Part 2
The beeping came again.
Slow.
Steady.
Almost like a heartbeat hidden behind steel.
The FBI agent didn’t move.
Neither did I.
She watched the storage door while her hand rested near the holster beneath her coat.
“My name is Special Agent Nora Ellis,” she said quietly. “Whatever happens next, stay behind me.”
I looked from her badge to the brass key in my hand.
“My father planned this?”
“For years.”
The word landed harder than I expected.
Years.
Not days.
Not weeks.
Everything about the funeral suddenly felt staged.
The flowers.
The closed casket.
The rushed burial.
Even my mother’s vacant expression.
Agent Ellis nodded toward the lock.
“Open it.”
I stepped forward.
The brass key slid into the padlock as if it had never been used by anyone else.
One click.
The lock fell open.
The metal door rolled upward with a loud scrape that echoed across the empty storage facility.
The beeping immediately grew louder.
Inside sat a black military-style equipment case.
Nothing else.
No furniture.
No boxes.
No family keepsakes.
Just one case with a blinking green light attached to it.
I frowned.
“What is that?”
Ellis knelt beside it.
“A dead man’s switch.”
She entered a six-digit code.
The beeping stopped.
Only then did she let herself breathe.
“If nobody opened this within six hours after the funeral,” she explained, “every file inside would have been automatically uploaded to twelve federal agencies and every major news network.”
