CHAPTER 18: THE COUNTER-STRIKE
CHAPTER 18: THE COUNTER-STRIKE
The steel door of the vault rattled violently. Someone was throwing their weight against it from the outside. "Evelyn, open the door," Christian’s voice came through the intercom speaker, calm, cold, and entirely unbothered. "Your sister is currently holding a laptop with zero network access." "The feds aren't coming." "Hand over the physical ledger beneath the lobby floor, and I will let you walk out of here with the child." I stood before the door, my teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached. "If I give it to you, you'll kill us anyway, Christian," I shouted back. "True," he replied casually through the static. "But it will be much less painful than the alternative." Suddenly, a loud, resounding thud echoed from the hallway outside the vault. Followed by the sound of a violent struggle. "Get away from that door!" a voice roared. Our father. Through the small observation slit in the steel door, I saw him. He had arrived in his old car, bypassing the perimeter security, carrying a heavy iron tire iron from his trunk. He lunged at Christian’s lead operative with a strength he shouldn't have possessed. The distraction was all I needed. I threw the vault door open, sprinting into the corridor. Hannah appeared from the auxiliary staircase, holding a chemical fire extinguisher. She discharged the blinding white cloud directly into the face of the second operative, filling the narrow hallway with a suffocating mist. "Evy! The lobby floor! Tile number nine, fourteen, eleven!" Hannah screamed through the chaos. I ran up the stairs, leaving the violence behind me, focused entirely on the numbers.
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