His eyes followed me as I moved closer throughout the room.“It sounds like you do,” he insinuated cautiously.
I nodded in acknowledgment as I turned to fully face him.“Turns out, those particular buildings were specifically targeted by a certain group of individuals looking to cause me trouble.”
Patrick looked confused for a moment as his eyes focused away from me.“Why would they target those specific buildings?”
I folded my arms across my chest and stared him down.“The question isn’t why, Pat.It’show,” I affirmed, my voice cold with disdain.“How did they know which buildings to target?”
Patrick shook his head, his eyes bouncing all over the place.“I-I have no idea.”
“No idea?You don’t think it might have anything to do with the little data breach you neglected to inform me of?”
Patrick’s eyes widened as his mouth dropped open.“I-I was told it was just a fluke by the security team.N-nothing happened.Nothing was stolen.”
I cocked a brow at his response.“Three destroyed buildings would suggest otherwise,” I deadpanned.Patrick stammered as he tried to come up with an excuse, which annoyed me even more.“Why didn’t you tell me about the breach, Pat?”
He blinked several times at me, his brain spinning for anything to justify his incompetence.
“I-I didn’t think it was something to report,” he answered.“Like I said, nothing really came of the breach.Everything was fine!”
I subtly shook my head at his blundering.Denial was not a good look on desperate men.
“You couldn’t possibly know that, Pat.Any kind of breach compromises the entire system and its data, no matter the circumstances.You should have known this.”
The old man sputtered some more, making nothing but noise as I continued to slowly close the distance between us.
“The only reason I can think of that would explain your lack of disclosure of something so critical is because you didn’t want to reveal your sheer incompetence.”
Horror drew all the color from his face.“No!I…I…that’s not?—”
“The truth is, you’ve been slipping for a while, Pat.Your commitment to this role has dwindled in the past year, and it now only seems to appear when damage control is required…to cover up your own mistakes.”The man began to shake, his lower lip trembling as his breathing became more erratic.“I’m always watching, Pat.Always,” I sneered, my blood rushing at the scent of fear in the air.“But in this particular case, my decision is made.”
Pat stared back at me with wide glossy eyes, his shoulders hunched with so much tension it must be killing his back.
“W-what decision?”he stuttered, still frozen in his chair.
On a deep exhale, I approached his desk, careful not to spook him as I made my way behind his chair and placed my hands on his shoulders.
“You’re fired, Pat.”
Gripping the underside of his jaw and the back of his head, I snapped his neck to the side just hard enough for a severe vertebral artery dissection.The tear in the artery I made leading up the brain stem would cause serious cerebral hemorrhaging critical enough to trigger an acute fatal stroke.
Dropping Pat’s head, his upper body fell over his desk, his limbs twitching as his oxygen-deprived brain struggled to function properly.I left Pat to his fate and discreetly exited the house, grateful the sun had finally set.
Pulling out my phone, I dialed Scott.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Locate all the members of Digital’s cyber security team and round them up.I want to know what they know.”
“Got it,” he confirmed.“Marx is still sorting through the system to make sure they didn’t leave any shit behind.”
I nodded as I mounted my bike.“Good.Let me know when he finds something.”
I hung up the phone and placed it back in my jacket pocket.Starting my bike, I secured my helmet, then headed toward the source of my latest frustration.Thirty minutes later, I pulled up to a hilltop over the destroyed building, overseeing the smoke still filtering through the wind in the background.
Firefighters, paramedics, police, and news reporters still littered the scene, their bodies swarming like ants over a rotting carcass.Hopefully, my team of forensic ballistic experts had already confiscated what they needed, blending in with the rest of the ants down there without suspicion.
The state authority’s investigation into the explosion would take months, if not years, and was going to be a huge pain in my ass.But I knew whatever method of explosives Jason and his little boy band used would be untraceable.So the investigation would just be another thorn in my side to waste my time and delay my ability to act.