Chapter 3 - The Price of Arrogance
The next twelve hours were the longest of my life.
We moved Lily to a secure medical facility three states away. She needed surgery on her ribs and a safe space to begin the long process of healing. Every time she woke up, she searched the room for me, the fear in her eyes gradually softening into a fragile sense of security.
I stayed in the background, a shadow among shadows. My old contacts—men and women I hadn't seen in over a decade—were everywhere. They weren't there for me; they were there for the kill.
Richard’s mother, Martha, tried to flee to her private hangar at the local airport. She was stopped by a 'routine' inspection by the Department of Transportation that lasted exactly long enough for the FBI to arrive with a warrant for her arrest. She had been the primary architect of the family's illicit lobbying efforts, the one who handled the payoffs. She was the brain; Richard was merely the teeth.
I watched her descent on the screen—the high-heeled shoes clicking against the concrete of the airport, the look of utter disdain when they touched her arms, the realization that her status meant nothing to a federal agent.
"Dad?"
I turned. Lily was awake. She looked better, though the bruises were still a vivid, painful purple.
"You did all of this," she said, looking at the screens that lined the room. "You aren't just a hardware store manager."
"I was a lot of things, Lily," I said. "But mostly, I was a man who wanted a quiet life for his daughter. I failed to keep you safe from him. I won't fail again."
"He called me," she said, her voice shaking. "From a burner phone. The guards didn't catch it. He said he knows where we are. He said you can't protect me forever."
I stood up, the chair scraping sharply against the floor. "He called you?"
"Yes."
I walked to the terminal. "Give me the number."
She recited it. It was a routing number, but it was being bounced through a dozen satellites. I traced it in seconds. It wasn't coming from his cell. It was coming from the holding facility where he was being processed before his arraignment.
The corruption ran deeper than I thought. He was still connected. He still had the keys to the kingdom.
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"He's not a prisoner," I said to myself. "He's a guest."
I didn't wait for the Agency. I grabbed my gear. There was one way to end this, and it didn't involve paperwork or federal investigators. It involved the one thing Richard Sterling didn't understand: a man who has already buried his own identity has nothing left to lose.
