Chapter 8 - Altitude 40,000 FeetThe private charter flight cutting through the freezing night sky over the North Atlantic was quiet, save for the steady hum of twin jet engines. I sat in a leather-upholstered seat near the front of the cabin, staring out the reinforced window at the endless expanse of dark clouds below.
Marcus had tried to stop me, of course. Protocol, chain of command, international law. But when you lose a sister and an unborn niece to a syndicate operating with total impunity, protocol becomes toilet paper. I had used my own savings to charter the private bird, tracking Arthur Vance’s transponder signal in real time through an encrypted federal aviation feed.
His Gulfstream G650 was currently two hundred miles ahead of us, descending toward a private mountain airstrip near Geneva, Switzerland.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. A secure encrypted message from Miller’s interrogation room logs: “Arthur Vance has just landed at Zurich private hangar 4. He is accompanied by two private security contractors and a legal representative.”
I checked my watch. 3:15 AM local time.
When the charter flight finally touched down on the snow-dusted tarmac of the Swiss airfield, the sub-zero wind hit me like a physical blow as I stepped down the mobile metal stairs. The air was crisp, thin, and smelled of pine and glacial ice.
A black Mercedes-Maybach was idling near the edge of the private hangar. Standing beside the vehicle was a tall, silver-haired man in a heavy cashmere overcoat, smoking a cigar as he watched my approach.
Arthur Vance.
He didn't look like a dead man. He looked like an emperor surveying his frozen domain.
"Detective Voss," Arthur called out, his voice carrying clearly over the whine of our jet engines as they taxied away. "I must admit, I didn't think even you had the reckless stupidity to follow me across an ocean alone."
I walked toward him, my hands buried deep in my coat pockets, my fingers wrapped firmly around the grip of my Glock.
"You made a mistake, Arthur," I said, stopping ten feet away from him. "You thought killing Maya would bury the ledger. You didn't realize she backed up every single file to an off-site cloud server programmed to dump into the global financial markets the second my heart stopped beating."
Arthur’s cigar ash drifted away in the wind. For a fraction of a second, his eyes narrowed. Then, he smiled—a cold, calculating grin that reached all the way to his eyes.
"You really are your grandfather’s granddaughter," Arthur said softly. "Always looking for a moral victory. But let me ask you something, detective... what good is a data dump when the people who control the global financial markets are on my payroll?"
He snapped his fingers.
From the shadows behind the Maybach, two heavy-set security contractors stepped forward, their hands resting ominously inside their jackets.
At the same exact moment, the hangar doors slid open behind Arthur, revealing a dozen more armed men standing in formation.
I was outgunned, outmatched, and completely outside my jurisdiction on foreign soil.
And yet, I didn't flinch.
"You think I came here alone, Arthur?" I asked, my voice cutting through the freezing wind.
May you like
Arthur paused, his smile faltering slightly as he scanned the empty perimeter of the tarmac. "There’s no one else on that plane, Lena. I tracked your flight path myself."
"Not on the plane," I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket and tapping the screen twice. "Look up."
