Chapter 5 - The Snake's Nest
While peace settled over the Hudson fortress, Manhattan was consumed by chaos.
In the penthouse office of Montgomery Global Logistics overlooking Central Park, glass shattered against the mahogany wall.
Richard Montgomery stood behind his desk, breathing heavily, his face contorted in an ugly rage. Standing across from him were three men in expensive charcoal suits—his legal counsel, his chief financial officer, and his head of private intelligence.
"How did they vanish?!" Richard roared, slamming his fists onto the desk. "You had twenty men surrounding the Waldorf! How does a sixty-year-old woman and a half-dead girl walk out of a secure garage?!"
"Marcus Vance was prepared, Mr. Montgomery," his intelligence chief offered nervously, adjusting his glasses. "He used decoy vehicles and jammed our tracking frequencies before we could get out of the alley. We lost them at the upper Manhattan ramp."
"Search every property registered to the Whitmore Trust!" Richard barked. "Every house, every condo, every estate in Long Island!"
"We already checked, sir," his legal counsel spoke up, holding a tablet. "Evelyn Whitmore transferred all her real estate holdings into an anonymous blind trust six months ago. Legally, she doesn't own a single square foot of land in the state of New York."
Richard turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out at the rain-slicked city skyline. His hand trembled as he poured himself three fingers of scotch.
He had spent twenty years building a lie.
When Arthur Whitmore died from the slow-acting neurotoxins Richard had fed him, Richard had assumed he could easily force Sarah into a marriage that would merge the Whitmore clean energy patents with Montgomery Logistics. He had never anticipated that a twenty-year-old girl would possess the courage to steal the master key and vanish into the night.
For two decades, Richard had survived by skimming off the Whitmore foundation’s secondary revenue streams, using corrupt politicians and bribed judges to keep the company under his temporary management. But the temporary management contract was set to expire in thirty days.
Without the master decryption key to prove ownership of the patents, the court would automatically revert control of the multi-billion-dollar foundation back to Evelyn Whitmore.
"Find them," Richard said, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper. "If Evelyn regains control of the board next week, she will order a forensic audit. She’ll uncover the shell accounts in Panama. She’ll find out about Arthur’s medical records."
"What about the child?" his intelligence chief asked. "The girl was carrying the locket."
Richard’s eyes narrowed as he remembered the small girl standing beneath the glowing chandeliers of the Waldorf. He remembered her eyes—pale, sharp, and totally unfazed by the water he had thrown in her face.
"The girl knew about the failsafe," Richard realized aloud, his eyes widening. "Sarah couldn't have built the decryption protocol alone. She didn't have access to high-end servers while running across the country."
He spun around to face his team. "Run a deep scan on every hospital birth record in the tri-state area from nine years ago! Look for Sarah Whitmore using any alias! I want to know who delivered that child and what biometric data was filed with the state registry!"
"Sir," his lawyer warned, "hacking the state medical registry is a federal offense. The FBI—"
"The FBI works for whoever pays them, Harrison!" Richard spat, tossing his empty glass into the fireplace where it shattered into a hundred glittering pieces. "If that child holds the access key to the Whitmore servers, I don't just want her found. I want her brought to me."
May you like
He stepped closer to his legal counsel, pulling him by the lapels of his jacket.
"If I go down, Harrison, I am taking half the city council and every partner in your law firm down with me. You find that girl before the week is over, or you start writing your confession letters."
