Brenda and Evelyn kept hammering at the vault door, their grunts and the screech of metal filling the small space. I knew the door wouldn’t hold indefinitely against that kind of assault. I just needed more time. Time to think.
Then, the task light flickered. Once. Twice.
It died, plunging the work room into absolute darkness.
I heard Brenda’s surprised gasp from the other side of the vault.
“What was that?” Evelyn’s voice was sharper, laced with genuine fear.
Brenda laughed, a harsh, humorless sound. “Just Ray doing his job.”
Ray Garrick. The building’s head security guard. Brenda must have leveraged him, too. My mind raced, trying to figure out how.
The penthouse was silent now, save for the rhythmic thud of the pry-bar, which had resumed its attack on the vault. No hum of the refrigerator. No soft whir of the ventilation. Just dead silence.
My private line, the one connected to the building’s emergency maintenance, was also dead. It was a complete blackout. And no running water, I realized as I tried the faucet in the small adjacent utility sink.
Brenda shouted through the door. “Having fun in the dark, Marcus? Thought you were so smart with all your little gadgets!”
She wanted to flush me out. To make me desperate. I could picture Ray Garrick in the basement sub-panel, dutifully flipping switches because Brenda had spun him a tale about a burst pipe on the 14th floor, or some other emergency.
“He’s probably gone,” Evelyn said, her voice strained. “We just need to finish this.”
My blood ran cold. They believed I would panic, that I would crack. But this wasn’t just a power cut. It was a strategic move. And it told me Brenda was far more organized than I’d given her credit for.
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