Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN THEY LOCKED OUT
At 12:31 a.m., June Viscari stood outside the employee entrance of Hudson Crown Terminal and watched the scanner reject her for the third time.
Red.
Red.
Red.
The freezing wind off the Hudson caught the open edge of her operations coat.
Her stomach tightened.
Not labor.
At least, she told herself it wasn't.
“Again,” she said.
Ellis Monroe, the sixty-two-year-old security supervisor standing inside the glass booth, looked miserable.
“June—”
“Again.”
He pressed the override.
Red.
ACCESS REVOKED.
The words burned across the tiny screen.
June stared at them.
Eleven months ago she had walked out of Hudson Crown for what was supposed to be temporary maternity leave preparation. Nolan had insisted she stop working early because she had suffered a frightening bleed during the first trimester.
She had agreed to step back.
She had never agreed to disappear.
But somehow, while she was home choosing crib paint and attending prenatal appointments alone, her name had been removed from meetings.
Then reports.
Then emergency calls.
And four days ago, apparently, the building itself.
“Who authorized it?” she asked.
Ellis hesitated.
“Everett Sloan.”
June looked past him into the dark terminal.
Everett Sloan was Hudson Crown's chief operating officer.
He was also the man Nolan had hired to replace most of June's responsibilities.
“Open the gate.”
“I could lose my job.”
A transformer exploded somewhere across the yard.
Blue light flashed against the clouds.
Then someone shouted.
Ellis hit the manual release.
“Guess I just did.”
June entered.
The terminal looked like a sleeping city after an evacuation.
Cargo vehicles sat frozen in lanes. Gantry cranes towered motionless against the sky. Emergency lights painted narrow red strips along the buildings.
Warren Pike came running toward her.
He stopped when he saw her stomach.
“Oh, hell.”
“Happy New Year to you too.”
“You shouldn't be here.”
“Then fix it without me.”
He said nothing.
June held out her hand.
“Tablet.”
He gave it to her.
She scanned the failures.
Main power down.
Backup grid isolated.
Container routing offline.
Security gates frozen.
Fuel-transfer monitoring unavailable.
Fire suppression at thirty-eight percent.
But something was wrong.
“Why isn't the backup synchronizing?”
“We tried twice.”
“I told you not to restart anything.”
“That was before you got here.”
“Who ordered it?”
A voice came from behind her.
“I did.”
Everett Sloan walked out of the darkness wearing a wool coat over a tuxedo.
June turned.
Of course.
Everett looked at her stomach first.
Then her face.
“You're not authorized to be here.”
“Apparently.”
“This is an active industrial emergency.”
“I noticed.”
“You're thirty-one weeks pregnant.”
“And you're standing in a dead terminal explaining pregnancy to the engineer who designed its redundancy architecture.”
Warren looked down to hide something dangerously close to a smile.
Everett's jaw tightened.
“You haven't worked operationally in nearly a year.”
June stepped closer.
“No. I built the system you're failing to restart.”
Silence.
“Now move.”
For one second, June thought he might actually refuse.
Then an alarm sounded from Pier Three.
Warren's radio exploded with voices.
“Temperature failure in refrigerated block C!”
“How long?” June asked.
“Maybe forty minutes before pharmaceutical cargo exceeds tolerance.”
“How much?”
Warren swallowed.
“Twenty-two million.”
Everett cursed.
June didn't.
Money could be replaced.
People could not.
“Workers?”
“Six still unaccounted for.”
June's expression hardened.
“Forget the cargo. Find them.”
Everett stared at her.
“The refrigerated block—”
“Is insured.”
“The contracts—”
“Are paper.”
She pointed into the dark yard.
“Six people aren't.”
That ended the discussion.
June headed for the old operations building.
Her body remembered the route before her mind did.
Left past dispatch.
Up twelve stairs.
Through the steel door.
The room looked almost exactly as it had six years earlier when she and Nolan had eaten cold pizza under fluorescent lights and promised each other things poor people believed wealth could never change.
June stopped for half a second.
Then she saw the control panel.
“Who changed the architecture?”
Warren looked at Everett.
June noticed.
“Who?”
Everett answered.
“We modernized.”
“You bypassed the analog isolation layer.”
“It was obsolete.”
“It was the only part that couldn't be remotely compromised.”
Everett's face changed.
Just slightly.
But June saw it.
She leaned over the terminal and began typing.
“What happened at 11:58?”
“Initial voltage drop.”
“No. Before that.”
She opened archived logs.
11:46:02.
Administrative credential accepted.
11:46:08.
Safety interlock disabled.
11:46:11.
Remote bridge opened.
June stopped typing.
Someone had not attacked Hudson Crown from outside.
Someone had opened the door from inside.
“Whose credential?” Warren asked.
June enlarged the record.
The room went silent.
N. VISCARI — EXECUTIVE ROOT.
Nolan's master credential.
Everett spoke first.
“That proves nothing.”
June looked at him.
“I didn't say it did.”
But Everett had already defended Nolan before anyone accused him.
Interesting.
Her phone vibrated.
NOLAN.
She watched it ring.
Across Manhattan, Nolan Viscari stood on the forty-third floor of Daphne Keane's penthouse with fireworks dying outside the windows.
He had spent midnight holding a champagne glass he never drank from.
Daphne had touched his arm when the room shouted the countdown.
He had stepped away.
Not dramatically.
Not nobly.
Just instinctively.
Because the second the clock struck twelve, the only person he wanted to look at was not there.
At 12:19 he had checked his phone.
No message from June.
At 12:24, one of Hudson Crown's insurers called.
At 12:25, another.
At 12:27, Nolan learned his terminal was dark.
At 12:28, he learned June was there.
Now his call went unanswered.
Daphne approached him.
“Nolan.”
He turned.
She had removed her champagne-colored wrap. Diamonds flashed at her throat.
“You don't need to go.”
“My terminal is offline.”
“You have people for that.”
His eyes shifted to her.
People.
Six years ago June had said almost exactly the opposite.
If we're ever rich enough to have people for everything, promise me we don't become people who think responsibility can be delegated.
Nolan picked up his coat.
Daphne's smile disappeared.
“She's already there, isn't she?”
He stopped.
Something in her tone bothered him.
“How do you know?”
Daphne recovered quickly.
“You said June used to run operations.”
“No. You said she's already there.”
Silence.
Nolan stared at her.
Daphne lifted her glass.
“You're overthinking this.”
His phone rang.
Warren.
Nolan answered.
“Talk.”
“We found the breach.”
“What breach?”
“The shutdown was initiated through an executive credential.”
Nolan's grip tightened.
“Whose?”
Warren hesitated.
“Yours.”
Nolan went still.
Then another voice came through in the background.
June.
“Warren, get everyone away from relay room four. Now.”
Nolan heard an alarm.
Then shouting.
Then the call disconnected.
“June?”
Nothing.
He called back.
No answer.
Across the river, June stared at relay room four.
Smoke was curling beneath the door.
And according to the building schematic in her hand, the six missing workers were trapped on the other side.
She reached for the emergency release.
Warren caught her wrist.
“June, no.”
She looked at him.
“They're in there.”
“You're pregnant.”
“I am aware.”
Another explosion shook the corridor.
June pulled free.
Then the baby kicked sharply.
Pain tightened across her abdomen.
She froze.
Warren saw it.
“June?”
She breathed through it.
“I'm fine.”
She wasn't certain anymore.
May you like
But six people were still behind that door.
And somewhere across the river, the husband who had chosen another woman at midnight had no idea that by sunrise, June intended to be gone from his life whether Hudson Crown survived or not.
