Chapter 20 - The Obsidian Protocol
I spun around just as the mansion's emergency floodlights suddenly flared to life with an ear-splitting hum.
The blinding white light illuminated the kitchen with clinical cruelty.
Standing in the arched doorway of the kitchen was not another mercenary.
It was Walter Sterling.
He wasn't wearing his overcoat.
He hadn't left the estate at all.
In his right hand, resting comfortably at his side, was a sleek, suppressed semi-automatic pistol.
In his left hand, he held the antique platinum thumb drive that had been taken from the safe behind Elena's portrait.
My jaw slackened.
My entire universe fractured down the middle.
"Walter?" I stammered, unable to comprehend the sight.
"You... you told me to go to the police about Julian."
Walter smiled, a warm, grandfatherly expression that now looked terrifyingly grotesque under the sterile emergency lights.
"Of course I told you to turn Julian in, Arthur," Walter said smoothly, taking three slow, measured steps across the slate floor.
"Julian was greedy, vulgar, and hopelessly incompetent."
"He was taking eighty percent cuts and leaving sloppy paper trails across Illinois."
"I needed someone to clean up his mess without bringing the board's attention to the larger enterprise."
"You did that brilliantly, my boy."
"You always were the most efficient instrument in the company."
"You're working with Richard Ashford?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
"Working for him? Good heavens, no," Walter laughed softly, shaking his head.
"Richard Ashford is an eighty-year-old relic drowning in pride."
"He thinks this is about an old family grudge and a piece of dirt in Peoria."
"He has no idea what Elena actually built before she died."
Walter lifted the platinum key between his fingers, letting it catch the glare of the lights.
"Elena didn't hide thirty million dollars, Arthur."
"She hid three hundred million."
"The entire liquid collateral of the Vance-Ashford syndicate, secured under an encrypted protocol called Obsidian."
"And the only reason she came to Peoria three years ago wasn't to apologize to June."
"It was to implant the biometric recovery seed into June’s medical implants when she underwent surgery at the municipal clinic."
Walter leveled the suppressed pistol directly at my heart.
Above us, June stepped forward to the railing, her face pale as snow.
"June, my dear," Walter called out, his voice dripping with venomous affection.
"Come down the stairs very slowly with the children."
"Or I will put a bullet through Arthur's lung, and you can watch him bleed to death on the very floor where you used to scrub his spilled milk."
June froze.
I looked into Walter's dead, unblinking eyes, my hands slowly rising.
May you like
Then, from the dark woods outside the mansion's smashed kitchen windows, the sudden, deafening wail of federal tactical sirens tore through the midnight air—accompanied by the blinding spotlights of two black helicopters hovering directly over the roof.
Walter’s finger tightened against the trigger.
