Chapter 7 - The Parking Garage Exchange
“Don't draw your weapon, Mr. Whitmore,” a synthesized voice rasped from the burner phone before Elias could even reach inside his jacket. “And Mrs. Parker, keep your hands where the caller ID can see them.”
I stopped dead in my tracks three cars away from our SUV. Elias froze beside me, his hand hovering near his briefcase.
“Who’s calling?” I demanded, raising my voice so it echoed off the concrete pillars.
The man in the trench coat didn't speak. He simply turned the burner phone around, pressing the speaker button.
“Maya? Maya, please! Oh God, they have a gun, they’re going to hurt me—” Jasmine’s voice shrieked through the tiny speaker, trembling with hysterical, ragged panic. Background noise hummed through the line—the sound of high-speed wind and heavy diesel engines. They were moving her on an interstate highway, likely heading north toward the mountain tunnels.
“Jasmine, listen to me,” I said, forcing every ounce of steel into my voice. “Stop crying. Tell me where they are.”
“I don't know! We’re in a van, the windows are blacked out—!”
The line abruptly cut off with a sharp, electronic squeal.
The man in the trench coat lowered the phone, slipping it back into his pocket. “Your sister is currently sixty miles outside the perimeter on I-85 North. Director Vance’s secondary security detail has her. If you want her back breathing, you will drive yourself to the coordinates attached to that Zurich message—alone—and hand over the physical hard drive containing the master ledger.”
“And if I refuse?” I asked, taking a slow, calculated step forward.
The man smiled thinly. “Then your family name ends with a obituary in the morning paper, and Sterling’s foundation wipes your company off the corporate registry before breakfast.”
Before Elias could interject, I nodded slowly. “Tell them I’m on my way.”
The man turned on his heel and vanished back through the service door before the echoes of his boots had even faded.
Elias grabbed my arm. “Maya, you can’t be serious. This is a classic extraction ambush. You walk into that coordinate alone without federal backup, and you won't make it out of the woods.”
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“If I call the feds now, they’ll lock down the interstate, and Vance’s detail will execute Jasmine to eliminate the witness,” I said, pulling my car keys from my pocket and pressing the unlock button. The SUV’s lights flashed in the gloom. “I’m not going to let them kill my sister, Elias. But I’m not handing over the ledger, either.”
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