Chapter 5 - THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
"How could they clone a biometric signature?" Parker raged as our motorcade sped down the highway toward the Davis Hardy headquarters. "The encryption on those hospital tablets is military-grade!"
"It wasn't the tablet," I said, my mind racing through every detail of that morning in the hospital room. "It was the pen."
"The pen?"
"Connor didn't hand me a normal pen," I recalled, my eyes narrowing. "He tossed a heavy, metallic pen onto my hospital tray. I touched it to sign the acknowledgment. It had an optical scanner built into the casing. It captured my thumbprint and retina reflection while I was looking down at Brinley."
"God damn it," Parker slammed his fist against the leather armrest. "Ares Holdings spent millions preparing that heist. They used Connor’s idiocy as a smoke screen. They knew you’d focus on punishing Connor, so you wouldn't notice the silent liquidation of the core trust!"
"Where is the money right now?" I asked sharply.
"The wire transfer was initiated twenty minutes ago," Parker pulled up the tracking ledger on his laptop. "It goes through three intermediary clearing houses in Zurich, Singapore, and London before landing in Ares Holdings' private vault in Dubai. Once it hits Dubai, international banking laws make it completely unrecoverable."
"How long do we have before the transfer completes?"
"Forty-two minutes," Parker said grimly. "And to halt a biometric transfer, you need the physical master key stored in the secure vault at the Central Bank downtown—or the authorization of the person who initiated it."
"Or," I said, a sudden spark of dark inspiration flashing in my eyes, "we make the system cancel itself."
"How?"
"Ares Holdings used my cloned biometric signature to authorize the transfer, right?"
"Right."
"And what triggers an immediate, hard-lock override on an international biometric wire?" I asked.
Parker froze, realizing what I was driving at. "A death certificate. If the primary biometric owner is declared deceased, all outgoing international transfers are frozen instantly under anti-fraud regulations."
"Ex-actly," I smiled coldly.
"Victoria, you can't just fake your own death with forty minutes on the clock!" Parker argued. "The bank requires an official medical examiner's digital seal!"
"I don't need to fake my death," I said, pulling out my secondary phone. "I just need the hospital network to broadcast a sudden critical code update linked to my patient ID from three months ago. The hospital system hasn't officially discharged my maternity file because Connor blocked the insurance clearance!"
I dialed a direct line.
"Dr. Aris Thorne," the voice answered on the third ring.
"Aris," I said calmly. "It’s Victoria Vance. Remember that favor you owe my father for funding your research wing?"
"Victoria? I saw the news live-streams from the St. Regis! It’s absolute madness!"
"I need you to log into the Metropolitan Hospital central database right now," I said without missing a beat. "I need you to issue an emergency system lock on my maternity file under 'Patient Critical Biometric Failure'."
"Victoria, that will trigger an automatic global alert across every bank connected to my identity!" Aris warned. "It will freeze all your active accounts!"
"Do it," I commanded. "Now!"
For three agonizing minutes, the car was silent except for the heavy sound of our breathing. Parker stared at his laptop screen, watching the digital countdown clock on the Zurich clearing house transaction.
38 minutes remaining... 37 minutes remaining...
Suddenly, the screen flashed bright crimson.
[ALERT: BIOMETRIC OWNER STATUS UNVERIFIED - SYSTEM LOCK INITIATED] [TRANSFER HALTED - LOCAL IDENTITY VERIFICATION REQUIRED WITHIN 60 MINUTES]
"It worked!" Parker gasped, letting out a breath he had been holding for minutes. "The transfer is frozen!"
"Only for sixty minutes," I reminded him, my voice dripping with cold determination. "Ares Holdings has sixty minutes to realize what happened and counter-override it using Betsy’s secondary authority. We need to find Betsy and the mastermind behind Ares before that timer hits zero."
"Where do we look?" Parker asked.
I pulled up a private tracking app on my phone. A tiny green dot was flashing near the private airfield on the north side of the city.
"Connor was an idiot," I said, a cruel smile forming on my lips. "But he was an idiot who loved buying expensive gifts with my money. Three weeks ago, he bought his mother a custom diamond watch for her birthday."
"Don't tell me..." Parker chuckled.
May you like
"A limited-edition Cartier," I said, showing him the screen. "With a built-in GPS anti-theft tracker registered directly to my master account. Betsy is currently sitting in a private hangar at Northside Airfield."
"Let's go say goodbye," Parker grinned, signaling our driver to take the off-ramp at full speed.
