Chapter 8 - The Desperate Call
At 1545 hours, my secure satellite phone on the tactical command table began to vibrate.
The caller ID displayed an unlisted number originating from the Oakmont Crest cellular tower.
Marcus glanced up from his monitor, a cold grin spreading across his face. "It's Marissa. She’s calling from Julian’s private study."
Every trainee in the tactical operations center paused what they were doing. The room, which had been buzzing with the clicking of keyboards, radio traffic, and printer feeds, went deathly quiet.
I picked up the phone. I didn't say hello. I simply pressed the green button and held it to my ear.
The screaming was instantaneous.
"JOHN! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
Marissa’s voice was completely unhinged. There was none of the polished, southern-belle poise she had cultivated since leaving me. The brittle, manicured facade had cracked down the center, revealing the feral, selfish panic underneath.
"The police just kicked in the front gates!" she shrieked, her breath coming in ragged, hyperventilating sobs. "They took Carter! They took Pierce! They have Julian’s sisters in custody! The FBI is at Julian’s corporate headquarters! My bank cards aren't working! What did you do to my family?!"
I listened to her breathe for five full seconds. I let the silence hang between us, heavy and toxic.
"Your family?" I asked quietly.
"You know what I mean!" she screamed. "You’re behind this! You set this up! You had those animals in uniforms attack my boys! I know you did this!"
"Then you should know I kept the receipts," I replied.
She went dead quiet.
The sudden absence of sound on the other end of the line was deafening. I could hear the faint sound of Julian in the background, shouting profanities into a landline, smashing what sounded like an antique lamp against the wall.
Marissa’s voice dropped, trembling with a mixture of terror and desperate malice. She had expected rage from me. She had expected me to scream back, to threaten to kill Julian, to give her something—anything—she could record and take to a judge to claim that her violent ex-husband was terrorizing her family.
She got nothing. Only the cold, flat tone of an executioner reading a legal manifest.
"You... you think you're untouchable, John?" she hissed, trying desperately to sound intimidating, but her voice cracked on the word *untouchable*. "Julian has lawyers you can't even fathom. He has politicians who owe him their entire careers! This will get thrown out of court by tomorrow morning, and when it does, Julian will have Redstone bulldozed into the dirt! You’ll die in a federal penitentiary!"
"No," I said, leaning forward, looking through the glass of the trauma bay where Lily was resting peacefully, an IV hydration bag nearly empty, Dr. Singh sitting beside her reading a medical journal. "I don't think I'm untouchable, Marissa."
"Then stop this!" she pleaded, breaking down into tears. "Call your people off! Tell Lily to recant! She’s my daughter too, John! You can't let them put her brothers in prison!"
"Lily is not your daughter," I said, each word dropping like an anvil onto concrete. "A mother doesn't stand in a carriage house, sip chardonnay, and watch grown men break her daughter's ribs. A mother doesn't tell her child to know her place while she bleeds onto the floor."
"I... I didn't know they were going to hurt her that bad!" she wailed. "Julian was just trying to scare her! She was being disrespectful!"
"You were on the video, Marissa," I said. "High-definition 4K. With directional audio. We have your face. We have your words. And more importantly, we have the forensic log of you taking Carter’s phone and trying to delete the cloud backup yourself."
The line fell into an icy, paralyzed silence.
"You think you’re untouchable?" she whispered, her voice barely audible now.
"No," I told her. "I think evidence is."
I hung up the phone.
I tossed it onto the desk. Marcus immediately hit a button, cutting off the incoming cellular ping.
"Instructor Vance," Tessa said, looking up from her terminal with a grim look of professional satisfaction. "The State Attorney General just signed the primary arrest warrants for Julian Hawthorne and Marissa Vance-Hawthorne. Charge: Facilitating human trafficking, felony conspiracy to commit kidnapping, tampering with physical evidence, and accessory to aggravated battery."
"Who is executing the warrant?" I asked.
"State Tactical Response Team," Tessa said. "Supported by forty federal marshals. They’re rolling through the Oakmont Crest gates right now."
I stood up. I pulled my tactical jacket off the back of the chair and zipped it up.
"Marcus, you have the operations center," I said.
"Where are you going, Boss?" Marcus asked.
May you like
"To watch," I said. "Lily deserves to see the sunset from the front gates."
***
