His eyes were totally dead.
The man I knew was gone.
"The buyer is waiting downstairs," Robert said softly, almost to himself. "I have three million dollars in diamonds in that briefcase. Once I hand them over, my debt is clear. I'm a free man."
"I've seen the fake stones," I said. "I know about the ledgers. You can't hide this anymore, Robert. The police will tear this place apart."
Robert looked at Julian.
Julian was shaking like a leaf.
"Julian," Robert said coldly. "What is Arthur’s medical condition?"
Julian swallowed hard. "He... he has a severe heart condition, sir. He had a double bypass three years ago."
Robert nodded slowly.
He turned back to me, a sickening smile creeping onto his face.
"It's a tragedy," Robert said softly. "The great Arthur Pendleton, suffering from dementia, wanders away from his estate. He breaks into his own store, disoriented and confused. Sadly, the stress is too much for his frail heart. He suffers a massive, fatal coronary event before anyone can find him."
My blood ran cold.
"You can't be serious," Chloe sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "Robert, we can't kill him! That's murder!"
"Shut up, Chloe!" Robert snapped. "He knows everything. If he walks out of this room, we all go to federal prison. Do you want to spend the next twenty years in a cage?"
Chloe whimpered but didn't argue.
Robert looked at Marcus.
"Take him down to the basement vault," Robert ordered.
"The main vault?" Marcus asked nervously. "The time lock engages at five o'clock. It won't open again until Monday morning."
"I know," Robert said, his eyes never leaving mine. "Throw him inside. Shut off the main ventilation fan to that sector. The air gets very thin down there. With his heart, he won't last the night."
"Robert, please," I said, the pain in my chest flaring into a sharp, terrifying agony. "Don't do this. I need my medication."
Robert stepped close to me, reaching into my coat pocket.
He pulled out the small orange bottle of beta-blockers.
He smiled, opened the bottle, and dumped the pills onto the rug, crushing them under the heel of his expensive shoe.
"Goodbye, Arthur," Robert whispered. "Tell Sarah I said hello."
Marcus grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me violently toward the door.
I fought back, kicking and thrashing, but I was weak, old, and completely outmatched.
Marcus dragged me out of the suite, down the main elevator, and into the sub-basement.
The air down here was cold, smelling of concrete and old dust.
We stopped in front of the massive, circular steel door of the 1920s vault.
It was a bank vault from the original construction of the building, retrofitted to hold our most precious overflow inventory.
Marcus pushed me inside the small, dark room.
I stumbled in the darkness, falling to my knees on the cold tile floor.
I looked back just in time to see Marcus standing in the doorway.
He didn't look remorseful. He looked relieved.
He grabbed the massive steel wheel on the outside of the door and spun it.
The two-foot-thick steel door swung shut with a horrifying, heavy groan.
The metal hit the frame, sealing perfectly.
I heard the massive internal locking bolts slide into place with a deafening thud.
Then, total, absolute darkness.
I was buried alive in my own creation.
The darkness inside the vault was absolute.
It was a suffocating, heavy blackness that seemed to press directly against my eyeballs.
The temperature dropped almost immediately, the cold seeping up through the thin fabric of my trousers from the concrete floor.
I sat alone in the dark, my wrists still bound tightly behind my back, gasping for air.
My heart was beating in a dangerous, erratic rhythm—a wild, fluttering sensation that sent sharp, terrifying spikes of pain radiating down my left arm.
Without my medication, the stress was triggering an acute angina attack.
Robert had planned this perfectly.
He knew the time lock wouldn't disengage until Monday morning.
By the time the staff opened the vault, I would be nothing more than a tragic headline.
I closed my eyes in the pitch black, forcing myself to take slow, shallow breaths.
I couldn't panic.
Panic required oxygen, and without the ventilation fan, the air in this sealed room was already growing stale.
I had to think.
I had to remember.
In 1985, I oversaw the retrofitting of this specific vault.
The insurance company had demanded a time-lock mechanism to prevent armed robbers from taking a manager hostage and forcing them to open the doors after hours.
But I was mildly claustrophobic.