Chapter 7 - The Master Clock Reset
By noon, the atmosphere in the executive suite had shifted from blind terror to clinical execution. Caleb did not call his usual underworld fixers to make Silas Crane and Vance disappear into an unmarked grave. That would have been the easy way out—the traditional mafia solution that ended with silence, lingering rumors, and an unresolved tragedy for a grieving family.
Instead, Caleb called the one man in the city of Chicago who despised him more than anyone else: United States Attorney Marcus Vance, an incorruptible federal prosecutor who had spent eight years trying to find a single crack in Caleb Voss’s legitimate corporate operations.
When the federal agents arrived with tactical gear and warrant binders, they expected an armed standoff. Instead, they found the front doors open, the security guards standing at attention with their credentials hanging from their lanyards, and Caleb Voss waiting in the main conference room.
On the table sat three distinct piles of evidence: the gutted micro-SD card from Owen Ward’s pocket watch, complete with the unedited audio recording of his final moments; the raw diagnostic backups recovered by Jonah showing the three-second master clock manipulation; and the complete banking records of Aegis Dynamic, detailing every penny Silas had stolen and laundered through international exchanges.
Silas Crane and his mercenary sat handcuffed in the corner, surrounded by Caleb’s personal security staff, ready to be handed over like common package deliveries.
Marcus Vance stood across the table from Caleb, his brow furrowed in utter bewilderment. “What kind of game are you playing, Voss? You’re serving your own chief financial officer to me on a silver platter? Along with your own internal financial routing logs?”
“I don't play games with murder,” Caleb said, his voice hard and uncompromising. “Silas Crane embezzled four million dollars from my hospitality group. When Owen Ward—an honorable, honest technician—discovered the breach, Silas orchestrated his murder, staged a drunk driving accident, and bribed an official at the medical examiner’s office to falsify the toxicology report.”
The US Attorney picked up the flash drive containing the raw audio file. “And this evidence? Where did it come from?”
Caleb turned slightly and gestured toward the far end of the room. Mara Ward stood there, holding Elsie’s hand. The child was wearing a clean winter coat that Caleb’s staff had purchased for her that morning, her blonde hair neatly rebraided by her mother.
“It came from Owen Ward’s daughter,” Caleb said. “The Chicago Police Department closed that case as an open-and-shut DUI because your detectives were too lazy to look past the first page of an edited security report. She found the truth in three minutes by looking at a timestamp.”
Marcus Vance looked at the little girl, then at the trembling executive in the corner, and finally back at Caleb. “You realize this opens up your corporate records to federal scrutiny for the next five years?”
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“Audit whatever you want, Marcus,” Caleb replied, not flinching. “My books are clean. But you make sure that man spends the rest of his natural life inside a maximum-security cell for what he did to that family. If he gets out on bail, or if a single charge is reduced, I will consider it a breach of our city’s peace. Do we understand each other?”
The federal prosecutor gave a single, solemn nod. “He won't see the sun again, Voss. I give you my word.”
