The VIP Landlord

Chapter 4 ; The Hot Core

Chapter 4: The Hot Core

Colter couldn’t let the muscles in his face tense in front of Mr. Henderson. He knew one wrong blink and the lawyer would immediately call in the armed security team from headquarters.

“The machine is running, Mr. Henderson,” Colter said, meeting the middle-aged man’s eyes without hesitation. “And the red liquid your technician saw is a mix of leftover lubricant oil and chemical cleaner from Ms. Mercer’s carpet that I just threw down there.”

Mr. Henderson didn’t answer. He just stared at Colter with a sharp, probing look, searching for any crack in the young man’s expression. The silence on the third-floor corridor grew heavier, broken only by the sound of rain still hitting the window at the end of the hall.

“Lubricant oil wouldn’t trigger the incinerator’s heat sensor to max level within two minutes, Colter,” Mr. Henderson said, raising his phone again. “My technicians say the heat indicator in the underground control room spiked drastically, like something very dense and large is being burned in there.”

“Thick plastic tarps,” Ines Mercer cut in from her doorway. The woman stepped out into the corridor, walking slowly toward Colter and Mr. Henderson with a casual but confident stride. “I wrapped the carpet in three layers of leftover renovation tarps so the oil wouldn’t drip on your clean hallway, Mr. Henderson. If your technicians knew anything about chemistry, they’d understand that burning solid plastic raises the furnace temperature instantly and produces thick residue.”

Ines’s explanation sounded completely reasonable and was delivered with a dismissive tone. It made the old lawyer pause for a second. He glanced at Ines, then back at Colter.

“You two seem very in sync tonight,” Mr. Henderson said with a thin, suspicious smile. “Fine. If it’s really just a carpet and some tarps, there’s no harm in all of us going down to see it ourselves with my technicians. Open the freight elevator, Colter.”

Colter felt his throat go dry. If they went down in the freight elevator now, the distinct smell of burning flesh from the incinerator wouldn’t be covered up by excuses about oil or plastic. In the basement waste room, that smell would give everything away.

“The freight elevator is locked manually from below by your technicians for circuit safety, Mr. Henderson,” Colter said, grabbing the fastest excuse he could think of. “We’ll have to use the emergency stairs at the end of the corridor to get to the basement.”

“Then lead the way, Colter,” Mr. Henderson ordered, pointing his silver cane toward the emergency stair door.

Colter walked ahead, followed by Mr. Henderson with the steady tap of his cane on the concrete floor, and Ines at the very back, making no sound at all. As they descended the dim stairs, Colter’s mind raced. He had to find a way to warn Linus or create a distraction in the basement before they reached the incinerator.

When they reached the ground floor and stepped into the concrete corridor leading to the machine room, a thick, acrid smell hit the air. It was a mix of melting plastic and something else — something that made Colter’s stomach turn.

Two men in dark-gray technician uniforms stood in front of a digital control panel mounted on the outer wall of the incinerator room. The panel flashed red, showing a temperature reading climbing toward the maximum limit.

“Mr. Henderson, you need to see this,” said the thin technician holding a monitoring tablet. “The liquid leaking from under the furnace door is too thick to be regular oil. We suspect a large organic material was put in without going through waste separation protocol.”

Mr. Henderson stepped closer to the gap in the iron furnace door, ignoring the heat pouring out of the room. He leaned down to look at the dark liquid slowly pooling on the concrete floor.

“Colter, bring me the manual key for this furnace door,” Mr. Henderson said without turning around. “I want to see for myself what’s inside before this machine finishes its burn cycle.”

Colter froze. The manual key was in his pants pocket, but handing it over was the same as putting his own neck on the noose. If the furnace door opened now, the intruder’s body that hadn’t finished burning would be visible right on top of the coals.

He glanced at Ines, standing near the shadow of the corridor entrance. Her right hand slowly moved behind her coat, ready to take extreme action if this couldn’t be controlled. Colter knew if Ines moved now, the two technicians and Mr. Henderson wouldn’t leave this room alive, and that would trigger an open war with his grandfather’s law firm.

Right before Colter was forced to make a choice, every light in the basement went out.

Pitch black swallowed the room in an instant, leaving only the red glow from the incinerator’s control panel running on emergency battery power.

“What happened? Why did the power go out again?” the thin technician shouted in a panic.

“The main network system had a forced shutdown from the upper floors!” the other technician replied, trying to turn on his phone flashlight.

Colter immediately realized this was help from Linus Floyd. The hacker in Room 302 must have cut the building’s main power from his room to mess up Mr. Henderson’s inspection.

In the sudden darkness, the sound of quick, light footsteps moved beside Colter. Before the technician could aim his phone light at the control panel, a loud bang came from the direction of the machine.

Someone had just broken the furnace door’s automatic locking lever from the outside in the dark.

“Nobody move!” Mr. Henderson’s voice rose in anger. “Technicians, turn on the emergency lights now!”

When the phone flashlight finally aimed forward, the scene in the machine room had changed. The incinerator door was still closed, but the digital locking lever was broken and melted from a deliberate short circuit, permanently sealing the thick iron door from the outside until the burn cycle finished completely.

Ines Mercer stood leaning against the corridor wall, a few meters from the damaged panel, with an expression so calm it was as if she hadn’t moved an inch from her original spot.

Mr. Henderson walked up to the broken panel, his face flushed with anger. He slammed the head of his cane against the panel until small sparks flew.

“This isn’t a normal short circuit, Colter!” Mr. Henderson turned and shined his phone light directly in Colter’s face. “Someone in this building is deliberately messing with me tonight!”

Before Colter could think of a new answer, Mr. Henderson’s phone rang loudly, cutting through the tension. Mr. Henderson looked at the screen, took a deep breath to calm his anger, and answered.

“Yes, this is Henderson. What is it?” he answered sharply.

Colter watched Mr. Henderson’s expression change as he listened to the voice on the other end. The anger on the old lawyer’s face slowly faded, replaced by shock so great that his grip on the cane loosened slightly.

Mr. Henderson lowered the phone slowly, then looked at Colter with a look completely different from before — not personal suspicion anymore, but a new, much bigger fear.

“The inspection is postponed, Colter,” Mr. Henderson said, his voice suddenly hoarse. He signaled to the two technicians to pack up their equipment.

“Is there a problem at headquarters, Sir?” Colter asked, trying to use the situation to get information.

Mr. Henderson walked past Colter toward the emergency stairs with hurried steps, no longer as calm as when he first arrived. Right at the stairwell door, he stopped for a second without looking back.

“Someone just sent our law firm’s confidential files to an Interpol server, Colter. And the message was sent using encrypted coordinates that originated from the third floor of this apartment building.” Mr. Henderson paused, then tightened his grip on his cane. “The outside faction isn’t just after Ms. Mercer tonight. They’re preparing to level this place. And if you can’t keep your tenants hidden, we’ll all be dead before dawn.”