Chapter 34 - The Descent Through the Pass
The armored federal transport vehicles idled outside the chapel, their high-beam headlights cutting thick, yellow tunnels through the swirling white chaos of the blizzard. The wind was ferocious, howling down the granite canyons of the ridge and whipping the heavy snow into blinding squalls that made visibility virtually zero.
I sat in the back of the lead transport, the heavy engine vibrating beneath the floorboards as the vehicle began its slow, treacherous descent down the winding mountain pass. Sarah sat across from me, her tablet glowing in the dim cabin light as she rapidly scrolled through data packets downloaded from the chapel’s master console.
"The DOJ just confirmed receipt of the encrypted ledger," Sarah said without looking up, her thumb flying across the glass screen. "The asset freeze has been initiated across all domestic and international accounts. Richard’s primary slush funds in the Cayman Islands are locked tight. He can't touch a dime."
"And the subsidiaries?" I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the condensation-streaked window, watching the dark, towering silhouettes of pine trees flash by in the headlights.
"That's the complication," Sarah admitted, her fingers finally pausing as she looked up at me with a serious expression. "While we were securing the main server, an automated fail-safe protocol executed. It wasn't written by Richard, and it wasn't written by Victoria."
I turned my head slowly, raising an eyebrow. "Explain."
"Someone with high-level administrative clearance—someone who has been inside the Vance corporate network for years—just transferred a controlling block of voting shares into an anonymous trust registered in Zurich," Sarah said, turning the tablet toward me. "Look at the routing numbers. They don't belong to Richard, and they don't belong to any known shell company. It’s a clean sweep of the secondary assets."
On the screen, lines of code and corporate routing graphs scrolled past in a dizzying cascade. I squinted at the master encryption key embedded in the transaction metadata. The signature was hidden beneath layers of proxy servers, but there was a faint, unmistakable watermark in the code—a signature style I hadn't seen in over a decade.
"Jonathan," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow.
Sarah frowned, shaking her head. "Jonathan doesn't have the technical expertise for this kind of corporate alchemy. He’s a puppet, Evelyn. Someone else pulled his strings from the very beginning."
Before I could process the terrifying depth of the conspiracy, the transport vehicle shuddered violently. A deafening crack—like a gunshot echoing through the canyon—ripped through the air.
The vehicle lurched hard to the left, the heavy tires losing traction on a sheet of black ice hidden beneath the fresh snow. The driver shouted an oath over the radio, wrestling the steering wheel as the massive truck began to fishtail dangerously close to the edge of the unfenced mountain drop-off.
May you like
"Hold on!" Sarah yelled, bracing her hands against the reinforced dashboard as the transport spun through a full three-sixty, the headlights sweeping wildly across the terrifying expanse of the icy abyss below.
---
