Chapter 6 - The Noose Tightens
Daniel's hand never made contact with my coat.
From behind the rusted shipping containers, three unmarked police cruisers accelerated, their sirens wailing, tires screeching on the wet gravel. Headlights flooded the pier, blinding Daniel.
"Federal agents! Put your hands on your head! Do it now!" a voice boomed through a megaphone.
Daniel spun around, his face a mask of absolute horror. He looked back at me, realizing too late that he had walked into a slaughterhouse. "You... you set me up!"
"I didn't set you up, Daniel. You wrote the script five years ago; I just brought the audience," I said, stepping back as Detective Marcus Vance and four armed officers tackled him to the ground.
His face was pressed into the dirty concrete of the pier, his expensive clothes staining with grease and saltwater. As the steel handcuffs clicked around his wrists, Marcus pulled a hidden wire device from the lapel of my trench coat.
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"We got everything, Claire," Marcus said, giving me a respectful nod. "The confession of identity, the bribe offer, and the physical threat. It's a wrap."
As they dragged him toward the police cruiser, Daniel screamed my name, curses ripping from his throat, his eyes filled with a desperate, impotent rage. I stood there, watching the red and blue lights reflect on the dark water, feeling the first real breath of freedom I had experienced in half a decade.
