Chapter 6 - The Paper Trail
By 2:00 AM, the living room of the penthouse suite had transformed into a high-tech tactical war room.
While Ms. Darlene tucked Miles and Juny into the massive king-sized bed in the master bedroom, Cade sat at the dining table surrounded by Nico Reyes, two forensic accountants, and an elite cyber-investigator.
Laptops, encrypted server monitors, and stacks of financial documents covered the table.
"Boss, we hit paydirt on Sarah Cross's cloud storage," the cyber-investigator announced, turning a laptop screen toward Cade. "Before she went missing on Thursday night, she uploaded an encrypted ZIP file to a blind server. The password was the birthdates of her two children."
Cade leaned in. "What was in the file?"
"Proof of massive maritime fraud," Nico explained, tapping the screen. "Arthur Sterling has been using his private security vessels to smuggle illegal industrial waste out of the harbor and dumping it in international waters to avoid environmental disposal fees. Sarah Cross was the junior accountant who processed the fuel logs for those ships three years ago."
"She didn't quit her job," Cade realized, his eyes narrowing. "She realized what the logs meant, took copies of the shipping manifests, and resigned to protect her children."
"And last week," Nico continued, "Sterling discovered that federal regulators were closing in on his shipping routes. He realized there was a mole from three years ago. He lured Sarah to his North Ridge estate under the guise of a lucrative catering contract, stole her phone, and forced her to hand over her local hard drives."
"Where is she holding her now, Nico?" Cade demanded, his fist clenching on the table. "He wouldn't keep her at the estate with federal eyes watching."
Nico pulled up a satellite map of the Brierport coastline. "Our team tracked a private security van that left the Sterling Estate at 1:00 AM on Friday morning. It drove straight down to the abandoned South Dock Cold Storage Facility—a property owned by one of Sterling's shell corporations."
Cade stood up so fast his chair scraped loudly against the floor. "The abandoned cold storage plant down by the salt marshes?"
"Yes," Nico nodded, picking up a tactical radio. "It's heavily guarded by Sterling's private security contractor, Blackwood Security. They have six armed men on site."
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Cade looked toward the closed door of the master bedroom, where Juny and Miles were finally sleeping peacefully under warm blankets.
"Call the state police chief," Cade ordered coldly. "Tell him Cade Whitlock is requesting an immediate armed raid on the South Dock Cold Storage Facility. And tell him if his officers take more than fifteen minutes to assemble, my personal security team will clear the building ourselves."
