The Red Wire Beneath the Wheel
Chapter 02 - The Red Wire Beneath the Wheel
Police closed the driveway while a bomb technician examined the device. It was not an explosive, but its purpose was nearly as dangerous. A remote signal would trigger a metal pin that sliced the weakened brake hose after the car reached a programmed speed. The Maybach could have traveled normally through the city. The brakes would have failed only after it entered the steep highway outside town.
“It was designed to look like an accident,” Detective Lena Ortiz told Ethan.
Nathan stood beside the gate, answering questions with professional calm. He claimed every member of the security team had been accounted for. The vehicle had been inspected at six that morning. No one, he said, could have reached it without appearing on camera.
Milo sat on the stone steps wrapped in a blanket Evelyn had brought from the house. A housekeeper placed a sandwich beside him, but he did not eat. He watched Nathan instead.
Ethan noticed. “Why are you looking at him?”
Milo lowered his voice. “He said nobody touched the car.”
“That is what the cameras show.”
“No. He said it before anyone checked the cameras.”
Nathan heard him and walked over. “The boy has made his statement. We should let social services handle the rest.”
Milo’s body tightened at the words social services. He rose as if preparing to run.
Evelyn stepped between them. “He just saved my husband’s life.”
“He may also be part of the plan,” Nathan replied. “A child appears at the perfect moment, recognizes a sophisticated mechanism, and expects us to believe it is luck?”
Milo reached inside his shirt and pulled out a small metal tag on a cord. It bore the faded emblem of Blackwood Mobility’s engineering division and the name RAFAEL REYES.
Ethan recognized it.
Rafael Reyes had been a senior safety engineer at Blackwood’s experimental systems laboratory. Three years earlier, he died after his truck left a mountain road. The company report described the crash as driver error. Ethan remembered signing a condolence letter without ever meeting Rafael’s family.
“He was your father?” Ethan asked.
Milo nodded. “He kept notebooks about a project called Atlas. He said it could prevent accidents, but someone changed it into something else. The night before he died, he told me never to trust a clean report if the numbers underneath were dirty.”
Ethan felt the driveway tilt beneath him.
Detective Ortiz asked where the notebooks were.
Milo looked toward Nathan again. “Safe.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened almost invisibly.
A technician approached carrying the black device in an evidence container. On its underside was a tiny serial number and a scratched company emblem.
Blackwood Mobility.
May you like
Ethan stared at the mark. The attempt on his life had not come from a stranger outside his empire.
It had been built from inside it.
