Chapter 7 - The Ghost in the System
By three o'clock in the morning, the police cruisers had cleared from my mother’s driveway, leaving behind deep tire ruts in the wet turf. The living room was dark save for a single floor lamp in the corner. My mother had finally fallen asleep in her bedroom under the heavy influence of a sedative prescribed by our family physician.
Renee sat at the kitchen counter, holding a mug of black coffee, her eyes bloodshot. Declan was fast asleep on the living room sofa, curled under a knitted blanket, looking young and vulnerable—no longer the obnoxious internet teenager, but just a frightened boy who had accidentally pulled the pin on a live grenade.
Grant and I sat at the dining table with his laptop opened once again. On the screen was an encrypted communications link provided by the FBI’s financial crimes division.
“Marcus Vance fled his residence forty-five minutes ago,” Grant reported, reading off the live intelligence feed. “State troopers found his vehicle abandoned near the marina in Baltimore. He cleared out his offshore accounts through an automated transfer protocol thirty minutes after Arthur was taken into custody.”
“Where is he going?” I asked, leaning my head against Grant’s shoulder, completely exhausted.
“He’s trying to catch a private charter out of the country,” Grant replied. “Vance knows that once Arthur’s legal team realizes he’s trapped, Arthur will turn state’s evidence and hand Vance over on a silver platter to cut a plea deal.”
“What about Mom?” Renee asked quietly from the kitchen island. “Will the government prosecute her for what she did seven years ago?”
Grant sighed, running a hand through his dark hair. “Technically, the statute of limitations on the offshore transfers expires in four days. That’s why Arthur was moving the physical drives today. He was cleaning up the last paper trails before the clock ran out. If Vance escapes with his personal ledgers, the prosecutor’s office might try to pin the entire conspiracy on your mother to save face.”
A cold shudder ran down my spine. “We can't let Vance get on that boat.”
“We can't stop him, Maddy,” Grant said gently, turning to look at me. “It’s in the hands of federal marshals now.”
“No,” I said, sitting up straight as an idea suddenly flashed through my mind. “We can stop him.”
Grant stared at me. “What do you mean?”
I pointed toward the living room, where Declan’s phone was sitting on the coffee table beside his camera stabilizer.
“Declan’s video,” I said, my mind racing. “The raw video file didn't just capture Whitney hiding the drive. When Declan panned his camera toward the street after the cake fell, he caught the license plate of the black town car parked near the alleyway.”
Grant instantly pulled up the high-definition video file from his cloud storage. He zoomed in on the background frame, adjusting the contrast and sharpness.
Through the leaves of the oak trees, visible for barely six frames, was the front bumper of the town car. The license plate was partially obscured by rain spots, but the state registration numbers were clearly legible: 7-B-X-4-9-2.
“That’s not a rental car,” Grant realized, his eyes widening. “That’s a private commercial fleet registration.”
He immediately ran the plate through a commercial vehicle registry portal he accessed through his firm’s private investigative network. Within ten seconds, a hit popped up on the screen.
The car belonged to a private luxury maritime transport service registered out of Annapolis. And its current GPS transponder was active, moving at sixty-five miles per hour southbound along Route 50 toward a private dock in Solomons Island.
“He’s not at the Baltimore marina,” Grant declared, standing up so fast his chair scraped loudly against the floor. “The abandoned car in Baltimore was a decoy. Vance is headed south toward Solomons Island right now!”
Grant immediately dialed the direct line of the lead FBI agent assigned to our case.
“Agent Miller,” Grant said into the receiver, his voice sharp and decisive. “I have Marcus Vance’s exact location and flight vector. Send a team to the Solomons Island Marina immediately.”
He listened to the receiver for five seconds, his expression darkening.
“What do you mean the nearest unit is forty-five minutes away?” Grant shouted into the phone. “He’ll be on a boat in international waters in twenty minutes!”
Grant slammed the phone down onto the table. He looked at me, his eyes burning with a dark, dangerous determination.
“We’re twenty minutes from Solomons Island,” Grant said.
I grabbed my heavy winter coat off the hook.
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“Madison, no,” Renee gasped, standing up from the counter. “You’re six months pregnant! You can't go chasing a dangerous fugitive!”
“That man helped ruin my father’s life and tried to frame my mother,” I said, zipping up my coat with unwavering focus. “I’m not sitting in this kitchen waiting for him to slip away into the dark.”
