Chapter 70 - The Truth in the Ash
Thirty minutes later, the Hanscom tarmac was awash in the blinding blue and red strobe lights of dozens of federal vehicles. Black tactical vans lined the perimeter, while federal agents in windbreakers took Vance and the surviving mercenaries into custody.
A field medic finished taping a sterile pressure dressing over the laceration on my ribs inside the back of an ambulance. Leo was asleep, wrapped snugly in a fresh warm blanket from the emergency response kit, resting peacefully in Emily's lap. She refused to let anyone else touch him.
Miller walked up to the open ambulance doors, holding the titanium ledger plate, which had been dried and placed inside an evidence container. Beside him stood Special Agent Harris, the lead investigator from the Department of Justice's financial crimes division.
"We ran the first layer of the plate through the mainframe in Boston," Harris said, adjusting his glasses, looking between me and Emily with a mixture of awe and profound exhaustion. "It’s all here. The offshore shell entities, the bribery logs covering twenty-four state officials, the illicit holdings used to manipulate market values for Harrington Industries."
"And the second partition?" I asked, wincing slightly as I shifted on the bench. "What Vance said on the plane?"
Harris exchanged a dark, uneasy glance with Miller. He pulled out a ruggedized tactical tablet and swiped the screen toward me.
"Vance wasn't lying about the payroll," Harris admitted quietly. "The accounts were established in 1988 under a multi-signatory trust. Marcus Harrington was indeed the primary trustee. But the secondary trustee—the person who authorized the liquidation orders that funded the private security teams that hit your house tonight—has been active for the past six hours."
I stared at the screen. The authorization logs showed transactions originating not from an offshore yacht or a Geneva bank vault, but from an IP address routed through a residential fiber connection in downtown Boston.
"Who authorized the hit?" Emily demanded, her voice cutting through the damp night air like a blade.
Harris zoomed in on the signatory registry. The digital certificate was accompanied by an unredacted passport scan and an authenticated biometric signature.
My breath caught in my throat. The world seemed to tilt violently beneath my feet.
The signature didn't belong to Julian Castille. It didn't belong to Alistair Vance.
It belonged to Amanda Harrington.
My brother Jason’s wife.
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"Amanda?" I whispered, disbelief warring with sudden, sickening realization. "Amanda has been playing the spoiled, trophy socialite for seven years. She spent half her time complaining about Jason's country club ranking."
"She wasn't Jason's wife by accident, Brian," Miller said grimly, leaning against the ambulance frame. "We just pulled her real background files from Interpol's deep archives. Her maiden name isn't Vance, but her mother was Alistair Vance’s younger sister. She was placed in Jason’s social circle eight years ago. She was the handler. Jason was just her disposable front."
