Chapter 16 - Forty-One Percent
For half a second, the only light in the server room came from the emergency strip above the floor.
Mercer hit the cracked glass partition with the chair again.
"Evelyn!"
The man on the other side dragged her backward.
Vincent drove the fire extinguisher into the weakened corner of the panel.
The glass finally collapsed inward with a violent burst.
Cold air rushed through the opening.
Dominic stepped across the broken frame before Mercer could stop him.
The attacker raised a pistol with his free hand.
Vincent fired first.
The bullet struck the wall beside the man's shoulder.
The attacker flinched and released Evelyn.
Mercer caught her as she fell.
The man ran toward the imaging corridor.
Vincent followed.
Dominic stayed beside Mercer.
"What did he inject?"
Mercer checked Evelyn's pupils and pulse.
"I do not know."
"Can you keep her alive?"
"I can if I know what he gave her."
Evelyn's breathing became shallow.
Her fingers twitched against Mercer's sleeve.
"Locker."
Mercer leaned closer.
"What?"
"Three... seventeen."
Dominic looked around.
A bank of staff lockers lined the outer hall.
He found 317 and pulled the door.
Locked.
He smashed the cheap latch with the head of the cane.
Inside was a small emergency kit.
Mercer opened it.
"Naloxone, flumazenil, atropine, epinephrine."
Evelyn's eyes fluttered.
"Blue."
Mercer found a syringe marked with blue tape.
"What is this?"
"Reversal."
Her voice was barely audible.
Mercer did not hesitate.
He administered the dose.
Dominic watched the clock on the wall because waiting without action made him feel more helpless than pain ever had.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Evelyn suddenly pulled in a deep breath.
Mercer exhaled so hard it almost sounded like anger.
"You kept an antidote in a locker."
Evelyn managed a weak smile.
"I know the people I work with."
"That is not comforting."
Vincent returned alone.
"Lost him at the stairwell."
Dominic looked toward the dark terminal.
"The archive."
Vincent stepped back through the broken partition.
The monitor had restarted.
The copy process was gone.
He connected one of the encrypted drives to his laptop.
A folder opened.
"We got forty-one percent."
Mercer looked up.
"Enough?"
Vincent began checking files.
"Depends which forty-one."
Dominic crouched beside Evelyn.
"Who was that man?"
She looked at him.
"Graham Pike."
"Name means nothing."
"Former federal contractor."
"Working for Daniel?"
"For whoever pays him."
"Tonight that is Daniel."
Evelyn nodded.
Dominic looked at the bruises on her face.
"Why did you change sides?"
Mercer started to object.
Dominic stopped him with a glance.
Evelyn answered.
"Because Daniel stopped caring whether anyone survived the plan."
"You noticed that after three injections into my knee?"
She accepted the cruelty in the question.
"No."
"Then when?"
"When he ordered Elias killed at Pier Nine."
Dominic's eyes narrowed.
"Elias helped arrange the crash."
"Yes."
"And that bothered you less than Daniel turning on him?"
Evelyn closed her eyes.
"You want a clean moment where I realized I was wrong."
"I want the truth."
"The truth is uglier."
She opened her eyes again.
"I told myself every step was temporary."
"The crash?"
"I did not know about the truck until afterward."
"The medication?"
"I convinced myself inflammation would fade once we stopped."
"Clare?"
"I objected."
"But you stayed."
"Yes."
Dominic stood.
"Then do not ask me to call you brave now."
Evelyn nodded.
"I will not."
Vincent looked up from the laptop.
"I found something."
Dominic joined him.
The partial archive contained a folder labeled LEGACY PROXIES.
Inside were scanned contracts, ownership declarations, and trust certificates.
Most were incomplete because the copy had stopped.
One file opened fully.
It showed a block of shares in Vale Industrial held by a company called Harbor North Custodial Trust.
The beneficial owner field was blank.
A hidden metadata field listed an internal designation.
DANIEL-07.
Dominic stared at it.
"How much?"
Vincent calculated.
"Four point eight percent."
"One trust?"
"One of at least seven."
Evelyn spoke from the floor.
"There are nine."
Dominic turned.
"You know?"
"I treated Daniel under several identities after he disappeared."
"That makes you his doctor, not his accountant."
"He kept documents in medical archives because nobody audits an MRI server for corporate ownership records."
Vincent almost smiled.
