Chapter 8 - THE CHIP AND THE BULLET
The air in the restaurant turned to lead.
Emily fell to her knees, sobbing, reaching her hand out toward the balcony. "Please! Please don't hurt them! They don't know anything!"
Her foster mother, a gentle woman with graying hair, wept openly. "Emily, sweetie, we're so sorry."
"Quiet," Thomas snapped, pressing the barrel of his gun harder into the older man's neck.
Daniel felt a white-hot rage boiling in his chest, but his mind was calculating a thousand miles an hour. He looked at Thorne. The disgraced FBI agent’s face was unreadable, his hand resting casually near his holstered weapon on the table.
"Vance," Daniel called out, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. "You don't need them. You want me. You want the money. Let them go."
"I don't negotiate, Daniel. You taught me that," Vance sneered, adjusting his cuffs. "You have exactly sixty seconds to walk up these stairs and hand me the drive. If you try to give it to Thorne, my men will open fire. Everyone dies."
Daniel looked at his daughter. Her face was twisted in agony. She had already lost her real mother, her caretaker Rebecca, and twenty years of her life. He would not let her lose the parents who had actually raised her.
Daniel nodded. He looked at Thorne.
"I'm sorry, Marcus," Daniel whispered.
Thorne didn't say a word. He just stared at Daniel, his eyes darting quickly to the briefcase, then back to Daniel. A silent message.
Daniel grabbed the chip from the table. He turned and walked slowly toward the grand staircase.
Every step felt like walking to the gallows. He reached the balcony. Vance was sitting at a glass table, a sleek black laptop open in front of him.
"Drop the gun, Daniel," Vance ordered.
Daniel pulled the empty silver revolver from his belt and tossed it onto the floor.
"Now the chip."
Daniel placed the tiny micro-SD card on the glass table.
Vance’s eyes lit up with greedy triumph. He picked up the chip with tweezers and slid it into the port on his laptop. The screen flashed, prompting a biometric scan and password.
"Type it in," Vance commanded.
Daniel leaned over the keyboard. He typed BARNABY. He placed his thumb on the fingerprint scanner.
The screen glowed green. ACCESS GRANTED. TRANSFER INITIATING.
Vance laughed. It was a cold, hollow sound. "Three billion dollars. And all it took was a little patience. You were always too emotional, Daniel. That was your weakness."
"Let them go," Daniel demanded, pointing at Emily's foster parents.
"Of course," Vance smiled. He nodded to Thomas. "Kill them."
"No!" Emily screamed from below.
Thomas raised his gun.
But before he could pull the trigger, Vance's laptop emitted a loud, piercing, digital screech.
A red warning box flashed across the screen.
ERROR. DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED. SYSTEM OVERRIDE.
Vance froze. "What is this? What did you do?"
Suddenly, the screen went black. Then, lines of green code began raining down the monitor.
WIPING OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS. REDIRECTING FUNDS TO: FEDERAL ASSET SEIZURE BUREAU.
"No! No, stop it!" Vance screamed, furiously mashing the keyboard.
Down on the floor, Marcus Thorne stood up, holding a second, identical micro-chip between his fingers. He smiled.
"Sleight of hand, Arthur," Thorne called up. "I swapped the chip when Daniel set it on the table. The one you plugged in was a Trojan horse I wrote five years ago. You didn't just fail to transfer the money. You just handed the FBI full access to your entire criminal network. Warrants are being signed right now."
Vance’s face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. He looked at the laptop, then at Daniel, realizing his empire was gone.
"If I go down," Vance snarled, pulling a 9mm pistol from his jacket, "I’m taking everything you love with me."
Vance didn't aim at Daniel. He didn't aim at Thorne.
He aimed over the balcony railing, directly at Emily's chest.
"NO!" Daniel roared.
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Daniel didn't think. He didn't hesitate.
As Vance pulled the trigger, Daniel threw his entire body in front of the gun.
