Chapter 8 - The Ghost Route
The Atlanta skyline dissolved into a dark, rolling expanse of pine forests and winding county roads as I pushed the unmarked SUV seventy miles per hour up Route 9 toward the Blue Ridge foothills.
According to the GPS string from the Zurich relay, the coordinate pointed to an abandoned logging depot nestled deep inside a federally protected wildlife refuge—a place with zero cell reception, no civilian traffic, and miles of dense timberland. Perfect for a quiet execution or a hidden data drop.
My phone sat silent on the dashboard, the secure satellite link routing our encrypted ping through three different offshore servers to keep federal tracking blind.
My mind raced. Sterling thought he had me cornered. Vance thought he could trade Jasmine for the ledger and walk away clean. But they didn't know what my grandfather had told me before I left the country club ballroom.
“The ledger isn't just on that hard drive, Maya,” his voice echoed in my memory. “The physical microfilm is stitched into the lining of the original family deeds locked in the federal depository in downtown D.C. What you’re carrying is just the bait.”
I reached down and flicked open the glove compartment. Inside rested a duplicate cryptographic key—a decoy drive programmed to self-destruct and wipe its own memory banks the moment it connected to an unauthorized foreign port.
Ten minutes later, the paved road turned into rough, gravel-strewn timber tracks. The headlights cut through the thick mist, bouncing off towering oak trees and overgrown fern banks.
Up ahead, parked squarely across the middle of the narrow dirt road with its hazard lights flashing, was a black cargo van.
May you like
I slowed the SUV to a crawl, shifted into park, and switched off the engine. The interior plunged into absolute silence, save for the ticking of the cooling metal hood.
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