Chapter 10 - The Last Ledger
The abandoned industrial warehouse on the West Side was dead silent when Gabriel’s SUV pulled into the shadows just after midnight. This time, there was no hesitation.
Khloe sat in the passenger seat, the decrypted DOJ manifest glowing on her tablet. Beside her, Gabriel checked the slide of his sidearm before sliding it back into its holster.
"You're staying in the car this time, sweetheart," Gabriel said, giving her a firm, non-negotiable look.
"I'm not staying in the car," Khloe replied instantly, her voice carrying a quiet, unyielding steel that made Gabriel pause. She reached down and popped open the glove box, pulling out a heavy, secure ledger she had printed out an hour ago. "Arthur Pendleton is a numbers man, Gabriel. He didn't build this conspiracy with a gun; he built it with false assets and shell accounts. If you walk in there and shoot him, you don't get the international banking codes. You need an accountant to lock him out of the offshore accounts permanently."
Gabriel stared at her for a long, silent moment. The fierce, protective mask slipped away, replaced by an expression of deep, consuming admiration. He reached out, his hand gently tangling in her dark hair, pulling her forward until his lips brushed her forehead.
"God help me, Chloe," he murmured against her skin. "You're going to be the death of me."
They stepped out into the damp night air, moving swiftly across the wet asphalt toward the side entrance of the safehouse. The door was unlocked—pushed slightly ajar, as if someone had left in a desperate hurry.
They drew their weapons—Gabriel leading with his pistol raised, Khloe close behind holding a heavy tactical flashlight. They swept the ground floor, finding it completely abandoned. The desk was overturned, and a smoking shredder sat in the corner, eating away at confidential manifests.
"Upstairs," Gabriel whispered.
They crept up the concrete stairwell, their footsteps silent. Gabriel kicked open the reinforced door to the second-floor safe room.
The room was empty. But sitting in the center of the leather armchair was a laptop plugged directly into the wall, its screen glowing brightly in the dark room.
Gabriel approached it cautiously, his gun raised. He swept the room one last time before stepping up to the desk. "It's a live terminal," he muttered.
Khloe rushed forward, shining her flashlight over the screen. "Wait—don't touch the mouse! It's a dead-man's switch." She dropped her bag, her fingers flying across the keyboard with lightning speed, her master's degree from Northwestern and her razor-sharp forensic mind taking over completely.
Lines of green code scrolled frantically across the monitor. Pendleton wasn't in the room, but he was live on the network, attempting to scrub the final offshore accounts before fleeing the country.
"He's transferring the remaining forty million to a Cayman account right now," Khloe gasped, her fingers blurring across the keys.
"Can you stop it?" Gabriel asked, standing right behind her, his hand resting reassuringly on her shoulder.
"Watch me," Khloe whispered fiercely.
She bypassed the firewall, injected an automated reversal script into the routing protocol, and slammed the enter key.
TRANSFER ABORTED. ASSETS FROZEN. ACCOUNT REASSIGNED TO MORETTI HOLDINGS.
A triumphant green checkmark flashed across the screen.
Before either of them could breathe a sigh of relief, the phone beside the laptop began to vibrate violently, flashing an incoming encrypted call.
Gabriel picked up the handset, pressing it to his ear. He didn't speak. He just listened, his jaw tightening into a hard, unforgiving line as a raspy, panicked voice echoed faintly from the earpiece.
"Moretti..." Pendleton's voice wheezed from the line. "You're too late. The primary ledger... the one containing the names of every federal judge and senator on our payroll... it's already on its way to the press."
Gabriel's eyes flared with sudden, lethal intensity. "Where is it?"
A wet, jagged laugh echoed through the line before the call abruptly went dead with a sharp, hollow click.
May you like
Gabriel slammed the phone down and turned to Khloe, who was already pulling up the network routing logs.
"He didn't send it to the press," Khloe said, her face pale as she stared at the destination IP address on her monitor. "He sent it to Julian Vance's personal defense attorney—the one person who can use it to blow up the entire trial on Monday morning."
