Chapter 24 - The Iron Lockbox
The silence that followed was suffocating. It wasn't the silence of peace, but the dead vacuum left behind by a detonation.
"You sold my identity," I repeated. The words tasted like cold iron.
"It was just paper, Emily!" Eleanor cried out, lunging forward on her knees, her hands reaching toward my legs. I stepped back, and her fingernails scraped harmlessly against the hem of my trousers. "They were going to kill Julian! You were just an orphan we took in! You owed us your life! If Richard hadn't signed those adoption papers, you would have ended up in state foster care!"
"You didn't take me in to save me," I said, looking down at the groveling creature before me. "You kept me as a hostage. A financial piggy bank you couldn't crack, so you beat me for the crime of holding the key."
The sudden shrill ring of my mobile phone shattered the tension. It was the private number of Dr. Thorne at the correctional facility.
I swiped the screen. "Emily Vance."
"Ms. Vance, this is Dr. Thorne again," the doctor's voice was sharp, tense, and stripped of all medical decorum. "Where are you right now?"
"In my apartment. Why?"
"You need to get down here immediately, or you need to call the state attorney general," Thorne said, her breath shallow. "Ten minutes ago, two men posing as federal marshals arrived at the front desk demanding custody of Richard Vance's personal effects, specifically the iron lockbox. They had forged court orders. Our intake lieutenant refused to surrender the property without verification, and they left—but our security cameras caught them cutting the fiber lines in our parking structure."
"They're coming for the box," I said, glancing at Eleanor, who was staring up at me in terror.
"The facility is going on emergency lockdown in fifteen minutes," Thorne said. "Once the lockdown protocol engages, the intake vault will be sealed for seventy-two hours pending an internal affairs review. If you are not here with your identification and your father's power-of-attorney release within forty minutes, that property will be transferred to state impound—and I cannot guarantee it won't disappear in transit."
"I'm ten minutes away," I said. "Hold the intake desk."
I hung up and looked down at Eleanor.
"Get up," I ordered.
"Where are we going?" she whimpered, pulling herself up by the armrest of the bench. "Emily, you can't go out there! The men in the Mercedes—"
"You're coming with me," I said, grabbing her by the arm with a grip that bruised. "You wanted to live off Sarah Sterling's bloodline for twenty-six years, Eleanor. Now you’re going to walk into that prison and sign the affidavit confirming every single signature you forged. Or I throw you out that front door right now and let those men in the black Mercedes have you."
Her resistance vanished instantly. The arrogance that had fueled her cruelty for decades had turned entirely to liquid fear.
Ten minutes later, we were in the freight elevator descending into the underground parking garage. My security detail—two ex-military contractors I had retained since the court trial—were already waiting by my armored Suburban, sidearms concealed beneath their dark jackets.
May you like
"Clear the ramp," I told the driver as the heavy steel gates groaned open into the storm. "We have twenty minutes to reach the county lockup. Drive through whatever gets in our way."
***
