Emily's POV
The groan of the fracturing glass was a living sound, a beast in pain. Emily stood paralyzed, the tablet forgotten in her hand, still recording the impossible scene. The rappelling man outside adjusted his device. The whining pitch changed, digging deeper. More cracks splintered, the sound like a million icicles breaking.
Movement to her left. Marco.
He pushed himself up on one elbow, his face a mask of pain that now looked utterly real. "Emily… the panic button… secondary panel…" he gasped, pointing a bloody hand toward the kitchen. "Under… sink…"
The panic button had a backup.
She didn't think. She ran, sliding across the floor in her socks, throwing open the cabinet under the kitchen sink. Behind the bottles of cleaner, there was a false panel. She ripped it away. Behind it was a simple, rugged red button in a metal housing.
She slammed her fist down on it.
This time, a response was immediate. A deafening, pulsating alarm blared through the penthouse, a sound so loud it felt like a physical assault. Stark white strobe lights mounted in the ceiling began to flash, turning the nightmare scene into a hellish disco.
The effect on the man outside the window was instant. He flinched, his device faltering for a second. The whining dropped in pitch.
From the elevator shaft, a new sound, a heavy, mechanical clunk-thunk, like massive deadbolts sliding home. The elevator doors, which had been open, began to shudder and then jerk closed, right over Marco's legs. He yelled in pain, scrambling to pull himself fully into the penthouse as the doors sealed with a definitive, echoing THUD. The elevator was locked down.
Simultaneously, from the stairwell door, she heard a series of heavy, metallic clangs, automatic bolts shooting home, sealing that entrance too.
Alexander hadn't just built a safe house. He'd built a panic room the size of an apartment.
The primary lights cut out, replaced by the blinding, rhythmic strobes. In the chaotic flashes, Emily saw the rappeller outside cursing, fumbling with his gear. The secondary alarm had done its job: disrupted the attack, sealed the vault.
But they were still inside with her. Marco was wounded. And the glass was still a fractured nightmare, bowing slightly inward with a sound of constant, minute splintering. It wouldn't hold forever.
"Marco!" she yelled over the siren, crawling to him. The pool of blood was real. A jagged tear in his sweater revealed a deep gash along his ribs. He'd been stabbed.
"Go… safe room…" he grunted, trying to sit up. "Panel… in master closet… code is…"
He didn't finish. His eyes rolled back, and he slumped, unconscious.
The master closet. Where she'd slept. There was a safe room within the safe house.
A thunderous CRACK from the window made her jump. A large piece of glass, webbed with fractures, popped loose from its frame and fell inward, landing on the carpet with a heavy, crystalline crash. A freezing wind howled through the hole, whipping her hair around her face. The hole was big enough to climb through.
The rappeller saw it too. He unclipped a tool from his belt—a glass cutter. He was going to enlarge the hole.
Move!
She hooked her hands under Marco's arms. He was impossibly heavy. She pulled with all her strength, dragging him across the floor, away from the broken window and the biting wind, toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Her muscles screamed in protest. Every strobe flash showed his pale, lifeless face, the trail of blood smearing the pale concrete.
She got him into the master bedroom and kicked the door shut behind her. It wouldn't lock, but it was a barrier. The alarm was slightly muffled in here.
The walk-in closet. She'd slept against the back wall. She shoved aside the hanging clothes, revealing a smooth, featureless wall. There was no visible panel, no keypad.
"Code! Marco, what's the code!" she shouted, shaking him. He was out cold.
She ran her hands over the wall, pressing, searching for a seam, a switch. Nothing.
From the main room, she heard another crash of glass. Then a thud. A boot hits the floor.
He was inside.
Panic clawed at her throat. She pounded on the wall in frustration. "OPEN!"
Her fist hit a spot that gave a faint, metallic click.
A small, hidden keypad lit up with a soft blue glow, recessed into the wall at waist height. It asked for a six-digit code.
She had no code.
Footsteps, slow and deliberate, echoed from the main room. Then the sound of the bedroom door being pushed open.
Think! Alexander. What would he use? A date? A random number?
In a flash of desperation, she typed the only number she knew by heart that was connected to him.
The number from the black card.
6-1-7-5-5-5…
She hesitated on the last digit. 0-1-9-3.
She typed 0-1-9-3.
The keypad glowed green.
With a hiss of pressurized air, a perfectly hidden door, three feet wide, swung inward, revealing a small, steel-lined room with a bench, bottled water, and another bank of monitors—these ones still active, showing the chaos in the penthouse from different, hidden camera angles.
She didn't have time to marvel. She hauled Marco the last few feet into the safe room, his boots scraping over the threshold. As she turned to close the door, she saw him.
Standing in the doorway of the master bedroom, silhouetted by the strobe lights behind him.
The rappeller. He'd taken off his harness and hood. He was a lean, wiry man with a shaved head and empty eyes. In his hand was the glass cutter, now looking like a vicious blade. He saw her. A slow, predatory smile spread across his face.
He took a step forward.
Emily threw her weight against the heavy safe room door. It swung shut with a solid, final CLANG, engaging multiple locks automatically.
She was safe.
Through the thick steel, she heard a dull thud as he kicked the door. Then another.
Then silence.
She slumped to the floor next to Marco, her breath sobbing in her chest. On the internal monitors, she watched the man prowl the bedroom, examine the sealed door, then shrug. He spoke into a wrist mic, then calmly walked back out into the main penthouse.
He wasn't trying to get in. He'd accomplished his goal. He'd proven a point.
The monitors showed him and another man who must have come up the now-sealed stairwell methodically searching the main room. They weren't looking for her anymore. They were looking for something else. Information. Data. They went to the dead security panel, pried it open, and removed a small hard drive.
This wasn't a kidnapping attempt. It was a demonstration. A hacking. A theft.
On the monitor feed from the now-broken window, she saw a black helicopter, no running lights, descend silently toward the rooftop of the adjacent, shorter building. A line was dropped. The two men secured the hard drive to it, gave a thumbs-up, and the helicopter rose, disappearing into the night sky.
The men then walked calmly to the gaping hole in the window. The rappeller clipped his harness back on, gave one last look around the ravaged penthouse, and stepped backwards out into the forty-story drop, rappelling down out of view.
The other man simply walked out the front door of the penthouse. It must have been unlocked from the outside once the primary breach was over.
The strobe lights and the alarm stopped abruptly.
Silence returned, broken only by the howl of wind through the shattered glass and Marco's ragged breathing.
They were gone.
They had broken into Alexander Rossi's inner sanctum, wounded his head of security, stolen his data, and left a message written in broken glass and blood.
The message was clear: Your protection is an illusion. Your walls are paper. We can get to what's yours whenever we want.
Emily hugged her knees, watching the empty, wind-blown penthouse on the monitor. The gilded cage had been shattered.
And she was still inside, waiting for the cat to come home and find his prize had been violated.
On the floor beside her, Marco's phone, protruding from his pocket, began to vibrate. The screen lit up, illuminating the small steel room.
The caller ID said: ROSSI.