Chapter 5 - The Shadow Network
Ray and Daniel spent the night in a cheap, ice-cracked motel on the edge of town, paying cash with the few hundred dollars Ray had left in his coat pocket. But I was nowhere near finished.
At 8:00 a.m. the next morning, I sat in a private suite at the downtown Hilton, sipping black tea while Sarah reviewed the secondary financial streams we had extracted from Ray’s seized computer tower.
"Clara, look at this," Sarah said, turning her monitor toward me. "Ray wasn't just stealing your mother’s money for gambling debts. He was running an illegal offshore lending pool with a local syndicate known as the Red Cedar Group."
I raised an eyebrow. "Red Cedar? That’s Victor Vance’s old crew."
"No relation to you, fortunately," Sarah noted. "Victor Vance is a local loan shark who operates out of the auto-salvage yard on the south side. Ray borrowed six hundred thousand dollars from Victor eighteen months ago to fund a failed real estate land-grab near the highway."
"And he used my mother’s home as collateral?" I asked.
"Worse," Sarah pointed at a digital contract on screen. "He assigned the debt payments directly to Daniel’s company. But now that we’ve frozen all of Vance Global Enterprises' accounts, the automated wire transfer to Victor Vance bounced two hours ago."
A slow, deliberate smile spread across my face.
"So Ray owes six hundred thousand dollars to a ruthless loan shark," I murmured, "and he just defaulted on his first payment because his accounts are frozen."
"Exactly," Sarah said. "And according to these encrypted text logs, Victor Vance isn't the kind of lender who sends gentle reminder notices. He’s already sent three messages asking why the money hasn't cleared."
"Marcus," I called out toward the balcony where my security chief was monitoring communications.
"Yeah, boss?"
"Send an anonymous tip to Victor Vance’s primary contact number," I ordered. "Inform him that Raymond Vance and Daniel Vance are currently staying in Room 112 at the Pines Motel. And make sure he knows that Ray just liquidated all his real estate holdings into an untraceable trust controlled by his estranged stepdaughter."
May you like
Marcus grinned, his white teeth flashing against his dark skin. "Consider it done, Clara. Anything else?"
"Yes," I said, rising from my seat and buttoning my coat. "Call my mother’s doctor. I want her fully prepped for transfer to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota by noon. She’s going to get the best medical care money can buy—paid for entirely by Ray’s seized judicial pension fund."
