Chapter 17 - The Flash Drive’s Final Protocol
Lily didn't hesitate.
She reached into the deep pocket of her oversized coat and pulled out the small, cylindrical steel cryo-container she had secretly snatched from my backpack before the guards grabbed her.
"Marcus, look out!" Victoria shrieked.
Lily twisted the silver clover base of the cylinder three times, exactly as Arthur had instructed her in the carriage house.
A piercing, ear-splitting ultrasonic frequency exploded from the device—a tactical military panic beacon designed to disrupt modern communications and overload electronic tracking devices.
The high-pitched acoustic assault hit everyone within fifty feet like a physical sledgehammer.
The guards dropped their weapons, violently clutching their bleeding ears and screaming in agony. Marcus staggered backward, his hands flying to his head, dropping the combat knife onto the wet grass.
Even Julian Sterling fell to one knee, a grimace of pure shock and pain contorting his aristocratic face.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Lily sprinted straight toward Marcus. With the fierce, desperate strength of a child protecting her mother, she slammed her small body into Marcus’s injured knee.
Marcus roared in pain, losing his footing on the slippery, rain-soaked mud at the edge of the cliff.
I rolled violently across the turf, grabbing the dropped combat knife with my bound hands. Using the jagged edge of the limestone rock, I snapped the zip ties around my wrists, slicing through the plastic in a shower of sparks and blood.
"Lily, run!" I yelled, scrambling to my feet.
Suddenly, the roar of a high-performance V8 engine tore through the darkness.
Crashing through the wooden perimeter fence of the estate, a heavily armored black Ford F-350 truck barreled across the lawn at ninety miles per hour, its high-beam floodlights blinding everyone on the cliff.
The truck drifted violently across the wet grass, sliding sideways to form a protective barrier between us and the helicopter.
The driver's door kicked open.
Graham stepped out into the blinding light. His suit was torn, his knuckles were bruised and bloodied, and in his hands was a tactical Benelli shotgun.
Standing beside him, stepping out of the passenger side with a squad of federal marshals in tactical gear, was a woman with silver hair and an iron jaw—United States Attorney General Margaret Vance. Marcus’s aunt, and Victoria Vance’s greatest living enemy.
May you like
"Federal agents! Drop your weapons!" Margaret’s voice boomed over a tactical megaphone. "Julian Sterling, Marcus Vance, Victoria Vance—you are all under federal indictment for treason, human trafficking, and judicial corruption! Down on the ground! NOW!"
***
