Chapter 3: The Bleeding Accounts
The betrayal didn’t break me; it forged me into something unrecognizable. I stepped away from the window, retreating to the cover of a rusted shipping container, and dialed my phone.
“Marcus,” I whispered when the line connected.
“Boss? Radar says your Gulfstream never took off. Where are you?” Marcus’s gruff voice was a tether to sanity. He was former JSOC, a man who dealt in threats, not feelings.
“I’m at a warehouse in Bridgeport. Arthur Vance is alive.”
A heavy silence fell over the encrypted line. “Jessica’s father? The one in the ground?”
“The coffin was empty, Marcus. The whole marriage was a long-con to get inside Sterling Capital. Jessica, Wendy, Arthur—they’re all here. They used Fiona to steal my biometric fob.” I took a jagged breath. “They think they have the real one. They have the replica. But the replica is still linked to the Cayman decoy accounts.”
“Christ, Ethan,” Marcus swore softly. “If they plug that replica into an unsecured terminal, the automated defense protocols will lock it down, but…”
“But what, Marcus?”
“To legally trace the IP and flag them for federal wire fraud and grand larceny, the decoy account has to be active. It has to hold real capital. If they trigger a transfer, we have to let it bleed for exactly one hundred and eighty seconds so the FBI cyber division can lock the digital forensic trail.”
“How much is in the Cayman decoy account?”
“Sixty-five million in liquid assets,” Marcus said grimly. “If we open the gate to let the FBI trace them, you’ll be watching your own money vanish in real-time. If they sever the connection before the three minutes are up, the money is gone, untraceable, offshore.”
“Do it,” I said, my voice like crushed glass. “Open the gate. Call the feds. I want them buried under the prison.”
“Opening the honey-pot now. Timer starting. Three minutes, Ethan. Don’t do anything stupid.”
I ended the call and moved back to the grimy window.
Inside, Arthur’s fingers were flying across the keyboard. The screen cast a pale blue light across his aristocratic face. “Bypassing the secondary firewall,” he muttered. “Jessica, the idiot actually kept his liquid capital exactly where we projected.”
Jessica poured herself a cup of coffee from a thermos, looking bored. “Ethan is predictable. He thinks he’s a shark, but he’s just a glorified accountant. Once the money is out, I’ll file for divorce on grounds of financial abandonment.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out.
ALERT: Unauthorized withdrawal initiated on Cayman Acct #884. Amount: $10,000,000.
I stared at the screen. Ten million dollars, erased in a millisecond. It was real money. My money.
I looked at the stopwatch app on my screen. 140 seconds left.
Inside, Arthur laughed. “First tranche is through! Routing through the Seychelles servers.”
ALERT: Unauthorized withdrawal. Amount: $25,000,000.
My chest tightened. I was bleeding out financially. Thirty-five million gone. The urge to smash the window, to stop him, tore at my muscles, but I forced myself to remain perfectly still. If I interrupted the transfer now, the money was gone forever, and they would walk away clean.
90 seconds left.
Fiona was curled into a tight ball on a metal chair in the corner, her hands clamped over her ears. Wendy was texting on her phone, completely ignoring the traumatized child.
ALERT: Unauthorized withdrawal. Amount: $15,000,000.
Fifty million. Gone. I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached.
30 seconds left.
“Almost done,” Arthur crowed, his eyes wide with greed. “Just the final fifteen million…”
10 seconds. 9 seconds. 8 seconds.
Suddenly, Arthur frowned. He leaned closer to the laptop screen. “Wait. What is this code?”
5 seconds.
Arthur’s face drained of color. “This isn’t a routing protocol. It’s a localized executable. A tracker.”
3 seconds.
“Pull it!” Jessica shrieked, dropping her coffee cup.
Zero.
Arthur yanked the silver fob from the laptop, but it was too late. The laptop screen flashed brilliant red, locking down with a massive FBI seal and a warning of federal seizure.
My phone vibrated one last time.
TRANSFER HALTED. IP LOGGED. TRACE COMPLETE.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. We had them.
Inside, panic erupted. “He knew!” Arthur roared, slamming his fist onto the keyboard. “It was a honeypot! They’re tracking us!”
Jessica spun around, her perfect facade shattering into sheer panic. “Pack it up! We need to leave, now!”
But as Arthur turned to grab his coat, his eyes darted toward the high ventilation window. Toward the small circle I had wiped clean in the grime.
Through the glass, Arthur Vance locked eyes with me.
His shock lasted only a fraction of a second. Then, his face contorted into something vicious, cornered, and deadly. He reached beneath his tailored suit jacket.
When his hand emerged, it was gripping the cold, black steel of a suppressed 9mm handgun. He leveled it directly at the window.
