Chapter 49: The Wilmington Intercept

Cole did not wait for a confession.

He turned his back and raised his smartphone. His thumb flew across the glass screen as he dialed a familiar Wilmington area code. He needed to reach Pell and Garrity immediately. He had to hire a local fixer to walk into that King Street hold center and intercept the package before Morgan Hale parked her car.

Lucas watched the lawyer move. He had to keep Cole entirely disconnected from the outside world.

He opened the System interface in his mind. He had eight hundred Acquisition Points remaining. He bypassed the psychological tools and went straight for electronic disruption.

[Skill Unlocked: Localized Signal Jamming (Level 1) - Cost: 500 AP]

[Description: Emits a localized frequency disruption masking cellular and wireless data signals within a thirty-foot radius of the Host. Lasts for ten minutes per activation.]

[Remaining AP: 300]

Lucas confirmed the purchase.

A faint, high-pitched electronic hum vibrated in his inner ear. Nobody else would hear it.

Cole pressed the phone to his ear and waited.

Silence greeted him. He pulled the device away and glared at the screen. The signal bars at the top right corner had completely vanished, replaced by a stark notification reading No Service.

Cole tapped the screen and tried again. The call failed instantly.

"Old building," Lucas said, pushing away from the oak table. "Reception on this floor has always been bad."

Cole did not waste time arguing. He shoved the phone into his jacket pocket and walked briskly toward the frosted glass doors at the end of the room. He needed a clear line of sight to a cellular tower. He needed a window.

Lucas followed him. He kept his pace measured and relaxed, ensuring he remained well within the thirty-foot radius.

Cole pushed through the library doors and stepped out into the fourth-floor corridor. The weekend lighting was dim. He pulled his phone out again and stared at the screen. The signal bars remained completely empty.

"This is ridiculous," Cole muttered. He turned right and headed for the main elevator bank.

Lucas matched his stride. Their shoes clicked on the marble.

"You are wasting your energy, Nathan," Lucas said. "Morgan has a head start. By the time you get someone on the line, she will already have the wet-ink signature in her car."

Cole hit the call button for the elevator. The button illuminated, but the digital display above the doors showed the car was sitting dormant on the ground floor.

"You think you are a mastermind," Cole said. He kept his eyes locked on the elevator display. "You think you are dispensing justice. You are just a child playing in traffic. Victoria will throw you to the wolves the moment the federal regulators knock on her door."

"Victoria knows everything," Lucas replied.

Cole turned his head.

"Do not lie to me," Cole said softly. "Victoria would never let a threat escalate this far. If she knew about Northshore, she would have had security drag me out of my office an hour ago."

"I told her to wait," Lucas said. "I told her to keep you comfortable while Morgan secured the physical proof. She listened to me."

The Micro-Motive overlay flared brightly across Cole’s face.

[Target: Nathan Cole.]

[Primary Motive: Rising Panic. The target realizes the extent of your influence over the CEO. The target acknowledges his internal leverage is entirely gone.]

Cole looked down at his phone. Still no service. He looked at the elevator display. The car had not moved.

He gave up on it and walked fast toward the heavy fire doors that led to the emergency stairwell.

Lucas stayed right behind him.

Cole pushed the heavy metal door open and stepped onto the concrete landing. The air in the stairwell was cold and smelled of dust and old iron. Cole went down two steps at a time, heading for the third-floor skybridge where the massive glass windows would guarantee a cellular connection.

Lucas followed him down the echoing stairwell. He stayed inside thirty feet.

"You are destroying your own boss," Cole shouted over the echo of their footsteps. "If the city regulators trace Brennan Soil and Water, they invalidate the Pier Nine acquisition. Vertex Management will lose hundreds of millions of dollars in municipal contracts. The board will fire Victoria and indict her for gross negligence."

"Victoria did not know the reports were fake," Lucas called down from the landing above.

"Strict liability," Cole snapped as he reached the third-floor landing. He shoved the door open and stumbled into the brightly lit corridor. "The SEC does not care what a CEO actually knows. They care whose name is on the letterhead. She benefited from the fraud. She will pay for it."

Lucas stepped out onto the third floor. He closed the fire door behind him.

They were standing at the entrance to the skybridge. It crossed the street to the Vertex annex, glass on both sides, and the morning sun lay across the carpet in long panels.

Cole stepped into the center of the glass bridge. He pulled his phone from his pocket with trembling hands and held it up toward the window.

The screen remained dead. No Service.

Cole slowly lowered his arm. He turned around and stared at Lucas.

He looked at the phone, then at the junior attaché standing twenty feet away who had not once checked his own.

"You brought a jammer into my building," Cole said. "That is a federal offense."

"I just have a terrible data plan," Lucas replied.

Cole put the phone away. When he spoke again, the hurry had gone out of his voice.

"You are going to turn that device off," he said. "You are going to let me make my call to Wilmington, and then you are going to let me walk out of this building."

"You are out of leverage, Nathan," Lucas said. He took a slow step forward. "Your exit company is burned. Your Delaware fixer is useless. The paper is gone."

"I am not talking about my leverage over Victoria," Cole said softly.

He folded his arms.

"I am talking about Camilla Verman."

Lucas stopped walking. Somatic Composure held his breathing steady. It did nothing for the cold in his stomach.

"Camilla has nothing to do with Delaware," Lucas said.

"No," Cole agreed. "She has to do with Vertex money sitting in a dormant Verman account that she thinks a bank misrouted."

A bus went by under the bridge.

"I collected the final print myself at eight forty-four," Cole said. "I read every page before it went to Victoria’s suite. The account numbers on page forty-seven were ours. Then you carried that folder for three hours, and our money landed in Camilla’s bank. Ms. Hale can call that inconclusive. I don’t need a scan to do the arithmetic, Mr. Vintage."

Cole took a slow, deliberate step toward Lucas.

"You carried the folder," Cole said. "You stopped Victoria from bankrupting Camilla by changing the numbers yourself. You committed felony wire fraud, and you made Camilla an accessory to the theft of corporate funds."

Lucas kept his face still.

"You have no proof," Lucas said flatly.

"I do not need proof," Cole said. "I need an investigator with a reason to look. I am a careful man, Lucas. If I do not enter a specific passcode into a secure server by noon today, a delayed email will be sent directly to the regional director of the SEC."

Cole checked his watch. It was ten-thirty.

"The email has the original draft from Victoria’s system, the print log, and the wire record," he said. "Anyone can lay them side by side. When the SEC reads that email, they will freeze Verman Development. They will arrest Camilla for accepting stolen funds. Her board will cut her loose, and she will spend the next decade in federal prison."

Red text flashed across his vision.

[Catastrophic Threat Detected!]

[The target has successfully inverted your strategic leverage.]

[Camilla Verman’s freedom and financial empire are directly tied to the target’s survival.]

Noon. Ninety minutes. And the only man who could stop that email was standing inside the dead zone Lucas had built.

"Turn off the jammer, Lucas," Cole whispered. "Let me save my exit strategy in Delaware. Let me walk away clean. If you try to stop me, the woman you did all this for loses everything she has ever built."