Chapter 3: Reaching the Control Panel
The velvet drapery smelled of dust and dry cleaning chemicals, offering a merciful barrier between the bright glare of the ballroom and the dim, humming space behind the stage. Rows of black metal racks filled with amplifiers, audio processors, and video switchers lined the back wall, casting faint green and amber blinks across the floor. A technician with a headset clamped over one ear was staring intently at a laptop screen, typing furiously while tapping his foot to the distant strains of a waltz.
I crouched low, keeping beneath the level of the velvet fringe, and crawled toward the primary media rack. My yellow floral dress dragged slightly against the floor, but the ambient noise of the crowd swallowed any sound I might have made. The auxiliary HDMI cable—the thick, heavy kind used for high-definition feeds—dangled from the back of the master switcher, its silver tip resting just a few inches off the floor.
The technician muttered a curse under his breath, rubbed his eyes, and stood up from his swivel chair. "Damn server sync," he mumbled to himself, unhooking his headset and tossing it onto the console. "I need to check the main breaker before the keynote starts in five minutes." He turned away from the rack, walking toward the heavy metal service door on the far side of the curtain.
This was the window. I didn't hesitate. I stood up from my crouch, stepped out from behind the velvet drape, and walked straight to the back of the open rack. My small fingers were remarkably steady as I picked up the heavy HDMI cable. The metal casing was cool to the touch. With practiced precision—hours of watching Arthur test equipment in his basement office finally paying off—I aligned the pins of the cable with the port on the bottom of my black smartphone.
Click.
The connection seated with a soft, satisfying sound. Immediately, the phone's display flickered, and a small dialogue box popped up on the screen: External Display Connected. On the massive projection screen hanging directly above the stage—currently displaying a pleasant, rotating logo of the Sterling Foundation—a small thumbnail of my phone's home screen appeared for a fraction of a second before I quickly swiped down to the video file.
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My heart gave a heavy thump against my ribs. The file was there. Sterling_Transfer_Final_Draft.mp4. Duration: 4 minutes and 12 seconds. It contained the audio of Victoria's voice in her private office, cutting a deal with a disgraced real estate broker to siphon the endowment funds into personal accounts, overlaid with clear, high-definition footage of her signature going onto the fraudulent papers.
I reached out my index finger, hovering just a millimeter above the play button. The technician's footsteps echoed faintly from the hallway outside, returning sooner than I expected. I didn't have time to second-guess. I pressed the screen.
