Chapter 32 - The High-Altitude Truth
The armored Mercedes van tore through the back alley behind Maplewood Court, crashing through the rotting wooden fence of the neighboring abandoned parcel and rocketing onto the Interstate 5 on-ramp with its lights blacked out.
Behind us, Maplewood Court faded into a silhouette of flashing red and blue police cruisers. Arthur Montgomery’s syndicate had undoubtedly arranged for the local police to arrive late—just late enough for their men to abduct me, but too late to catch Marcus Hale’s counter-ambush.
Twenty minutes later, we pulled past the restricted security gates of Boeing Field. Waiting on the tarmac, its turbine engines already whining in a high-pitched idle, was a sleek Bombardier Global 7500 devoid of any commercial tail numbers.
As the jet climbed through thirty thousand feet, piercing the dense cloud cover above the Pacific Northwest, the cabin lights warmed to a gentle amber. Marcus handed me a warm mug of black tea and a sealed leather dossier.
"Drink," Marcus said, taking a seat across the leather conference table. "You’re in international airspace now, Miss Vance. Arthur Montgomery’s jurisdiction ends at the shoreline. And the consortium he worked for is currently having an apoplectic fit."
"Consortium?" My voice was tight, the shock finally giving way to cold, clinical curiosity. "Arthur was just an arrogant real estate mogul. A corrupt family friend who tried to swindle my house through my mother."
Marcus let out a dry, humorless chuckle. "Arthur Montgomery was the North American regional bagman for the Helvetia Consortium—a private cartel of offshore financiers, disgraced European aristocrats, and legacy corporate raiders who specialize in hostile sovereign takeovers. In the late 1990s, your father, Richard Vance, discovered that the consortium was using his maritime logistics enterprise to launder state treasury bonds looted during the collapse of the Eastern Bloc."
I stared at Marcus, my mind racing. "So the car crash on Highway 101 in 2007..."
"A calculated strike," Marcus explained, leaning forward. "Arthur Montgomery paid a rogue mechanic to sever the hydraulic brake lines on Richard’s car. But Richard knew it was coming. Our intelligence team intercepted the contract three weeks prior. Richard hired an incurably ill former intelligence operative who volunteered to take his place in exchange for a twenty-million-dollar trust established for his surviving grandchildren."
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, a tempest of grief, anger, and awe swirling in my chest. "He let me mourn him for sixteen years. He let Eleanor drag me through hell. He let my brother Julian treat me like an unwanted stray."
"He had to," Marcus said gently. "If the Consortium suspected for even a fraction of a second that Richard was alive, they wouldn't have just taken the money. They would have eliminated you before you turned eighteen. Richard had to disappear into the shadows of Switzerland, building a multi-billion-dollar trap from a private clinic in Zurich, waiting for Arthur and Eleanor to overplay their hand."
May you like
Marcus tapped the leather dossier.
"And tonight, Lauren, the trap is fully loaded. In six hours, we land in Zurich. You aren't just going to see your father. You are going to sign the warrant that obliterates the people who ruined your life."
