I turned slowly back to Principal Higgins. The man was trembling violently, his eyes darting between his two disabled 'consultants' and me.
"Tell Marcus Vance," I said, my voice echoing in the quiet woods, "that if he ever sends men to my house again, I won't be this polite. Now get off my property."
Higgins scrambled into the driver's seat. The two fixers managed to drag themselves into the car, slamming the doors. The sedan threw gravel as it reversed wildly out of the driveway and sped down the road.
I watched them disappear, but the victory felt hollow. Vance wouldn't stop here. The fact that he sent muscle alongside the principal meant whatever was on that phone was devastating to him.
I walked quickly back inside the house, locking the heavy steel door and throwing all three deadbolts. I went straight to the garage.
The decryption program had finished.
The burner phone was unlocked.
I pulled up the file directory. There were no drug contacts. No messages from teenagers. There was only one large file—a high-definition video recorded a week ago.
I clicked play.
The camera was positioned on a tripod, showing Rick Vance and his friends sitting on a couch in a lavish office, clearly treating it like a joke, pretending to host a podcast. But the camera angle captured the reflection of the massive glass windows behind them.
In the reflection, clearly visible, was Marcus Vance sitting at his executive desk with the city’s building inspector.
The audio captured their conversation perfectly.
"The concrete density in the primary support pillars is forty percent below code, Marcus," the inspector was saying, sounding terrified. "If you pack five thousand people into that stadium for the opening game, the vibrational resonance will shatter the structural load. The roof will collapse."
"I am aware of the density issue," Marcus Vance’s voice replied coldly. "Fixing it would require tearing down the entire east wing and cost me twenty million dollars. That's not happening."
"People will die," the inspector pleaded.
"If the concrete gives, thousands die, sure," Marcus sneered. "But we keep the twenty million, and my lawyers will blame the subcontractors. You are going to sign the safety certification today, Robert, or the photos of you in Vegas go to your wife."
I paused the video. My stomach turned to ice.
This wasn't about drugs. This was a massive, lethal conspiracy. Marcus Vance was covering up a structural failure that would kill thousands of high school students and parents to save his profit margin. Rick had been using this burner phone to make a stupid podcast video for his friends, completely oblivious to the fact that he had accidentally recorded his father confessing to a mass-casualty cover-up in the background reflection.
Vance must have discovered the recording today and realized his own son was carrying the evidence. He demanded Rick hand over the phone, leading to the panic and the chase with Leo.
As I stared at the frozen frame of the video, a sudden, sharp sound shattered the silence of my home.
CRASH.
The front window of my living room exploded inward in a shower of glass.
Before I could even stand up from the workbench, I saw a thin, bright red laser sight sweep across the hallway wall, tracking steadily toward the doorway where I sat.
They weren't sending high school fixers anymore. They had sent professionals.
CHAPTER 3
The red laser dot hovered on the doorframe, sweeping downward in a smooth, practiced search pattern.
Every civilian instinct I had built over the last five years vanished, replaced entirely by cold, algorithmic survival logic. I didn’t shout. I didn’t panic. I dropped instantly to the concrete floor of the garage, sliding beneath the heavy steel workbench just as a silenced kinetic impact shattered the wood of the doorframe directly where my chest had been a second earlier.
The shot was meant to kill. There was no negotiation here.
"Dad!" Leo screamed from the living room, the sound of breaking glass having startled him from his cartoons.
"Leo, drop!" I bellowed, low and commanding.
I low-crawled out of the garage, staying beneath the window line, moving into the main house. The living room was bathed in the flickering blue light of the television. The front window was gone, the cold autumn wind blowing the curtains wildly inward.
I saw Leo. He had followed my order, pressing himself flat against the rug, covering his head with his hands. He was crying, trembling in sheer terror.