Chapter 1 - The Trust FileThe silence in my narrow brick apartment was absolute except for the ticking of a plastic clock on the microwave.
“How long, Benjamin?” I asked again, my hand tightening around the phone so hard the plastic casing creaked.
“Twelve hours,” Benjamin Ross replied, his voice strained. “Julian scheduled the dead-man's switch to release everything to federal investigators, state tax authorities, and every major news outlet in Colorado at precisely noon on New Year’s Day if he didn’t manually check in. That gives us less than thirty-six hours before Graham Whitmore realizes his entire empire is about to be exposed.”
“That means Julian is still alive,” I said, calculating the risk. “If Graham had already disposed of him, the switch would have gone off, or Graham would have seized the passcodes by now. Julian is holding out. He’s buying time.”
“Or they are torturing him to get the master decryption keys to the Ironline logistics servers,” Benjamin countered sharply. “Walter, you cannot go in there alone. Graham has armed security. He uses private contractors who used to work in military logistics. If they see your blue pickup truck anywhere near that estate, they will open fire before you reach the front porch.”
“Who said anything about driving the blue truck?” I walked to the window, peering down through the cracked blinds at the deserted street below.
“What are you planning?”
“Julian told me not to let them see my truck,” I replied, my eyes hardening. “He didn't say anything about me arriving on foot through the ridge woods behind the property.”
“Walter, you’re sixty-eight years old—”
“I’m the man who built Ironline on three hundred dollars and a broken transmission,” I interrupted, my voice dropping into a low, uncompromising growl. “My son is chained in a concrete basement while his wife drinks champagne upstairs. Find out every delivery schedule scheduled for Whitmore Industrial Brokerage over the next twenty-four hours. And get in touch with Captain Vance at Major Crimes. Tell him to position unmarked units three miles out on county road twelve. When I give the signal, I want the house surrounded so tightly a bird can't fly out.”
“And if Julian isn't there?”
“He’s there,” I said, hanging up the phone.
May you like
I walked to the back of my closet, pushed aside three faded work shirts, and reached behind the drywall panel. My fingers found the cold steel lockbox containing my emergency satellite communicator, a secure encrypted radio linked directly to Ironline's private dispatch network, and a heavy-duty tactical flashlight.
It was time for the truck driver to show these corporate vultures what kind of foundation Ironline was really built on.
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