Chapter 7 - Cornered Predators
By Friday morning, the legal net had tightened around Carter Preston until there was virtually nowhere left for him to breathe.
He had posted a one-million-dollar bond—secured by his elderly mother’s pension and life insurance policies—and was confined to a small studio apartment in Long Island City with an ankle monitor locked onto his left leg. His passport was seized. His bank accounts were frozen under a federal restraining order.
The polished, handsome executive was gone. In his place was a feral, unshaven man pacing a six-hundred-square-foot room littered with takeout cartons and printed legal briefs.
His burner phone buzzed against the laminate counter.
He snatched it up. "Hello?"
"Carter?" It was Khloe. Her voice was cracked, slurred, and breathless. "Carter, you have to help me. Sarah is evicting us from the Bedford house. The bank repossessed my jewelry this morning. My mother is locked in her bedroom popping Valium. We have nothing left."
Carter let out a ragged, barking laugh. "You have nothing? *I’m facing twenty years in federal prison, Khloe!* The FBI has my emails! They have the Cayman routing numbers! Bradley Stone walked out on me, and my court-appointed attorney is telling me to take a plea deal for seven years!"
"You promised me!" Khloe sobbed through the speaker. "You told me we would be together! You told me you would take care of me!"
"I told you whatever I had to tell you to keep you quiet while I got the money!" Carter roared, veins bulging against his neck. "You were an idiot, Khloe! An easy mark! If you hadn't opened your big, stupid mouth behind that door at Briar Hall, I would have had the voting proxies by Tuesday and we’d both be in Saint-Tropez right now!"
On the other end of the line, Khloe went deathly quiet.
"You... you never loved me," she whispered.
"Love you?" Carter sneered, his mask completely shattered. "You’re a parasite. Just like your mother. You latch onto anyone with money because you don't have the brains to earn a single dime on your own. Don't ever call this number again."
Carter slammed the phone down onto the counter so hard the cheap plastic casing cracked.
He grabbed a bottle of cheap bourbon, tipped it back, and took three deep swallows, gasping as the alcohol burned his chest.
His ankle monitor emitted a low, electronic beep.
He looked down at the green flashing light. He was confined to his apartment except for mandatory meetings with his attorney and pretrial services. But his mind was spinning into the dangerous, jagged territory of a cornered predator who knows his life is functionally over.
"It’s not over," Carter muttered to himself, his bloodshot eyes darting toward his car keys sitting on the counter. "Sarah thinks she’s won. She thinks she can sit in her father’s ivory tower and watch me rot."
He knew Sarah’s schedule. He had spent three years learning every detail of her life.
Every Friday evening at six-thirty, Sarah visited the private cemetery in Tarrytown where Thomas Sterling was buried. She went alone. No Arthur. No board members. Just Sarah and a bouquet of white lilies for her father’s grave.
Carter picked up the car keys. He picked up a pair of heavy wire cutters from the toolbox under the kitchen sink.
He knew what cutting the monitor meant. It meant an immediate felony fugitive warrant. It meant no bail, no plea deal, no second chances.
He didn't care.
He knelt down, wedged the heavy steel blades around the thick rubber strap of the ankle monitor, and squeezed with all his strength.
The rubber snapped with a sharp *pop*. An alarm began shrieking from the base station on the counter.
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Carter shoved the car keys into his pocket, pulled his dark hooded jacket tight, and ran out the back fire escape into the alley.
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