Chapter 6
Marcus had filed five security complaints in four months.
An unlocked service door.
A vehicle entering the wrong gate.
A stranger near the riding trail.
A missing equipment case.
A temporary camera failure.
Every incident occurred while Lily or Leo was somewhere nearby.
None caused harm.
All made existing security look incompetent.
Marcus used those incidents to push Meridian Shield’s contract.
Dante sat with the reports spread across his desk.
“Were these real?”
Nathan pointed at the service-door incident.
“This one was.”
The wrong-gate vehicle was a delivery driver given outdated instructions.
The equipment case turned up in another storage room.
The stranger near the riding trail was a landscaping subcontractor.
Ordinary problems.
Marcus had presented them as escalating threats.
Then the camera failure looked different.
Maintenance logs showed Grant accessed the system thirty minutes before the outage.
Dante leaned back.
“They were creating some of the failures.”
Nathan nodded.
“Looks that way.”
The hidden trackers now made sense as part of the same operation.
Marcus wanted data.
How guards reacted.
How quickly Dante moved toward Lily.
Which team shifted when a child seemed endangered.
How long exits remained uncovered.
He was building a security map while simultaneously arguing that only Meridian Shield could fix the weaknesses.
Financial motive.
Control.
A profitable contract.
Still, Dante felt something missing.
A security contract did not explain Marcus physically trying to remove Lily from the examination room.
It did not explain Grant attacking Leo.
Unless the boot contained something even more damaging than the tracker itself.
Dante called Emma.
“Did anything else fall from the boot?”
“No.”
“Did you keep the pieces?”
“Yes.”
“Every piece?”
“I sealed the boot exactly as it was after cutting it.”
Dante sent the technician back.
Twenty minutes later, Emma called.
“There’s something under the inner sole.”
Dante’s grip tightened.
“What?”
May you like
“A second compartment.”
The tracker had only been the first thing Marcus was afraid they would find.
