They looked like private military. Neighbors were peeking through their blinds. Someone on the second floor yelled something, then quickly slammed their window shut. The rear door of the lead SUV opened. A woman stepped out.
Even from a thirdstory window. Evelyn Cross commanded the space. She wore a tailored charcoal trench coat over a stark white blouse. Her dark hair was pulled back into a severe flawless knot. She was the CEO of Omnicorp's parent conglomerate.
She was a woman who routinely destroyed hedge funds before breakfast. She belonged in a penthouse overlooking the financial district, not in a pothole ridden lot in the bad part of town. Jack watched as one of the security men went to the second SUV, and opened the back door. He reached in and hauled someone out by the collar. It was Greg Simons.
Greg looked like he had aged 10 years in a single night. His expensive suit was crumpled. His hair was a mess. He was sweating profusely, looking frantically around the run-down neighborhood like he expected to be shot. Evelyn Cross didn't look at Greg.
She looked straight up, her eyes scanning the windows of the building until they locked onto the third floor. She couldn't possibly see Jack through the glare of the glass, but he felt the weight of her stare regardless. She pointed a finger at the front door of the complex. The men shoved Greg forward. Dad.
Kloe pulled at Jack's pant leg. Who are those people? Jack dried his hands on a dish towel, his heart hammering a slow, heavy rhythm against his ribs. He walked to the front door, engaging the deadbolt. "Finish your oatmeal, Chloe," Jack said, his voice low and steady.
"Go into your room and put your headphones on. Watch your cartoons." But now Chloe, she saw his face and scured off to her bedroom, pulling the door shut behind her. Jack stood in the small, narrow hallway. The walls were thin.
He heard the heavy footsteps thutting up the wooden stairs. One flight, two flights, they reached his landing. There was no knock, just a sharp, authoritative wrap of knuckles against the cheap wood of his door. "Mr. Thornton," a woman's voice called out. It was crisp, devoid of any warmth, slicing through the heavy silence of the hallway.
Open the door. We have a company to save, and you are the only one holding the keys. Jack reached into his pocket, his fingers wrapping around the encrypted USB drive. He took a breath, turned the deadbolt, and pulled the door open. Evelyn Cross stood on his worn welcome mat.
Up close, her eyes were the color of flint. Behind her, two massive security guards held Greg Simons by the arms. Greg wouldn't make eye contact with Jack. He was staring at the floor, trembling. "Nice neighborhood," Evelyn said, stepping past Jack without waiting for an invitation.
She stood in his tiny, cluttered living room, her presence instantly shrinking the space. She looked at the peeling paint, the mismatched furniture, and the empty insulin vials on the counter. She turned back to Jack. "20 hours ago, my subsidiary suffered a catastrophic data collapse," Evelyn said, her voice completely even. "My engineers spent the night trying to reboot the legacy servers.
They discovered a failsafe lock, a piece of code buried so deep in the architecture, it took them 6 hours just to find it, let alone read it." She took a step closer to Jack. The code requires a specific decryption key to restart the cooling units and save the databases. A key that belongs to the original architect. She paused, her eyes narrowing slightly.