My Boss Fired Me in Front of Everyone - Nine Minutes Later, Someone Used My Name to Reroute $28 Million in Cargo

Richard was alive, and he was working with Arthur to clean up the loose ends. Tyler was one of them. I was the other.

I dropped my cell phone on the mahogany desk, my hands shaking uncontrollably. I had to get out of the building. I grabbed my purse and reached for the glass door handle to my office.

It wouldn't turn.

The electronic mag-lock had been engaged from the outside.

I slammed my hand against the glass. The dispatch floor outside was completely empty. Everyone had gone to lunch. Everyone except Sarah, the junior dispatcher who used to bring me donuts on Fridays.

Sarah was standing right outside my office, staring at me through the glass. Her face was completely blank.

“Sarah!” I yelled, muffled through the soundproof glass. “Open the door! The system is glitching!”

Sarah didn't reach for the keypad. Instead, she picked up her desk phone, dialed a brief extension, and held the receiver to her ear. She looked me dead in the eyes and mouthed three words: Drink your coffee.

I spun around. Sitting on my desk was a fresh cup of coffee in a white porcelain mug. It hadn't been there when I walked in.

I looked closer. The dark liquid was perfectly still, but a faint, chalky white residue ringed the inside of the porcelain.

They weren't going to shoot me. They were going to make it look like the stressed, overworked new executive had suffered a sudden cardiac event on her first day.

My cell phone buzzed on the desk. A text message from Sarah:

Drink it, Emily. If you try to smash the window or call the police, the men standing outside your father’s nursing home will walk into his room and disconnect his ventilator.

Attached to the text was a live photo. Two large men in black suits standing outside Room 402 at the Chicago Mercy Care Facility. My dad’s room.

I was trapped in a glass cage.

I stared at the poisoned coffee. I thought about my father, lying helpless in a hospital bed. I thought about the people locked in cages in the back of Tyler’s truck.

I didn't drink the coffee. I walked over to the corner of the office, grabbed a heavy bronze statue from the bookshelf, and hurled it with all my strength at the fire suppression sprinkler on the ceiling.

The glass bulb shattered. Instantly, the fire alarm shrieked through the building. The emergency override protocols kicked in, automatically disengaging every mag-lock in the building to prevent fire entrapment.

The door clicked open.

I bolted out of the office, shoving Sarah hard against the cubicles, and sprinted for the emergency stairwell. But as I burst through the fire doors, I slammed straight into the chest of a man in a trench coat holding a suppressed pistol.

He grabbed me by the throat, pinning me against the concrete wall, and pulled a federal badge from his pocket.

“My name is Agent Julian Rossi, FBI,” he whispered, keeping the gun pressed against my ribs. “And if you want your father to live past noon, you are going to help me burn this entire company to the ground.”

The next chapters are on the left side of your screen.