Chapter 82 - The Tarmac Stand-off
The tarmac vibrated beneath my soles as the idling turboprop threw heat against the mountain air. Roland Vance stood three steps up on the Beechcraft’s boarding ladder, his cane planted like a conqueror’s banner. Behind him, the two hired guns kept their muzzles leveled directly between Lind’s ribs and mine.
"Look at the screen, Roland," I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline hammering in my throat. I didn't reach for a weapon. I simply turned the glowing display of the satellite phone toward him.
The live stream from New Hampshire showed the gravel driveway of my farmhouse. Sleet was falling through the pine branches. Two state trooper cruisers had blocked the entrance, their blue strobe lights painting the slush in rhythmic pulses. Tori was huddled against the bumper of Caleb’s truck, clutching her jacket around herself, tears cutting clean streaks through her mascara. But it wasn't the police that made Roland’s jaw tighten; it was the black Suburban rolling silently past them, flashing federal plates.
"You thought Patrice was just a country attorney running estate filings," I told him, stepping forward until the barrel of the nearest rifle was barely three feet from my collarbone. "She’s been coordinating with the regional task force since the hour I landed in Lisbon. Every shell corporation you tied to Caleb’s mortgage, every offshore account Arthur flagged before he died—it’s all being seized right now under federal asset forfeiture."
Roland’s gray eyes flickered toward the handset. The smug arrogance that had defined his lineage cracked for a fraction of a second. "Arthur didn't give her the master keys," he spat, his knuckles whitening around the silver head of his walking cane. "The digital records are locked behind an offline cipher. That ledger in your bag is the only cipher key left on earth, Myrna. Without it, your clever little lawyer has nothing but frozen accounts that will revert back to my trust in ninety days."
"Then shoot me," I replied coldly. "Because you won't get the pages alive. And the second this connection drops, the decryption program Patrice built runs through a dead-man's purge."
Behind me, Lind shifted his weight, his fingers brushing the strap of his duffel. The tension on the tarmac was a wire pulled to its breaking point. Roland raised his cane an inch off the metal stair. For five agonizing seconds, nobody breathed.
May you like
Then, from the perimeter gate behind our taxi, the sirens of the Moroccan Royal Gendarmerie wailed into life.
***
