Chapter 3: The Ghost in the Machine<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t die that night. Marcus tackled Richard in the dark, disarming him just long enough to barricade the doors and perform emergency CPR on me. By the time the police arrived, Richard had vanished into the night.
\nA week later, I was sitting in a highly secured, off-the-grid safehouse on the outskirts of the city. Across from me sat Phoebe, my oldest friend and a ruthless private investigator.
\nWe stared at the laptop screen on the rustic wooden table. The email from my father, dead for eighteen years, contained a single string of numbers and an address: The First National Trust, a defunct bank building downtown scheduled for demolition.
\n\u201cYour biometric monitor flatlining at the hospital triggered a contingency code he set up before his car crash,\u201d Phoebe explained, adjusting her glasses. \u201cMabel, your dad knew someone was going to kill him.\u201d
\nWe didn\u2019t wait. Dressed in nondescript utility worker uniforms, Phoebe and I bypassed the chain-link fences around the condemned bank that evening. The air inside was thick with dust and the smell of rot. We navigated the darkened lobby by flashlight, descending into the subterranean vault.
\nThe safety deposit box required a dual key\u2014one from the email code, the other from a biometric thumbprint. Mine.
\nThe metal box slid out with a heavy scrape. Inside was a leather-bound ledger and a micro-cassette recorder. We hit play.
\nMy father\u2019s voice, tired and fearful, filled the dusty vault. \u201cMabel, if you are hearing this, it means I am dead, and Vance Global has likely absorbed our company. Hector Cole, the underworld financier, is using our logistics network to launder cartel money. I confronted him. But the real traitor isn\u2019t Hector. It\u2019s Fiona Vance. She tipped Hector off. They\u2019re lovers. They are planning to kill me and put you under their \u2018protection\u2019 until you turn thirty, at which point my master trust legally unlocks for your spouse. Do not trust the Vances. They are raising you like a lamb for the slaughter.\u201d
\nThe floor seemed to drop out from under me. Flynn. The marriage. The stabbing. It wasn\u2019t just a crime of passion. It was a twenty-year corporate conspiracy engineered by my mother-in-law.
\n\u201cMabel,\u201d Phoebe whispered, her flashlight beam trembling. \u201cLook.\u201d
\nA red laser dot was resting squarely on the center of my chest.
\nThree men in tactical gear dropped silently from the ventilation shafts above the vault. Hector Cole\u2019s cleaners.
\n\u201cRun!\u201d Phoebe screamed, tossing a smoke grenade she had smuggled in her bag.
\nThick, blinding gray smoke filled the vault. Gunfire erupted, deafening in the confined space, bullets pinging off the steel walls. I grabbed the ledger and the tape, diving under a heavy oak table. Phoebe grabbed my arm, yanking me toward an old, forgotten prohibition-era smuggling tunnel she had mapped out on the blueprints.
\nWe scrambled through the dirt and darkness, the sounds of shouting and gunfire echoing behind us. We burst out into a rain-slicked alleyway miles from the bank, gasping for air, covered in mud and ancient dust.
\nI looked down at the ledger in my hands. The fear that had paralyzed me since the stabbing evaporated, replaced by a cold, searing fire.
\n\u201cPhoebe,\u201d I panted, wiping rain from my eyes. \u201cGet me a dress. We\u2019re going to a party.\u201d
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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