Chapter 10 - The Falling Mask
For three seconds, nobody breathed.
Then, Raymond Cross quietly picked up his linen napkin, wiped his mouth, and pushed his chair back from the table. He didn't look at Vanessa. He didn't look at the doctor.
“Special Agent Vance,” Cross said, his voice entirely detached, the smooth delivery of a corporate apex predator abandoning an infected limb. “My organization was presented with what appeared to be facially valid historical instruments by Mrs. Vance’s legal representatives. We have disbursed zero capital. We have recorded zero deeds. My legal department will provide full, unreserved cooperation with your office by eight o'clock tomorrow morning.”
“Get out,” I said.
Cross nodded once, rose from the table, and walked out of the private dining room without a single backward glance. He knew when a hand was dead.
Vanessa, however, did not.
She stood frozen beside the table, her fingernails digging so hard into the mahogany wood that one of her acrylic tips snapped off with a sharp *crack*.
“You ruined everything,” she hissed, her voice vibrating with a frequency that sounded barely human. “Do you know how long I worked on this? Do you know how many years I had to spend listening to your pathetic, sniveling brother whine about his failures? Do you know what it was like living in that miserable suburban house, pretending to care about your senile father and his stupid garden?!”
“He wasn't senile until you started poisoning him, Vanessa,” I said coldly.
“He was an obstacle!” she shrieked, lunging across the table toward me.
She didn't reach me. Postal Inspector Davis stepped in smoothly, caught her by the shoulder, and spun her around against the glass wall overlooking the city lights.
*Click. Click.*
The sound of the high-tensile steel handcuffs snapping around her wrists was the sweetest sound I had heard all week.
“Vanessa Albright Vance,” Davis recited smoothly, reading from his Miranda card. “You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, wire fraud, and distribution of a Schedule IV controlled substance resulting in severe bodily injury. You have the right to remain silent...”
As Davis read her rights, Vanessa stopped struggling. She went completely limp against the glass, her face pressed against the cold pane. When she turned her head to look at me, the rage had vanished. In its place was a terrifying, hollow smile.
“You think you saved him, don't you?” she whispered, blood trickling from where she had bitten her own lip.
“The land is safe, Vanessa,” I said, signaling the task force officers to take Dr. Vance into custody. “The house is safe. And you are going to a federal penitentiary for twenty years.”
Vanessa began to laugh. A quiet, rhythmic, bubbling laugh that rose into an echoing cackle that filled the private dining room.
“Check the security feed at the house, Agent Vance,” she whispered, her eyes dancing with psychotic delight. “Did you really think Raymond Cross was the only developer bidding on that interchange?”
My heart seized.
“What did you do?” I demanded, closing the distance between us in half a step.
“Cross was the corporate bidder,” she giggled, her eyes wide and bloodshot. “The polite ones. The ones who use lawyers and contracts. But the people your brother owes money to in Chicago? The ones who bought his sports-betting paper? They don't file deeds, Maya. They take collateral in blood.”
May you like
She leaned her head back against the glass, her smile splitting her face ear to ear.
“They knew I was meeting Cross tonight. They knew you’d follow me here. And they knew your precious federal friends would be downtown watching me while your father was sitting all alone on Elmridge Drive.”
