Chapter 26 - The Trial of Michigan
The north point of Walloon Lake was a desolate, windswept spit of land dominated by a ruined, wooden ice-house built in the late 19th century. The lake surface around it was frozen into thick, jagged plates of black ice that groaned under the weight of the freezing wind.
Liam walked across the frozen bay alone, his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets, his boots crunching against the hard crust of snow. Inside his inner coat pocket rested the leather-bound ledger.
Inside the cavernous, shadowy ice-house, Dr. Arthur Pendelton sat calmly on an overturned wooden crate, wearing a tailored charcoal overcoat and leather gloves. Two armed men stood in the gloom behind him, their silenced handguns trained on the entrance.
"You walked right into the trap, Liam," Arthur observed, pouring himself a cup of coffee from a silver thermos. "Just like five years ago in Chicago."
"Daniel Mercer didn't die in that warehouse fire because of an electrical short, did he?" Liam asked, stopping ten feet away, his breath pluming thick in the sub-zero air. "You locked him inside."
Arthur took a measured sip, unbothered. "Mercer became unstable. He was planning to hand over our offshore routing codes to the Department of Justice to save his own skin. I couldn't allow a greedy idiot to ruin a twenty-year operation. And you were the perfect scapegoat—the brooding, disgraced financial consultant with a criminal record. When you surfaced at Walloon Lake with Nora, it was almost poetic."
"Where is the master encryption key?" Liam demanded, his voice even. "Give me the proof that clears my name."
Arthur chuckled softly, shaking his head. "There is no proof for you, Liam. Did you really think I’d leave loose ends alive? Once my men take that ledger from your corpse, we drop you through a hole in the lake ice. By afternoon, the FBI finds the cash in your boathouse, and as far as the government is concerned, Liam Vance killed his partner, hid the money, and fled."
Arthur gestured faintly with his hand. Both armed guards stepped forward, raising their weapons directly at Liam's chest.
Liam didn't flinch. He didn't plead. Instead, he slowly pulled the leather-bound ledger from his jacket and held it high in the air.
"You made one fatal mistake, Arthur," Liam said, his voice quiet, carrying through the drafty wooden beams.
"Oh? And what is that?" Arthur sneered.
"I’m not the arrogant, naive hedge-fund strategist you framed five years ago," Liam said, a cold, dangerous smile touching his lips. "I’m a man with nothing left to lose except his wife."
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Liam smashed the leather ledger down onto an open kerosene lantern sitting on a nearby fuel drum.
The glass globe shattered instantly. Kerosene erupted into a towering wall of orange fire, splashing across the dry, century-old timber walls of the ice-house. The structure caught like tinder, filling the darkness with roaring heat and thick, blinding smoke.
