Chapter 7 - The True Handler
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the hum of the cooling fan on Grace's portable terminal.
Keller stared at her, his badge clutched in his hand as if it had suddenly become heavy and useless. "Federal Cyber Intelligence? There is no active cyber division assigned to this district under that designation. I’ve run every clearance protocol in the Carolinas—"
"Because my division answers directly to the congressional oversight committee on transnational corporate syndicates, not your regional bureau," Grace interrupted, her fingers flying across the keys with practiced ease. The screen flashed green, unlocking the front deadbolts with a sharp, pneumatic click. "For eight months, Meridian Holdings has been using your bureau office as an information tollbooth, Agent Keller. Every time you pulled a file on Daniel’s warehouses, a copy was automatically routed to a shell server in the Cayman Islands controlled by Marcus Vance and your supervisor."
Vanessa pushed herself up onto her elbows, her voice trembling with hysteria. "No! That's impossible! I met with Marcus! I gave him the keys! He promised me immunity and a stake in the offshore accounts!"
"You were a pawn, Vanessa," Grace said, finally turning her gaze toward my fiancée. The look in her eyes wasn't anger; it was profound, chilling pity. "You thought you were a brilliant corporate mastermind playing two powerful men against each other. In reality, you were just the digital mule who plugged a compromised thumb drive into Daniel's home safe—a safe we left deliberately unshielded to see who would take the bait."
I looked at Grace, a slow, heavy realization settling into my chest. "You knew about the leak from day one."
"Since the second week I started working here, Daniel," Grace admitted, offering me a brief, apologetic nod. "The agency flagged unusual data traffic originating from your guest network. We needed to find out who inside your inner circle was feeding logistics data to Meridian. Vanessa made it easy. But what we didn't anticipate was that she would involve your family, or that your brother Ryan would escalate to physical violence against a child to cover their tracks."
At the mention of Ryan, the color drained completely from Vanessa's face. "Ryan... Ryan is in federal custody downtown. They arrested him earlier tonight."
"Ryan is currently in an interrogation room three miles away singing like a canary," a deep, gravelly voice echoed from the open front doorway as two men in tactical gear stepped inside, escorting a tall, trembling figure between them.
It wasn't a federal agent.
It was Marcus Vance himself.
His immaculate tailored suit was wrinkled, his hair disheveled, and his hands securely bound behind his back with heavy plastic zip-ties. He looked past Grace, past Keller, and locked his dark, venomous eyes directly on me.
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"You think you won, Whitfield?" Marcus spat, a twisted grin cutting across his pale face. "You and your little federal handler think shutting down Meridian's local node stops the board? The moment those servers go dark, a dead-man's script releases every single hidden ledger of your own illegal freight routes to every major news outlet and federal prosecutor from here to New York."
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