Chapter 7 - The Desperate Strike
The rain began falling in earnest around midnight, drumming against the skylights of my home office in North Oakridge.
Daniel was asleep in the bedroom, exhausted after spending the day helping the county building inspectors access the blueprints for the compromised Oakridge sectors. But I couldn't sleep.
I sat at my desk, watching the progress bar on my screen slowly tick toward one hundred percent as my secure server backed up eighteen gigabytes of encrypted evidence to an off-site, tamper-proof repository maintained by the Department of Justice’s Financial Crimes Division.
Martin Cole had arranged the preliminary meeting for 9:00 AM on Thursday. By noon tomorrow, federal subpoenas would be served, and Vanessa’s offshore accounts would be frozen by international mutual legal assistance treaties.
At 1:15 AM, the security sensor on our driveway chimed softly through my computer speakers.
*Motion detected: Front Walkway.*
I froze.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I switched my screen to the external security camera feed.
Through the streaming rain, the high-definition night-vision camera showed a sleek black Mercedes sedan idling by our curb with its headlights switched off. A figure in a heavy dark raincoat and a pulled-down baseball cap was walking up our stone path, heading directly toward the front porch.
I didn't scream. I stood up, quietly walked into the hallway, and shook Daniel’s shoulder.
“Daniel,” I whispered. “Someone is outside.”
He was awake in an instant, rolling out of bed, grabbing the baseball bat he kept beside the nightstand. “Stay here. Lock the door.”
“No,” I said, pulling up my phone, which was synced to the live camera feed. “Look at the license plate.”
Daniel squinted at the phone screen.
The Mercedes belonged to Vanessa.
Before Daniel could move toward the stairs, a heavy, frantic pounding shook the front door. Not a burglar trying to pick a lock, but someone hammering their fists against the wood with wild, uncontrollable desperation.
“Emily!” a voice shrieked through the rain and the thick oak door. “Open the door! Open the goddamn door!”
Daniel and I descended the stairs, turning on the foyer lights. Daniel kept the safety chain engaged as he cracked the door open four inches.
“Get off my property, Vanessa,” Daniel said, his voice flat and lethal. “Right now. Or the police will be here in four minutes.”
“I need to talk to my sister!” Vanessa screamed. Her hair was plastered to her face by the pouring rain, her mascara running in black streaks down her cheeks. Her coat was unbuttoned, soaking wet, and her hands were clawing at the doorframe. “Emily, please! Don't do this!”
I stepped up behind Daniel, resting my good hand on his shoulder. “Let her in, Daniel. Leave the door wide open so the neighborhood can see her if she tries anything.”
Daniel hesitated, then unlatched the chain and stepped back, keeping the bat low by his side.
Vanessa stumbled into the warm, brightly lit foyer, leaving puddles of muddy rainwater on our hardwood floor. She was shaking violently, smelling faintly of alcohol and raw panic.
She looked at me, her eyes wild, bloodshot, and sunken.
“Where is Martin?” she demanded, her voice cracking. “His phone is off. His office is locked. What did you two give to the feds?”
“Everything,” I answered coldly, standing six feet away from her with my arm secured in my sling. “We gave them the Delaware filings. The shell bank trails. The yacht registration. The core sample reports from the county inspectors. It’s over, Vanessa.”
“It doesn't have to be!” she cried, falling to her knees on our entryway rug, clutching her hands together in a grotesque parody of prayer. “Emily, listen to me! Dad had a stroke tonight!”
The words hit the room like a cold blast of wind.
I felt a sharp pang in my chest, but I kept my face an absolute mask of stone. “What?”
“After you left the club,” Vanessa sobbed, tears pouring freely down her cheeks. “He collapsed in the parking lot. He’s at St. Jude’s Memorial right now in the ICU. The doctors said his blood pressure spiked through the roof. If the feds raid the corporate office tomorrow, the shock will kill him! Do you want to kill our father, Emily? Is that what you want?!”
Daniel looked at me, his jaw tight.
I looked down at my sister.
For two seconds, the ghost of the little girl I used to share a bedroom with flickered in my mind. The sister who used to scrape her knees on the sidewalk and come to me for bandages.
And then I remembered the cold water of the swimming pool.
I remembered her whispering in my ear: *You always have to make everything about you.*
I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and tapped a speed-dial number on speakerphone.
The phone rang twice.
“St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital, ICU nursing station, how can I direct your call?” a brisk, professional voice answered.
“Hello,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on Vanessa’s face. “My name is Emily Sterling-Vance. I’m calling to check on the status of my father, Richard Sterling. I was told he was admitted to your ICU within the last two hours.”
There was a brief pause, the clicking of computer keys on the other end.
“Ma'am, we have no patient by that name admitted tonight. Let me check the general emergency registry... No. Richard Sterling is not in our system.”
“Thank you,” I said, and disconnected the call.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Vanessa’s manufactured tears stopped instantly.
The trembling, desperate posture vanished. She slowly rose from the floor, wiping the wet hair from her forehead, her eyes turning from false remorse into pure, venomous malice.
“You really are a cold-hearted bitch, aren't you?” Vanessa sneered, her voice dropping into a low, terrifying register.
“You came into my house at one in the morning to lie about our father dying,” I said, my voice dead and steady. “All to buy yourself six hours so you could catch your flight to France.”
“I built that company!” Vanessa hissed, taking a step toward me, her hands clenching into fists. “I spent seven years stroking that old man’s pathetic ego, listening to him ramble about his glory days, running his errands, smiling at his boring friends! I earned that money! You sat in your little cubicle doing math problems while I did the dirty work that kept the Sterling name on the skyline!”
“You didn't build anything, Vanessa,” I said. “You poured fake concrete into homes where children sleep at night. You’re a thief. And a coward.”
Vanessa lunged forward.
With a speed born of pure psychotic rage, she raised both hands, aiming straight for my injured right shoulder, desperate to tear the healing joint apart once and for all.
“I’ll destroy you!” she screamed.
She never touched me.
Daniel stepped between us in a fraction of a second, his powerful forearm catching Vanessa across the collarbone, shoving her backward with enough force that she stumbled out the open doorway, tripping over the threshold and landing hard on the wet flagstones of our front porch.
“Touch my wife again,” Daniel said, his voice shaking with a fury so deep it made the hair on my arms stand up, “and they will never find your body in the woods.”
Vanessa scrambled backward in the mud, staring up at us with wide, horrified eyes.
I stepped to the edge of the porch, looking down at her as the rain poured over her ruined clothes.
“The gala is tomorrow night, Vanessa,” I said softly. “You wanted the spotlight. You better make sure you look your best.”
Daniel slammed the front door shut, locked the deadbolt, and latched the heavy steel chain.
May you like
Outside, the Mercedes engine roared to life, tires squealing against the wet asphalt as Vanessa Sterling fled into the dark.
***
