Chapter 9 - The Final AuditThree days later, the front page of The Arizona Republic didn't feature a headline about the death of Dominic Russo.
Instead, bold, terrifying black letters screamed across the morning paper:
MASSIVE FEDERAL RAID: THREE MARICOPA COUNTY JUDGES AND CHIEF OF POLICE ARRESTED IN DAWN CORRUPTION SWEEP. Encrypted Financial Ledger Implicates High-Ranking Officials in Syndicate Protection and Real Estate Fraud.
Inside a quiet, dimly lit diner fifty miles outside of Tucson, Cara Jennings sat in a corner booth, staring at the front page over a cup of black coffee.
Her nursing license was suspended. Her apartment had been searched twice by federal agents who found nothing. And her bank account—previously sitting at negative eighty dollars—had just received an anonymous wire transfer of two million dollars with a simple note attached: Tuition paid in full. Stay out of the desert.
The bell above the diner door chimed.
A tall man in a dark trench coat walked in, sliding quietly into the booth across from her. He looked tired, his right shoulder still stiff from where the bullet had torn through muscle and bone, but his posture was upright and unyielding.
"You shouldn't have come here, Dominic," Cara said quietly, not looking up from her coffee. "The FBI is still looking for you. Vance has a warrant out across three states."
"Vance has bigger problems today," Dominic replied, a faint, wry smile touching his lips. "His boss, the Chief of Police, was just led out of headquarters in handcuffs because of the files you uploaded to the federal server from a public terminal in Flagstaff."
Cara looked up, her dark eyes narrowing. "I didn't upload anything. You did."
"We did," Dominic corrected gently. "You pulled the trigger on a corrupt system, Jennings. Just like you pulled it on my chest in Trauma Room 4."
He slid a small, heavy velvet box across the Formica table.
"What's this?" Cara asked suspiciously.
May you like
"A parting gift," Dominic said, standing up and buttoning his coat. "The syndicate in Phoenix is dead. Lorenzo is running a quiet trucking company in Mexico, and Vincent is spending the rest of his natural life in a supermax federal penitentiary. I'm leaving the country, Cara. But before I go, I wanted to make sure the best nurse in Arizona had the capital to open her own clinic—far away from Mercy Ridge."
Before Cara could open the box or reply, Dominic turned and walked out into the bright, blinding Arizona sun, disappearing into the crowd just as the bell chimed one last time.
