Chapter 6
“Do it,” I told her, my voice turning to gravel. “But delay the electronic filing by exactly two hours. Please, Doc. Give me a head start.”
She studied my face, recognizing the dangerous glint in my eyes. She gave me a single, crisp nod.
Irwin took Ella to get pancakes. I drove straight to Cortez’s estate.
My brother was a creature of habit and hubris. He had given me his security gate codes five years ago when I house-sat, assuming I was too far beneath him to ever pose a threat. The code still worked. The house was entirely empty.
I moved with the precision of a ghost. In Ella’s room and the main hallway, I planted micro-cameras hidden inside air vents and the molding of picture frames. Then, I hit the jackpot: Cortez’s locked study.
I’d learned how to bump locks while shadowing a reformed cat burglar for a documentary in 2018. The deadbolt yielded in under forty seconds. His custom-built PC was password protected, but Irwin had handed me a USB drive loaded with brute-force extraction software sourced from his dark-web contacts. I plugged it in and let the code do its violent work.
While the computer bled its data, I picked the lock on his physical filing cabinet. Inside, under a folder mockingly labeled Asset Protection, I found physical backup hard drives for his internal home security system. The arrogant bastard had been recording every room in his house for insurance purposes.
I swept the drives into my satchel, grabbed the USB, and was out the door before the extraction software even finished its final beep.
Ninety minutes had passed. My phone vibrated. It was Irwin.
“CPS just logged the red-flag report,” he said urgently. “The police are mobilizing. The clock has struck midnight, Mike.”
“Good,” I growled, speeding back toward the city. “Let the games begin.”
But if Cortez’s lawyers suppress the stolen drives, will I have just handed my niece back to the devil?