Chapter 10 - The Ultimatum
The dial tone didn't even have time to register before Matt slammed his foot on the accelerator, throwing our car out of the rest stop and back onto the highway with a squeal of rubber.
“Exit 42 is five miles back,” Matt said, his voice tight with controlled panic. “Did she say where Sterling is?”
“She didn't have to,” I said, my fingers flying across my phone screen as I dialed a direct, high-priority contact number I had saved from a corporate compliance seminar I attended the year before—a federal investigator specializing in identity syndicates. “She’s bluffing. If Sterling had Matt, she would have put him on the phone.”
“Are you sure?” Emily asked, her voice cracking as she clutched the black binder against her chest. “Liv, you don't know what Sterling is capable of. He’s not like Dad. He doesn't yell; he just... he makes things disappear.”
“She’s right about one thing,” I said, ignoring the cold knot twisting in my stomach. “We’re not safe going back to the local precinct. We bypass the city entirely and head straight to the federal building in the capital district.”
The highway stretched out before us under a darkening evening sky, the clouds turning a bruised shade of purple as the sun dipped below the horizon. My phone was still clutched in my hand, the screen dark, waiting for another call that didn't come. Every passing semi-truck felt like a rolling blockade; every off-ramp looked like a potential ambush point orchestrated by a man who had spent years operating in the gray margins of the law.
We drove in tense, suffocating silence for twenty minutes, watching the mileage markers tick down toward the federal district line. The tension in the car was thick enough to cut with a knife—every shadow cast by the overhead highway lights felt like a threat waiting to materialize.
Then, my phone buzzed again.
It wasn't a call. It was a GPS coordinate text message from an unknown number, accompanied by a single photograph.
The image showed Matt’s truck—the one parked safely in our driveway thirty miles away—with both of its rear tires slashed, and a jagged brick thrown directly through the driver’s side window. Scrawled across the brick in white greasepaint was a single word: Tick-tock.
“Matt,” I whispered, turning the screen toward him.
He glanced at it for a fraction of a second, his jaw clenching so hard I thought his teeth might crack, but he didn't slow down. He just pressed his foot harder against the gas pedal, pushing the car past eighty miles per hour as the dark silhouette of the federal building’s skyline finally appeared over the horizon.
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We were thirty minutes away from safety when my phone buzzed a third time. This time, it wasn't a text or a photo. It was a live video stream from a security camera mounted directly above our front porch at home.
The video showed two figures dressed in dark tactical gear walking casually up our front steps, kicking our locked front door open with a single, brutal strike, and stepping into our house.
