Chapter 25 - The Voice from the Police Radio
Garrett lay sprawled across the concrete floor, his chest heaving, his face contorted in a grimace of agony. Blood leaked from his shoulder and his ruined leg, pooling around the iron dog chain he had dropped during the scuffle. Yet, despite the shattered bones and the iron wrench Daniel held hovering over his skull, Garrett began to laugh.
It was a broken, bubbling sound that chilled Daniel to the core.
“You’re... too late, Dan,” Garrett coughed, spitting a mixture of blood and phlegm onto the floor. “You think... this is about money? Diane doesn't care about the trusts anymore. She knows she’s going away for twenty-five years.”
Daniel pressed the blunt end of the wrench against Garrett’s throat, putting his full weight behind it. “Speak. Why did you come here tonight?”
“Distraction,” Garrett wheezed, his eyes bulging as the pressure cut into his windpipe. “Diane... Diane’s transport van... left the county courthouse at midnight. Route 9. The marshland crossing.”
Daniel froze.
From the pocket of Garrett’s olive jacket, a tactical shortwave radio suddenly crackled to life, hissing through the high-frequency static. A cold, flat voice cut through the speaker:
*“Eagle One to Perch. The transport has been intercepted. The guards are neutralized. Package is mobile. Repeat, package is mobile. Garrett, report status on the boy.”*
Daniel reached down with trembling fingers, yanked the radio from Garrett’s pocket, and brought it to his ear. The radio wasn't tuned to a commercial walkie-talkie frequency; it was transmitting on a secure, encrypted law enforcement band.
Diane Vance had not been sitting helplessly in a holding cell.
Her public humiliation, the viral video, the courtroom surrender—it had all been a stalling tactic. She had orchestrated an armed ambush on her own prison transport, using Garrett to eliminate Daniel and Mason so there would be no surviving witnesses, no conflicting claims to the Vance assets, and no one left to testify at the grand jury indictment on Monday.
“You sick bastards,” Daniel breathed into the microphone.
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. Then, an unmistakable, cultured voice drifted through the static. It was smooth, devoid of remorse, dripping with the icy aristocratic arrogance that had terrified Mason for six agonizing months.
“Hello, Daniel,” Diane Vance said over the radio, the background noise filled with the rush of wind and the rumble of a heavy diesel engine. “I told you at the dinner table once: family is an iron circle. You broke the circle when you humiliated my daughter in front of our peers.”
“Diane,” Daniel snarled, his knuckles white around the radio casing. “Your son is bleeding out on my basement floor. Turn yourself in, or he dies right here.”
A soft, chilling laugh answered him.
May you like
“Garrett knew the risks when he took the contract,” Diane replied without an ounce of maternal warmth. “A mother must make sacrifices for the survival of the dynasty. Look out your front window, Daniel. Vanessa’s friends are arriving. And this time, they didn't bring pet collars.”
***
