Chapter 10 - The Closing Trap
Arthur stared down at the federal warrant, his breath catching in his throat. The paper fluttered slightly under the draft of the suite's air conditioning vent.
"This... this is fabricated," Arthur whispered, his hands trembling as he reached for the edge of the desk. "Diane, tell them! Tell them we had an agreement!"
Diane looked at Arthur, then over at me, and finally at her own father standing tall and uncompromising by the door. The reality of what she had traded away—her family, her dignity, and her daughter's trust—seemed to hit her all at once. She crumpled into a nearby velvet armchair, burying her face in her hands.
"It's over, Arthur," Marcus said, gesturing to the two federal marshals waiting outside the door. They stepped into the suite, heavy boots clicking against the hardwood floor.
Before the marshals could reach the desk, Arthur’s hand shot toward the open laptop, his fingers frantically hammering the delete key on a secure data-transfer terminal wired to an offshore server.
"Stop him!" Marcus shouted.
I didn't think. Driven by pure, white-hot instinct, I threw all my upper body weight forward, gripping the wheels of my chair and lunging across the gap between the desk and the entryway, slamming my heavy metal footrest directly against Arthur’s shins.
Arthur let out a sharp cry of pain, tumbling backward over his chair just as the federal marshals swarmed the desk, slamming his hands onto the mahogany surface and slapping cold steel cuffs around his wrists.
Marcus calmly reached down, pulled a thumb-drive out of the laptop's side port, and slipped it into his pocket.
"Data secure," Marcus announced, turning to look at me as I caught my breath in the wheelchair.
Just then, my phone buzzed violently in my coat pocket again.
I pulled it out. It wasn't a text message this time. It was a call from Ethan, his video feed connecting instantly on the screen, showing the lights of the airport tarmac rushing past his window as his transport vehicle pulled up to the private terminal.
“Lauren? Honey, I'm on the ground,” Ethan’s voice rang out, breathless and desperate over the speaker. “Where are you? I'm coming straight to the hospital!”
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I looked up at my grandfather, then down at my mother weeping in the chair, before speaking directly into the phone screen.
"Don't go to the hospital, Ethan," I said, a fierce, triumphant smile breaking across my face. "Come downtown. We're taking back our lives."
