Chapter 3 - The Cold Hard Ledger
Hearing the woman I had loved for two decades sign away our son’s physical safety for commercial kickbacks shattered whatever remained of my sanity. Victoria hadn’t just tolerated Ryder’s violence; she had explicitly authorized the intimidation that ended with our nineteen-year-old boy lying in a hospital bed with metal rods holding his bones together.
I copied every single byte of data from that computer onto two external hard drives I kept in my personal work bag. I took clear photographs of the handwritten note, the offshore account balance ledgers showing over four million dollars in disguised bribes, and the municipal shipping manifests detailing illicit cargo passing through Victoria's riverfront warehouse. They were laundering contraband under the guise of commercial building materials, using Ryder as their muscle and Grant as their legal shield.
Suddenly, headlights swept across the ceiling of the office.
A car had just pulled quietly into the driveway below. The engine went silent, but the exterior lights stayed off. I crept toward the window, pulling the sheer curtain aside by a fraction of an inch. A sleek, unmarked black cruiser was idling near my truck. The driver’s side door swung open, and Sergeant Cole Ryder stepped out into the misty drizzle.
He wasn’t in uniform anymore. He wore a dark tactical jacket, leather gloves, and a black baseball cap pulled low. Tucked into his right hand was a heavy crowbar, and resting against his hip was his service pistol. Grant had sent him to Victoria's house to retrieve the very drive I was holding in my hand. They knew Mason might talk to me, and they wanted all evidence scrubbed clean before the sun came up.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. If Ryder caught me in this room with these files, neither Mason nor I would ever leave this town alive. An accidental shooting, a father crazed with grief attacking an officer—they could spin any narrative they wanted, and Grant's internal affairs unit would rubber-stamp it within forty-eight hours.
I grabbed the hard drives, pocketed the brass USB key, and slipped out of the office into the shadows of the upstairs corridor. Downstairs, the front door handle jiggled. Ryder had a key. Victoria had given him a key to our family home. The deadbolt clicked open with a faint, oily turn, and the heavy front door swung inward.
His combat boots squeaked quietly against the polished hardwood of the foyer. ""Ethan?"" Ryder called out, his voice smooth, teasing, dripping with toxic confidence. ""You home, buddy? Thought we ought to have a little private chat about Mason's future.""
I slipped silently into the master bedroom, navigated through the walk-in closet, and opened the small attic crawlspace hatch nestled behind Victoria’s designer coats. I pulled myself up into the dusty, fiberglass-insulated rafters, pulling the lightweight access panel back into place without making a sound.
Below me, Ryder’s heavy footsteps bounded up the staircase. He walked straight into Victoria’s study. A second later, a loud, vicious curse erupted from his throat as he saw the shattered door frame and the empty desk drawer. Glass shattered against the wall as he threw Victoria’s desktop monitor to the floor in a blind rage.
May you like
He pulled his radio from his belt and keyed the microphone. ""Grant, we have a major problem. Ethan's already been here. The safe is cracked and the storage ledger drive is missing. The husband has the whole package.""
Grant’s crackling voice answered through the speaker, loud enough for me to hear through the ceiling drywall: ""He's an amateur contractor, Cole. He doesn't have federal contacts. Hunt him down, get that drive back, and put him in the river next to the freight docks. Don't let him reach sunrise.""
