Suddenly, Victor’s phone rang. It was not his business line. It was his private encrypted cell, the number only five people had. He frowned and answered it. “Callaway,” he said. The voice on the other end was distorted, low and mechanical. “Mr. Callaway, you seem to have stumbled into a game you don’t understand.” Victor stiffened. “Who is this?” “You took a lot of money from us today,” the voice said. “Triton was just one asset in our portfolio. We don’t like it when the help interferes with business.” Victor looked at Selena. “And tell Miss Pendleton,” the voice continued, chilling Victor to the bone, “that her father screams hello.” The line went dead.
Victor slowly lowered the phone. The jubilation of the win evaporated instantly. “What?” Selena asked, seeing his face. “What is it?” “They know,” Victor said, his voice hollow. “They know who you are. And they claim your father is alive.” Selena stopped breathing.
The silence in the server room was heavier than the noise of the trading floor had ever been. The blinking green lights of the server towers seemed to mock them. Victor stared at his phone as if it were a venomous snake. “My father,” Selena whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the cooling fans. “They said he screams hello. That means torture.”
Victor pocketed the phone, his face hardening into a mask of cold determination. He turned to Graves, his head of security, who was standing by the door with a hand inside his jacket. “Graves, we have a situation. Code black. We need to move.” Graves did not ask questions. “The chopper is on the roof, sir. But if they have your private line, they likely have eyes on the building. The roof might be a kill box.” “Freight elevator,” Victor commanded. “Basement loading dock. We take the armored SUV. Selena, grab the drives. Wipe the laptops.”
Selena moved robotically, her hands trembling as she yanked the hard drives from the machines. She was no longer the confident quant who had just crashed a stock. She was a terrified daughter. They moved through the back corridors of the building, avoiding the main lobby. The adrenaline from the trade was gone, replaced by the primal fear of the hunted.
As they burst out onto the loading dock, the gray light of a New York morning greeted them. The armored Cadillac Escalade was waiting, engine idling. “Get in.” Victor shoved Selena into the back seat and dove in after her. Graves jumped into the driver’s seat. “Where to, sir?” “The safe house,” Victor said. “The brownstone in Brooklyn. Off the books.”
As the heavy SUV peeled out into traffic, Selena stared out the window. “Who are they, Victor? The people who called.” Victor poured a drink from the car’s decanter, his hands shaking slightly. “We call them the consortium. I thought they were a myth, a campfire story for junior analysts. They say it’s a group of the oldest money in the world, banking families that predate the Federal Reserve. They don’t play the market, Selena. They own the casino.” “And they have my father.” “If Arthur Pendleton is alive,” Victor said, “it’s because he has something they need. They don’t keep pets.”