I threw myself in front of Leo, knocking the laptop to the floor. The screen shattered, but the USB drive was still safely tucked in my coat pocket.
Julian stepped into the room, kicking the broken door shut behind him. Two massive men flanked him, their faces impassive blocks of granite.
“Where is she?” Julian asked, his voice a low, terrifying hum. He raised the gun, pointing it squarely at my chest. “Where did Sarah go?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice remarkably steady despite the chaotic drumming of my heart.
Julian sighed, adjusting his cuffs with his free hand. “Sarah is a deeply sick woman, Claire. You saw the files I brought to the hospital. She suffers from delusions. She thinks I’m some sort of comic-book villain. I just want my son, and I want to get my wife the psychiatric help she desperately needs.”
“You don’t want your son,” I spat, the anger finally overriding the terror. “You want the drive.”
Julian’s eyes darkened. The charming facade cracked, revealing the dead, soulless void beneath. “Give it to me.”
“I don’t have it,” I lied again, backing Leo toward the small bathroom.
“Check the laptop,” Julian barked at one of his men. The man picked up the shattered machine, shook his head. “Drive’s not in it, boss.”
Julian stepped closer, the cold metal of the silencer pressing against my forehead. “I will blow your brains out right in front of him, Claire. And then I will take my son, and I will find it myself. Five seconds.”
“One,” he counted.
My mind raced. I am an architect, I told myself. Look at the structure. Look at the weak points. “Two.”
The weak point was his arrogance. He thought I was just a frightened civilian.
“Three.”
“It’s in the mail!” I screamed, closing my eyes.
Julian paused. The gun remained pressed to my skull. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not an idiot, Julian,” I said, forcing my eyes open, pouring every ounce of contempt I had into my glare. “You think I’d sit in a cheap motel with the only piece of evidence keeping me alive? The second I saw it, I put it in a priority overnight envelope. It’s sitting in a FedEx drop box four blocks from the hospital. It gets picked up at 6:00 AM, addressed directly to the FBI Field Office in D.C.”
It was a desperate, wild bluff.
Julian stared at me, searching for the lie. He looked at my watch. It was 3:15 AM.
“Which box?” he demanded, pressing the gun harder.
“Kill me and you’ll have to search every box in the city before the sun comes up,” I said. “You won’t make it in time. Take Leo and me. We’ll show you. But if you shoot me, you lose everything.”
Julian’s jaw clenched so hard I heard his teeth grind. He lowered the gun.
“Zip-tie her,” he ordered his men. “Bring the boy. If the drive isn’t in that box, I’m going to skin you alive.”
They dragged us out to a black SUV idling in the rain. They threw me in the trunk area, binding my wrists tight behind my back. Leo was thrown into the backseat between the two muscle-bound guards.
As the car sped through the slick, empty streets of Seattle, I twisted my bound wrists. The plastic bit into my skin, but I could feel the cold, sharp edge of the USB drive in my coat pocket through the fabric.
I hadn’t mailed it. We were driving toward a drop box that held nothing but junk mail. I had bought us maybe twenty minutes of life. I needed a miracle.
The SUV swerved violently. Tires screeched against the wet asphalt.
Julian shouted something from the passenger seat, but it was drowned out by the deafening crunch of metal. Another vehicle—a heavy, reinforced tactical van—had T-boned us at the intersection.
Our SUV flipped.
The world turned into a washing machine of shattering glass, crushing metal, and screaming steel. I slammed against the roof, then the floor, the seatbelts of the men in the back failing.
When the car finally ground to a halt on its side, my ears were ringing. The smell of gasoline and deployed airbags choked the air. I blinked the blood out of my eyes, struggling against the zip-ties.
Outside, blinding tactical flashlights pierced the rain.
“FBI! DROP YOUR WEAPONS! DO NOT MOVE!”
Booted footsteps swarmed the vehicle. Glass shattered as doors were pried open.
“Leo!” I screamed, kicking wildly at the shattered rear window. “Leo!”
A tactical officer wrenched the trunk open. He cut my zip-ties in one fluid motion and hauled me out into the freezing rain.
“I have the boy! He’s secure!” another voice yelled over the siren wails.
I collapsed onto the wet pavement, my chest heaving. Through the chaos, I saw Julian being dragged from the crushed front seat. He was bleeding from a head wound, screaming obscenities, fighting the agents as they slammed him onto the hood of a cruiser and cuffed him.
Then, the crowd of black-clad agents parted.
Walking toward me, sheltered under a large, black umbrella held by an agent, was a woman. She was limping, her arm in a sling, her face bruised and battered.
But her eyes were bright.
“Sarah,” I choked out, scrambling to my feet.
She dropped the umbrella and ran to me. We collided in the rain, holding onto each other with a desperate, crushing grip. Twelve years of silence, twelve years of pain and misunderstanding, dissolved in the span of a single embrace.
“You did it,” she sobbed into my shoulder. “You kept him safe.”
“I lied to a man with a gun,” I laughed, a hysterical, broken sound escaping my throat. “I told him I mailed the drive.”
Sarah pulled back, her eyes wide. “You still have it?”
I reached into my torn coat pocket and pulled out the metal rectangle. I pressed it into her good hand.
“It’s a masterpiece, Sarah,” I said. “You built a masterpiece.”
An agent in a suit—the real Agent Harris—approached us. He looked at the drive, then at Sarah. “Is this it, Mrs. Vance? The ledger?”
“Everything,” Sarah said, her voice turning to steel. “Burn his empire to the ground.”