow depot. "Your entire financial history. Every shell company, every offshore account, every illegal transaction your wife uncovered. It’s all right here."
Vincent’s eyes narrowed slightly as he stared down at the small black device. A cruel, satisfied smile slowly spread across his face.
"You really are an extraordinary bank manager, Laura," he said, his tone mocking. "Most people would have run away or cowered in a corner. But you actually went and retrieved my property. I respect that. Now, throw it into the service pit below you, and I will let the boy's mother go."
Laura looked down. A few feet in front of her was a deep concrete trench used by mechanics to work on the undercarriage of the trains. It was dark, filled with stagnant water and old debris.
"No," Laura said firmly, her voice steady. "I'm not stupid. The moment I drop this, you'll kill both of us. Walk her down here. Untie her. Let her walk out of those doors, and then I will give you the drive."
Vincent sighed, shaking his head as if disappointed by a child's stubbornness. He reached into his coat and pulled out a sleek, silver handgun with a heavy silencer attached to the barrel. He pointed it directly at the head of Caleb's mother.
May you like
The woman whimpered, closing her eyes tightly, her body shaking against the ropes.
"You don't have any leverage here, Manager Bennett," Vincent said, his voice dropping to a deadly, quiet frequency. "You brought me my drive, but my man at the storage facility called me. He said you kept a map. He said you know too much. So here is the new deal: you drop that drive into the pit, or I paint this catwalk with her brains right now, and then I come down there and take it from your corpse."
