Chapter 7 - The Arrest at the Fairmont
The luxury penthouse on the thirty-fifth floor of the Fairmont Hotel looked like a nerve center for a high-tech corporate raid. Cables ran across the Persian rugs, four server towers hummed loudly near the marble fireplace, and blue light bathed the faces of Garrett Lawson and two hired Swiss hackers.
Garrett was standing over the main monitor, his face flush with manic triumph, sweating profusely despite the air conditioning.
"Ninety-four percent!" Garrett yelled, pointing at the progress bar on the screen. "Look at that! We’re tearing through their firewalls! Evelyn’s precious network is falling apart!"
Richard Sterling sat on the leather sofa behind him, holding a glass of champagne, watching the live stock market feeds on his phone.
"Vance Global stock is already starting to dip," Richard chuckled darkly. "Traders are hearing rumors of a network breach. In ten minutes, we make two hundred million dollars, Garrett."
"I don't care about the money!" Garrett screamed hysterically. "I want to see her face when the trading floor shuts down! I want to see her lose everything!"
"Here it comes!" Garrett cheered, slamming his fist onto the mahogany table. "Execute payload!"
Suddenly, every screen in the penthouse flashed bright crimson.
A loud, piercing warning tone echoed from the server towers. The digital progress bar vanished, replaced by a massive, high-definition logo of Vance Global Enterprises.
Beneath the logo, a single line of text appeared in bold white letters:
MIRROR-TRACE COMPLETE. ALL INTRUSION DATA TRANSMITTED TO FBI CYBER DIVISION. ACCESS DENIED.
"What... what is this?!" Garrett shrieked, grabbing the hired hacker by his shirt collar. "What did you do?! Unblock it!"
"It's a honeypot!" the Swiss hacker panicked, his fingers flying across his keyboard in vain. "It wasn't their live network! It was a simulated decoy sandbox! They trapped us! They have our IP, our location, and our decryption keys!"
"No... no! That's impossible!" Richard Sterling gasped, dropping his champagne glass onto the rug. The glass shattered into a dozen pieces. He looked at his phone screen in absolute horror. "The market... Vance Global stock isn't crashing... it’s surging! It’s up twelve percent!"
A secondary notification flashed on Richard’s phone:
ALERT: STERLING CAPITAL MARGIN CALL EXECUTED. ALL OFFSHORE ASSETS LIQUIDATED.
"I'm ruined..." Richard whispered, falling backward onto the sofa, his eyes wide and vacant. "She bought our shorts... she took everything..."
Before Garrett could utter another word, the heavy double doors of the penthouse suite were blown inward with a deafening crash.
BANG! BANG!
Flashbang grenades ignited in the foyer, filling the room with blinding light and thunderous smoke.
"FBI! DON'T MOVE! GET ON THE GROUND!"
A dozen federal tactical agents clad in black body armor, holding automatic rifles, poured into the penthouse. The hired hackers immediately threw their hands into the air, dropping to their knees.
Garrett stumbled backward, tripping over a server cable, slamming hard onto the carpet.
As two FBI agents stepped forward, forcing his arms behind his back and snapping heavy steel handcuffs around his wrists, the smoke in the doorway began to clear.
I walked into the penthouse suite.
I was wearing an ivory coat over my silk suit, walking with slow, deliberate steps across the ruined Persian rug, my heels clicking softly against the hardwood border. Beside me walked Arthur Vance and the FBI Special Agent in Charge.
Garrett raised his tear-stained, terrified face from the floor, staring up at me.
"Evelyn..." he sobbed, his voice completely broken. "Evelyn... please..."
I stopped three feet from him, looking down at the man who had tried to destroy my life, my family, and my legacy.
"Garrett," I said softly, my voice filled with a profound, unshakeable calm. "Under Title 18 of the United States Code, federal computer fraud, economic espionage, and market manipulation carry a mandatory minimum sentence of twenty years in federal custody."
"I did it for us!" Garrett wept hysterically, struggling against the heavy grip of the federal agents holding him down. "I wanted my life back! I wanted my family back!"
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"You never had a family, Garrett," I whispered, leaning down slightly so only he could hear my words. "You had hostages. And tonight... the hostages are free."
I turned on my heel and walked out of the penthouse without looking back.
