Chapter 7 - A Voice from the Inside
The FBI swept the office for bugs, and Elias’s private security contractors locked down the perimeter, but the damage was already done. The illusion of safety I had spent a year building was shattered in a matter of seconds. I spent the night in Elias’s fortified loft in the West Loop, unable to sleep, staring at the ceiling as the digital clock glowed 3:14 AM.
I couldn't shake the connection. Richard Sterling. Calvin. Obsidian Vanguard. I needed answers, and there was only one person on the planet who had the missing piece of the puzzle. I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Elias, and walked into the darkened living room, pulling my encrypted laptop onto my lap.
If I wanted to talk to a maximum-security federal inmate without triggering red flags across three government agencies, I had to do it the hard way. I routed my connection through a dozen proxies, tapping into the prison's outdated digital telecommunications system. It was a trick Elias had taught me during the initial hunt for Calvin’s assets. I authorized a one-way, unrecorded call to Inmate 89402-054.
The line clicked, hissed, and then connected.
"Who is this?" a raspy, hollow voice answered. He sounded older, broken. The cocky, polished executive was gone, replaced by a caged animal.
"Hello, Calvin," I said, my voice dripping with absolute ice.
Dead silence hung on the line. Then, a low, breathy chuckle echoed through the speaker. "Well, well. My beautiful, brilliant widow. I didn't think I'd hear your voice until my parole hearing in 2066. To what do I owe the pleasure? Did you finally miss me?"
"I found Obsidian Vanguard, Calvin."
The amusement in his voice vanished instantly. The line was so quiet I could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing in his cell block. "You need to hang up the phone. Right now."
"Richard Sterling," I pressed on, ignoring his panic. "He’s moving five million a month to the same routing nodes you were using. You didn't plot to kill me just for the insurance money, did you? You owed them. And when I took everything you had, I took their money."
"You stupid, arrogant bitch," Calvin hissed, his voice trembling with a terrifying mixture of rage and genuine fear. "You thought you won? You thought Victor was the only monster in the dark? The money you seized was seed capital for the Cartel's new tech investments. They let you live this long because they needed you to consolidate the assets. They needed you to build your little firm so they could use it."
"Use it for what?" I demanded, my hands shaking.
"Who do you think referred Victoria Sterling to you?" Calvin whispered, the truth hitting me like a physical blow to the stomach. "She isn't the victim, sweetheart. She’s the cleaner. And you just gave her full access to your entire firm’s mainframe."
My blood ran cold. The encrypted drive I had plugged in this morning to analyze the Sterling data. It wasn't just data. It was a Trojan horse.
May you like
"They aren't going to frame you, honey," Calvin laughed, a manic, desperate sound. "They're going to make you disappear, and your precious Elias is going to help them do it."
The line went dead. I sat in the dark, the laptop burning against my skin. Slowly, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I turned around. Elias was standing in the shadows of the hallway, perfectly still, watching me.
