The Snobbish Dealer Locked My Engine Line—Until My Forensic Audit Repossessed His Entire Dealership Network At Dawn!
Chapter 6 - The Ghost in the Telemetry
The twin-turbo V16 roared to life with a deafening, earth-shaking mechanical thunder that vibrated straight through the concrete foundation of the testing hangar.
The massive exhaust extraction fans kicked on, pulling the hot blue flame from the downpipes as the digital tachometer climbed steadily toward nine thousand RPM.
The monitors across the entire bay flashed brilliant green: zero pressure drops, optimal oil viscosity, and pure, unrestricted horsepower output.
I watched the live telemetry graphs curve upward in flawless, unbroken parabolas.
Then, at exactly 2:14 a.m., the secondary monitor on the diagnostic wall flickered.
A line of unmapped code bled across the baseline data stream, overriding our secure Detroit intranet.
Sarah stopped typing, her brows drawing together in sharp confusion. "Zachary... look at the secondary CAN bus."
I stepped beside her, my eyes narrowing as I scanned the incoming hexadecimal stream.
The signal wasn't originating from our internal dyno sensors.
It was an inbound encrypted handshake routing through a private satellite uplink in Bern, Switzerland.
"Is that Apex Motors corporate?" Victoria asked, leaning over the console.
"No," I whispered, my pulse tightening. "Apex uses a twenty-eight-bit handshake. This is sixty-four-bit military grade."
A single text window forced its way through the diagnostic firewall, displaying in stark white monospace font across the main screen:
TARGET: ZACHARY DRAKE // VANGUARD POWERTRAIN. STATUS: DEALERSHIP PROXY TEST COMPLETED. PAYLOAD RECOVERY: 40/40 ENGINES LOCATED IN ROMULUS. NEXT PHASE: CARRIER ACTIVATION AT NORFOLK NAVAL SHIPYARD.
The engine on the dyno suddenly surged without throttle input, the wastegates hissing with violent pressure as the RPM redlined against the electronic limiter.
I lunged forward, slamming my palm down on the red emergency fuel shut-off button.
The engine sputtered, backfired once like a cannon shot, and died into dead silence.
In the sudden, suffocating quiet of the hangar, my private satellite phone on the workbench began to ring.
The screen displayed an unlisted number from an offshore maritime satellite node.
I reached out, picked up the receiver, and pressed it to my ear without speaking.
A calm, cultured voice—deep, resonant, and speaking with a flawless Mid-Atlantic accent—drifted through the speaker with chilling precision.
"You dismantled the Vance family rather cleanly, Mr. Drake," the man murmured over the quiet hum of ship engines in the background. "They were clumsy thieves who thought they were running an enterprise."
"Who is this?" I demanded, gripping the receiver until my knuckles ached.
The man chuckled softly, the sound cold as deep-ocean ice.
"I’m the man who designed the military firmware you just seized in Romulus," the voice whispered. "And unlike Carter Vance, Zachary... I didn't hide those engines to sell them to collectors. I left them there so you would deliver them directly to my transport dock."
