It was the maintenance worker from the lobby. Lucas.
He was still wearing his faded gray uniform, though the coffee stain had been washed and dried into a faint brown shadow on his chest. Resting on his lap was a highly advanced, ruggedized diagnostic terminal—military-grade hardware that cost tens of thousands of dollars. A thick blue cable ran from his terminal directly into the locked access port of the ghost server.
His fingers were flying across the keyboard at impossible speed. Lines of green code cascaded down his screen, reflecting in his calm, dark eyes.
This was no janitor.
"What are you doing?" I demanded, my voice cutting through the hum of the servers.
Lucas didn't flinch. He didn't even look up. He simply finished typing a command, hit the enter key, and slowly closed the terminal. Only then did he turn his head to look at me.
"Good morning, David," he said, his voice carrying the same grounded, quiet authority I had heard in the lobby.
"Who are you?" I stepped closer, my fists clenched at my sides. "You're not maintenance. I saw your watch yesterday. I see what you're doing now. You’re L.V. You downloaded the discrepancy logs."
Lucas remained seated on the milk crate. He unhooked the blue cable from the server with casual precision. "You're very observant for a finance guy."
"Are you a corporate spy?" I asked, my mind scrambling to connect the dots. "Did a rival firm hire you to tank the Omni buyout? Or did Brad hire you to scrub the drives before the auditors arrive?"
A faint, humorless smile touched the corner of Lucas's mouth. "If I worked for Brad, you'd already be locked out of the building. And if I were a spy, I wouldn't be talking to you right now." He stood up, towering over me despite his slight slouch. "I'm just a man who hates dirty math. And AuraNet’s math is incredibly dirty."
"You know about the ghost accounts," I breathed.
"Three point six million fake profiles," Lucas stated flatly, tapping the ruggedized terminal under his arm. "Generated by a randomized script looping through stolen social media photos. It's a clumsy, desperate fraud. Brad is a child playing with matches in a fireworks factory."
I grabbed his arm. "You have the proof. The administrative logs linking Brad to the script."
Lucas looked down at my hand gripping his sleeve. I immediately let go, intimidated by the sheer weight of his stare. "I have enough," he said quietly.
"I need a copy," I pleaded, the desperation leaking into my voice. "Brad forged my digital signature on the financial guarantees. He told me yesterday that if Omni finds out, he's pinning the entire fraud on me. He has his vice presidents ready to testify against me. If you’re going to blow this up, you have to let me give the data to the SEC first so I can secure immunity."
Lucas tilted his head, studying me as if reading a complicated balance sheet. "Why didn't you go along with it, David? Most men in your position would just take the buyout money, buy a yacht, and pretend they didn't know the ship was sinking."
"Because I have a daughter," I said, my voice cracking slightly. "And because it's stealing."
Lucas stared at me for a long, heavy moment. For the first time, I saw the coldness in his eyes soften just a fraction. He reached into his pocket.
Suddenly, the heavy steel door of the server room beeped loudly.
Heavy boots pounded against the raised floor grating. Flashlights cut through the dim aisles.
"Check the perimeter!" Trent's voice barked from the front of the room. "Brad said the firewall alerted a physical breach on the ghost servers. Lock down the exits!"
Panic seized me. If Trent found me here, next to the ghost servers, Brad would have all the proof he needed to execute his threat immediately. He would hand me over to the police before lunch.
Lucas reacted with terrifying speed. He grabbed me by the shoulder, his grip like iron, and yanked me violently backward into a narrow, unlit wiring closet hidden behind the cooling units.
He pulled the metal grate shut just as Trent and Greg rounded the corner into our aisle.
The closet was pitch black and no wider than a phone booth. I was pressed tightly against Lucas, the smell of burnt coffee still lingering faintly on his uniform. I tried to gasp for air, but Lucas clamped his calloused hand hard over my mouth.
"Keep quiet," he whispered directly into my ear, his breath hot, "if you want to see your daughter again."
Through the slatted grate of the closet, I watched Trent and Greg stop exactly where we had been standing seconds before. Greg swept his heavy flashlight across the humming black servers.
"Someone was definitely here," Greg grunted, pointing to the disconnected access port. "The physical lock is bypassed."
Trent pulled out his phone, his face illuminated by the screen. "Brad wants a full sweep of the building. If it's David, Brad says we don't even wait for Friday. We call the police now and serve him up as the rogue element."
They turned and marched back down the aisle.
I stood in the suffocating darkness of the closet, my heart threatening to hammer its way out of my ribs, trapped with a man whose true identity I still didn't know.
CHAPTER 3
The heavy server room door slammed shut in the distance. The electronic deadbolt engaged with a sharp, final clack.
I let out a shaking breath as Lucas removed his hand from my mouth. In the claustrophobic darkness of the wiring closet, the only sound was the drone of the cooling fans pushing freezing air through the grates beneath our feet.
Lucas pushed the closet door open and stepped out into the dim aisle. He moved with a relaxed, predatory grace that seemed entirely out of place for a man in his sixties wearing work boots.