Chapter 5 - The Gambit
"I need twenty-four hours," I said.
Victor stared at me, his eyes narrowing as he calculated the risk. "You have twelve, Mr. Vance. By tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m., I want the manifest codes for the North Basin terminal on my desk. If I don't have them, Sarah dies. And then... we come back for the boy."
He turned and walked out into the rain, his heavy boots splashing in the puddles until the sound faded into the distance.
I stood in the empty storage unit for a long time, the cold dampness of the air seeping into my bones. My laptop screen still glowed with the encrypted files of my ex-wife’s desperation.
I didn't call the police.
If Agent Glenn and her team rushed the marina, Victor would know. He had eyes everywhere, and Sarah would be dead before the first police cruiser cleared the gate. I had to play his game—but I had to play it better than he did.
I packed the briefcase, closed the storage unit, and drove back to my office in downtown Seattle.
The building was empty, the night shift security guards the only souls in the towering glass structure. I bypassed the main lobby and went straight to my private office on the forty-second floor.
I sat at my desk, looking out over the glittering skyline. Below me, the city looked so small, so organized, as if every life were neatly tucked into its own little box. But I knew the truth now. Beneath the surface, the city was a wild, predatory thing, and my family had been dragged into its teeth.
I called my chief technology officer, a brilliant young woman named Lin.
"Julian?" her voice was groggy, her phone ringing at 2:14 a.m. "Is everything okay? I heard about Emma—"
"I need a backdoor into the North Basin terminal server," I said, cutting her off. "Right now, Lin. I need a ghost manifest. Something that looks identical to our shipping codes, but contains a tracking virus that will trigger the moment it’s accessed by an external IP."
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. "Julian, that’s highly illegal. If the Port Authority finds out—"
"My wife is going to be murdered if I don't do this, Lin," I said, my voice cracking. "And my children will never see their mother again. Please."
Another pause, then the sound of keys clacking in the background. "I'm on it. Give me two hours. I'll send the files to your personal drive."
"Thank you," I said.
I hung up and opened the ledger once more. I began to cross-reference the shipping dates Sarah had recorded with my company's historical data.
She hadn't just been selling routing algorithms. She had been subtly altering the shipping schedules of our competitors to ensure that certain vessels—vessels owned by shell companies linked to 'Viper'—always arrived at the port when security was at its lowest.
She had been their inside operative, forced into a life of corporate espionage to pay off her father's sins.
But as I looked closer at the final entries, I noticed a discrepancy.
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The last three payments of $100,000 hadn't gone to the Panama account. They had been routed to a local bank account registered under the name 'Margaret Vance.'
My mother.
