Chapter 4 - The Confession
Briggs looked exactly as he had twenty years ago, just grayer and heavier.
He stared at me in pure shock, dropping a half-eaten sandwich onto his desk.
I locked the metal door behind me and stepped into the dim light of the glowing security monitors.
I asked him what he was doing working private security for Julian Vance.
Briggs swallowed hard, his eyes darting frantically toward the red emergency alarm button on the console.
I crossed the room in two strides and grabbed his collar, pinning him against the bank of screens.
He began to cry, pathetically begging for his life.
Briggs confessed that the scaffolding accident wasn't a mechanical failure at all.
Julian had paid him a fortune to cut the safety line so Julian could steal my blueprints from the site office while I was dying.
Rage boiled up inside me, hot and blinding.
I shoved him out of the chair and grabbed the master keyboard, scanning the audiovisual network for the ballroom.
I still had a digital backup of my original sketches saved on a small encrypted flash drive in my pocket.
I jammed the drive into the USB port and began overriding the presentation system Julian was about to use for his acceptance speech.
Briggs crawled across the floor, slowly reaching for a heavy heavy flashlight dropped near the corner.
I hit the final enter key, linking my files directly to the main stage projector.
Suddenly, the computer screen flashed bright red.
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A warning message popped up, declaring that a remote security protocol was actively purging all connected external drives.
Julian's IT team had anticipated a digital breach and was currently deleting the only remaining evidence I had left in the world.