"Until tonight."
Evelyn nodded.
"Nine trusts."
"Total ownership?"
"Thirty-one percent before this year."
Dominic remembered Elias giving the same number.
"Before this year?"
Evelyn looked at him.
"Daniel bought more after your crash."
"How much?"
"I do not know."
Vincent searched the partial files.
"I might."
He opened transaction records dated seven weeks earlier.
A dormant family trust sold six percent of Vale Holdings voting rights through a private secondary transaction.
The buyer was a consortium of small entities.
All nine Daniel-linked trusts appeared among them.
Dominic read the seller field.
ARTHUR VOSS FAMILY TRUST.
He went still.
Arthur had sold Daniel six percent after Dominic's crash.
Vincent stared.
"Arthur knew."
Dominic shook his head.
"Or Arthur sold to entities he did not know Daniel controlled."
"You are still giving him the benefit of doubt?"
"No."
Dominic looked at the transfer price.
It was twenty percent above market.
"I am giving greed its usual importance."
Evelyn tried to sit up.
Mercer supported her.
"Arthur needed cash."
Dominic turned.
"For what?"
"His nephew's security company had debt problems."
Vincent's face hardened.
"Voss Protective Systems."
The company that installed the estate's compromised access network.
Arthur may not have known he sold voting rights to Daniel.
But his financial weakness gave Daniel another opening.
Every flaw in every person had been converted into access.
Arthur's ambition.
Martin's resentment.
Mercer's fear.
Evelyn's arrogance.
Elias's loyalty.
Even Dominic's pride.
Daniel had not created their weaknesses.
He had simply cataloged them.
Vincent found another file.
"This one is a schedule."
It listed three dates.
The first was Dominic's crash.
The second was the council vote.
The third was tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.
FINAL PROXY RECOGNITION.
Dominic looked at the note beneath it.
If the board accepted the newly consolidated proxy claims at nine, Daniel could challenge control of Vale Holdings legally while the falsified port records placed Dominic under suspicion.
The plan was not a coup with guns.
The guns were noise.
The real coup would happen through documents.
Dominic looked at Vincent.
"Who validates proxies?"
"Corporate secretary, general counsel, and two board representatives."
"Charles Wynn is general counsel."
"Yes."
"Corporate secretary is in New York."
"Yes."
"Board representatives?"
Vincent checked.
Arthur Voss.
Martin Keane.
Dominic almost laughed.
Daniel had arranged the entire validation group before the night began.
One man ambitious enough to seize temporary authority.
One man angry enough to shoot him.
Both compromised.
Both removable once they had signed.
"Daniel did not need Arthur to keep control," Dominic said.
Vincent nodded.
"He needed Arthur to authenticate the trusts."
"And Martin."
"Then once they signed, Daniel could discard both."
Evelyn closed her eyes.
"That was always his method."
Mercer looked at her.
"Including you?"
She did not answer.
A nurse entered with hospital security.
Mercer arranged immediate treatment for Evelyn under guard.
Dominic turned toward the exit.
Vincent followed.
"Where now?"
"Estate."
"We should go to the board before nine."
"We will."
"Then why the estate?"
Dominic stopped.
"Because Daniel has one thing I do not."
"What?"
"Fifteen years of preparation."
Vincent waited.
Dominic looked at the cane.
"But I have something he stopped accounting for the moment he decided everyone was predictable."
"Ellie?"
Dominic shook his head.
"No."
"Then what?"
"People who now know how he used them."
Vincent understood.
Dominic was going to put Arthur, Martin, Mercer, Evelyn, Elias, Charles, and every surviving piece of Daniel's plan in the same room.
Not because he trusted them.
Because Daniel had built his plan on keeping their partial truths separated.
Dominic intended to remove the separation.
As they reached the elevator, Vincent's laptop chimed.
A new file appeared on the encrypted drive even though it was no longer connected to the hospital server.
Vincent stopped walking.
"That is impossible."
The file was a video.
Dominic opened it.
Daniel Vale appeared on screen.
Older than the brother Dominic remembered.
Gray in his beard.
A scar along his jaw.
Alive.
He looked directly into the camera.
"You have forty-one percent of the archive, little brother."
Dominic stared.
Daniel smiled.
"I have the other fifty-nine."
He leaned closer.
May you like
"At nine o'clock, one of us becomes the man our father chose."
