Chapter 29 - Five Minutes
“Bomb?” my father demanded.
Security scanned the room.
“No explosive signal.”
Adrian examined the countdown.
“Then what happens at zero?”
Richard suddenly understood.
“The records.”
He ran toward the shelves.
“The archive has an old fire-suppression system.”
Not water.
Chemical destruction.
Originally designed to protect sensitive documents from fire.
Modified incorrectly, it could destroy everything inside.
Including us.
03:41
My security director tried the steel doors.
Locked electronically.
I looked around.
Parker knew the building.
But so did my father.
“Dad.”
Arthur was already examining the wall.
“When we built Sterling Tower, we preserved the original emergency ventilation shaft.”
“Where?”
He pointed upward.
Thirty feet above us.
Adrian found an old maintenance ladder.
Security positioned it.
02:18
“Vivienne first,” my father ordered.
“No.”
“Your daughter needs you.”
That ended the argument.
I climbed.
Adrian followed.
My mother came next.
Then my father.
Richard remained below.
“Move!” I shouted.
He looked toward the shelves.
Decades of crimes surrounded him.
His crimes.
His secrets.
His empire.
“No.”
My mother stared down.
“Father!”
Richard looked up at her.
For the first time, the ruthless old man's face softened.
“I took one child from you.”
His eyes moved toward me.
“I won't take another.”
00:42
“Richard!”
He pushed the ladder upward, helping the final security officer reach the shaft.
Then he stepped away.
The ventilation grate closed.
00:08
My mother screamed his name.
A violent hiss filled the archive below.
White chemical vapor exploded through the room.
Richard Crawford disappeared inside it.
We crawled desperately through the ventilation shaft.
Behind us, thirty years of buried secrets were consumed.
May you like
And somewhere above us, Parker was escaping.
Again.
