Chapter 8 - The Ultimate Deception
"He completely played us," Valeria whispered, horror washing entirely over her exhausted face.
Julian aggressively snatched the blinking drive from her trembling hands and inspected it under the dim dome light.
"He intentionally set up a mirror server to trap whoever tried to download the original files," Julian deduced angrily.
He forcefully threw the useless piece of plastic out the window into a dark puddle on the street.
"If that was a decoy drive, where is the actual hardware containing your life's work?" Julian asked.
Valeria closed her eyes, desperately trying to remember every single detail of Mauricio's paranoid habits over the last ten years.
He never trusted cloud storage, he never trusted his own employees, and he absolutely never left his most valuable assets out of his sight.
Her eyes snapped wide open as a brilliant, terrifying realization hit her like a freight train.
"He didn't have it in the office because he brought it to the wedding," Valeria gasped.
"He told me last night that his grandmother was bringing a vintage family bible to the ceremony for the vows."
Julian started the heavy engine, his eyes narrowing in sharp concentration.
"You think he hollowed out a holy book to hide a multi-million peso hard drive during his own wedding?"
"Mauricio believes he is smarter than God, so yes, I absolutely believe it," Valeria confirmed fiercely.
They sped frantically back toward the Parish of San Miguel, praying the building had not yet been locked for the night.
The storm had worsened, turning the city streets into dangerous, slick rivers of dark water.
They arrived at the church just as the elderly caretaker was preparing to lock the massive iron gates.
Julian aggressively flashed a fake police badge, intimidating the old man into stepping aside.
They rushed entirely back into the dark, silent sanctuary, the smell of incense and crushed flowers still lingering in the cold air.
Valeria ran directly to the wooden altar, frantically searching beneath the heavy linen cloths.
She found the massive, leather-bound vintage bible resting entirely untouched on a small wooden stand.
She forcefully opened the heavy cover, holding her breath as she flipped past the ancient pages.
The center of the book had been expertly hollowed out, perfectly shaped to hold a massive storage drive.
May you like
But the secret compartment was completely, devastatingly empty.
Suddenly, the heavy church doors slammed shut, and the massive sanctuary was instantly flooded with bright, blinding police lights.
