My fingers tightened around the phone until my knuckles turned white. “Transferred them to whom?”
“A ghost corporation based in Macau. The transfer is on a digital time-delay. It executes in exactly forty-eight hours. Once those patents cross international waters into that jurisdiction, you’ll never get them back. Whitmore Holdings will be an empty shell. He set a dead-man’s switch.”
I stared out the window at the sprawling Manhattan skyline, the glass cold against my forehead. Arthur was sitting in a federal holding cell, stripped of his suits and his pride, but he was still trying to reach out from the grave to strangle me.
“Send me the IP architecture of the server,” I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
“Eleanor, the cyber division is on it, but this is military-grade encryption. They’re saying it’s impossible to stop from the outside.”
“Send it anyway, Detective,” I replied, hanging up the phone.
Arthur thought he had outsmarted me with his digital traps. But he had forgotten one crucial detail. He had sent me to a maximum-security prison. He had thrown me into the dark. And in the dark, I had made friends with wolves.
I reached into my blazer pocket and pulled out the cheap, untraceable burner phone I had smuggled out of the penitentiary. I dialed a number I had memorized in the dead of night.
“Hola, princesa,” a raspy, amused voice answered.
“Maria,” I breathed, looking at the ticking clock on the wall. “I need to hire a cartel money launderer for a corporate consulting gig. And I need her right now.”
Part 6: The Rot Within
The federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan was a fortress of limestone and aggressively flashing cameras. The trial of Arthur and Beatrice Whitmore was the media spectacle of the decade. The press dubbed it the “Billionaire Black Widow” case, though they were referring to Beatrice, not me.
I sat in the front row of the gallery, wearing a charcoal suit, my posture rigid. The courtroom smelled of old wood, floor wax, and the sharp, acidic tang of nervous sweat.
Arthur sat at the defense table. He had lost weight in the three months leading up to the trial. The bespoke suits had been replaced by a baggy, orange county jumpsuit. His hair was thinning, the golden-boy charm entirely eroded. But when he turned his head to look at me, his eyes were still flat, reptilian, and brimming with malice.
He still thought the dead-man’s switch had worked. He still thought Whitmore Holdings was a burning husk.
The prosecutor, a ruthless woman named Castillo, called Chloe to the stand.
Chloe walked down the aisle, her head bowed. She was no longer pregnant; she had given birth to a baby girl two months prior. She looked exhausted, a ghost of the vibrant, ambitious protégé I had once mentored.
“Miss Davis,” Castillo began, projecting her voice to the jury box. “Can you describe the nature of your relationship with the defendant, Arthur Whitmore, during the time his father-in-law, Harrison Whitmore, was critically ill?”
Chloe gripped the edges of the witness stand, her knuckles white. She didn’t look at Arthur. She looked directly at me. Her eyes were pools of agonizing regret.
“We… we were romantically involved,” Chloe whispered, her voice trembling into the microphone. “Arthur told me that his marriage to Eleanor was a sham. He said she was emotionally unstable, that she was going to ruin the company. He promised me that if we had a child… if I gave him an heir… we would take the money and leave.”
“And did he ever discuss Harrison Whitmore’s health?” Castillo pressed.
A tear spilled down Chloe’s cheek. “He said the old man was taking too long to die. He said… he said he had found a way to speed up the clock. And that Eleanor was so exhausted, she wouldn’t even realize she was the one pulling the trigger.”
The gallery erupted into gasps. The judge slammed his gavel, demanding order. Arthur’s jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might shatter. Beatrice, sitting a few feet away from her son, buried her face in her hands.
But I didn’t care about the gasps. I was watching Richard Sterling, my former CFO, who was sitting three rows behind the defense table. Richard had been subpoenaed as a hostile witness regarding the offshore accounts. He was sweating profusely, dabbing his neck with a handkerchief.
When the court recessed for lunch, I didn’t go to the cafeteria. I cornered Richard in the men’s restroom on the second floor.
I locked the heavy wooden door behind me. Richard spun around from the sink, his face pale, water dripping from his chin.
“Eleanor! You can’t be in here,” he stammered, backing into the paper towel dispenser.
“I can be wherever I want, Richard,” I said, stepping into his personal space. I pulled a folded piece of paper from my pocket and pinned it to his chest with two fingers. “Arthur’s dead-man switch. The Macau patent transfer.”
Richard swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I hissed, the memory of Rhonda’s fists making my own hands curl into fists. “Military-grade encryption doesn’t write itself. Arthur is a narcissist, not a coder. He needed someone on the inside to build the digital bridge. Someone with absolute access to the company’s financial architecture. Someone like the CFO.”
