Chapter 7 - The Fairmont Exchange
By eleven thirty that night, the old Fairmont rail depot looked like the kind of place where bad decisions went to die.
The station had been abandoned for nearly twenty years.
Broken windows lined the brick walls.
Rust covered the tracks.
Weeds pushed through cracked concrete.
A single yellow security light flickered over the loading platform.
Michael stood beside me in the darkness.
Eli and Noah had been moved to a federal safe location.
At least that was what Briggs told us.
Rebecca was somewhere inside the depot.
Maybe.
And Grant wanted me.
That part still made no sense.
Briggs crouched behind a maintenance shed twenty yards away.
He had ignored Grant’s order.
Of course he had.
But he kept the operation small.
No marked vehicles.
No uniforms.
No radios on open channels.
Only four agents he said he trusted.
I wasn’t sure that made me feel better.
Michael checked his watch.
11:57.
“You don’t have to walk in with me.”
I almost laughed.
“He specifically asked for me.”
“That doesn’t mean we give him what he wants.”
“He has your wife.”
Michael looked toward the station.
His face tightened.
“I know.”
He had been like this since the phone call.
Focused.
Cold.
But every few minutes, the fear showed through.
Not fear for himself.
For Rebecca.
I understood that.
“What did Grant mean?” I asked.
“What?”
“When he said I have something.”
Michael didn’t answer.
That bothered me.
“You know, don’t you?”
He looked at me.
“Not exactly.”
“That sounds like yes.”
He rubbed his jaw.
“Your name came up once.”
“In what?”
“In one of my father’s old files.”
I stared at him.
“Your father?”
“Charles Hale.”
“The founder?”
“Yes.”
“He died eight years ago.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s the truth.”
“Then why was my name in his file?”
Michael looked away.
“Not your name.”
“Your father’s.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“My father?”
“Thomas Carter.”
I hadn’t heard anyone outside my family say that name in years.
My father had died when I was nineteen.
Heart attack.
At least that was what I had always been told.
“What file?”
“Old acquisition records.”
“Research transfers.”
“Your father’s name appeared beside something called Project Meridian.”
I shook my head.
“He was an electrician.”
“That’s what I thought too.”
“Until I found his name in a restricted corporate archive.”
My mouth went dry.
Before I could say anything else, the yellow station light shut off.
Total darkness.
Then a voice came through a speaker.
“Midnight.”
Grant.
Michael stepped forward.
“I’m here.”
A spotlight snapped on.
Rebecca stood on the far platform.
Her hands were tied.
Her face was bruised.
But she was alive.
Michael stopped breathing.
“Rebecca.”
She looked toward his voice.
“Michael?”
Grant stepped out behind her.
Gray coat.
No visible weapon.
Two armed men appeared on either side of him.
The scarred man from the hospital was one of them.
My stomach turned.
Grant looked at me.
“Daniel Carter.”
His smile was calm.
“Finally.”
Michael raised his voice.
“Let her go.”
“Where’s Noah?”
“Safe.”
Grant’s smile disappeared.
“That wasn’t the deal.”
“You get Rebecca first.”
“No.”
“You bring me the child.”
“Then she walks.”
Rebecca shouted.
“Michael, don’t!”
The scarred man struck her across the face.
Michael flinched.
I felt rage rise in my chest.
Grant saw it.
“You really do have the Carter temper.”
I stared at him.
“You knew my father.”
Grant smiled again.
“Better than you did.”
“What did he do?”
“What did he leave me?”
“Ah.”
“So Michael told you.”
Michael cursed quietly.
Grant stepped closer to Rebecca.
“Your father was not an electrician, Daniel.”
“He was a systems engineer.”
“One of the best Hale Biomedical ever had.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“He designed containment architecture for our first private research campus.”
“You’re lying.”
“Then ask yourself why his death certificate was sealed for eighteen months.”
I felt the ground shift beneath me.
I didn’t know if that was true.
But Grant said it with the confidence of someone who knew it would hurt.
“What do you want from me?”
Grant looked almost relieved.
“A key.”
“I don’t have a key.”
“You do.”
“Where?”
“Your father put it somewhere no one would think to search.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You dragged me here because of something he hid almost twenty years ago?”
“Not almost.”
“Seventeen years.”
Grant’s eyes narrowed.
“Thomas Carter stole something from us before he died.”
“What?”
“The access architecture for Meridian.”
Michael whispered beside me.
“Grant.”
“Don’t.”
Grant ignored him.
“Project Meridian wasn’t an experiment.”
“It was a database.”
“A complete record of every patient, every payment, every illegal acquisition, every dead infant, every doctor, every politician, every officer we bought.”
My skin went cold.
“Why would my father have that?”
“Because he built the vault.”
“And when he realized what the company was becoming, he tried to expose it.”
“Like Michael.”
Grant glanced at his brother.
“Exactly like Michael.”
Michael looked sick.
“You told me Dad died before Meridian existed.”
“I lied.”
Grant said it like it meant nothing.
Michael stared at him.
“You knew.”
“I knew everything.”
A train horn sounded in the distance.
There were no active trains on these tracks.
That meant movement somewhere nearby.
Briggs’s signal.
Something was wrong.
Grant continued.
“Your father encrypted Meridian using a physical access chain.”
“Three pieces.”
“One was destroyed.”
“One is missing.”
“And one belongs to the Carter family.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“Maybe not.”
“But you’ve carried it for years.”
My chest tightened.
“What are you talking about?”
Grant looked toward my left hand.
At the old steel watch I wore every day.
My father’s watch.
The only thing of his I still had.
“No.”
Grant smiled.
“Yes.”
My hand moved instinctively to my wrist.
“The key is inside the watch.”
I stared at the scratched metal face.
It had stopped working years ago.
I had never repaired it.
I wore it because it was his.
Nothing more.
Michael whispered.
“Daniel.”
“Don’t touch it.”
Grant pulled a pistol.
“Take it off.”
Rebecca screamed.
“Don’t!”
Grant pressed the barrel against her temple.
“Take it off.”
Slowly, I unfastened the watch.
Before I could move, the depot exploded with gunfire.
Briggs.
Grant’s men returned fire.
Rebecca dropped to the ground.
Michael ran for her.
I ducked behind a pillar.
The scarred man came straight for me.
Not for Michael.
Not for Rebecca.
For the watch.
He slammed me against the wall.
My head snapped backward.
His hand closed around my wrist.
I drove my knee into his stomach.
He barely reacted.
He punched me once.
Hard.
I fell.
The watch slipped from my hand.
It hit the floor.
The back plate cracked open.
Something tiny fell out.
Not a key.
A microchip.
The scarred man saw it.
So did I.
He reached.
A shot rang out.
He dropped.
Briggs stood ten feet away.
“Move!”
I grabbed the chip.
Michael reached Rebecca.
Grant disappeared behind the far platform.
Briggs’s agents chased him.
Then every light in the depot came on at once.
A voice filled the station.
Female.
Calm.
Evelyn Voss.
“Thank you, Daniel.”
I froze.
Her voice continued.
“Your father made this very difficult.”
“Fortunately, his son was much easier to find.”
May you like
Then the station doors locked.
And the entire building began to fill with gas.
