Chapter 6 - The Unraveling Strategy
Deprived of bail and facing decades behind bars, Grant became a cornered animal inside his jail cell.
Two days after the court hearing, a shady, mid-level criminal associate named Victor "The Hammer" Vance met Grant in the attorney-client visitation room.
"She has all the original hard drives in her private safe deposit box at Metro Trust Bank," Grant whispered frantically through the mesh glass. "If those drives reach the federal grand jury next week, I’m going away for life. Not just for fraud, Victor... for what happened to my old partner, David, four years ago."
Victor leaned in, his voice dark and low. "David’s 'car accident'?"
"She has the real telemetry logs," Grant hissed, his eyes wild. "She kept everything! I need you to break into that bank box, or intercept her when she goes to retrieve it. I don't care what you have to do to her. Break her other arm, put her back in the ICU—just get those drives!"
"It’s going to cost you half a million," Victor said cold-bloodedly.
"Take it! Take whatever is left in my offshore account! Just make her disappear!"
What Grant didn't know was that the visitation room’s acoustic glass had been fitted with a federal wiretap forty-eight hours earlier under a judicial surveillance order obtained by my legal team.
Three miles away, inside the Metro Trust Vault room, I sat at a marble table with Federal Inspector Thorne. We watched the live audio transcript generate on a laptop screen.
"We have him," Thorne said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Attempted murder, corporate theft, witness intimidation, and now conspiracy to commit robbery and physical assault. He just sealed his own coffin."
"He thinks like a bully," I said softly, stroking the brass key to safe deposit box #408. "A bully always assumes that once you're down, you'll stay down. He never realized that while he was busy posturing for the world, I was taking notes."
"What’s actually on those hard drives, Evelyn?" Thorne asked curiously.
I unlocked the heavy iron box and pulled out a sleek, black encrypted drive alongside a faded yellow ledger.
"Four years ago, Grant’s original business partner, David Ross, discovered that Grant was skimming millions from low-income housing grants," I revealed. "Two days before David was set to go to the District Attorney, his car went off a cliff on Highway 9. It was ruled an accidental brake failure."
May you like
Thorne gasped. "You think Grant tampered with his brakes?"
"I don't think," I said, opening the ledger to reveal a series of wire transfers made from Grant’s personal account to a mechanic in South City three days before the crash. "I know. And now, David’s family is finally going to get justice."
