Chapter 5 - The Trap is SprungMy brain stalled. Detective Rayner? The lead investigator who was currently supervising Ethan’s interrogation at the precinct?
I opened the leather journal with frantic hands. My father’s unmistakable, neat handwriting filled the yellowed pages.
October 14th. Marcus thinks he’s playing a game. He brought in Detective Rayner three months ago to ensure that any local investigation into their shell companies gets buried immediately. But Rayner isn't just taking bribes—he’s the one directing the enforcement side of the cartel. If anything happens to me, it won't be Marcus pull the trigger. It will be Rayner. They think I’m stupid. They think I don't know about the offshore accounts in Panama registered under Prosecutor Vance's father. If I die, the files on this SD card will auto-send to the State Internal Affairs Bureau—unless someone tampers with the router at my home office.
My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. The night my father died, Marcus hadn't just framed my mother; he had deliberately destroyed my father's digital network so the auto-send sequence would fail.
"Ava..." Ethan whispered, his voice trembling with a fresh wave of panic. "Look behind you."
I whipped around.
Standing at the entrance of the greenhouse, bathed in the beam of a high-powered tactical flashlight, was Detective Rayner. He was wearing his full police uniform, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his service weapon.
"You really are your father's daughter, Ava," Rayner said, his voice terrifyingly calm amidst the storm raging outside. "Always poking around where you don't belong."
"You were working with them all along," I said, slowly pulling Ethan behind me, clutching the ammo box tightly to my chest. "You set up my mother!"
"Your mother was collateral damage," Rayner sneered, stepping into the greenhouse. "Your father was going to blow the whistle on a fifty-million-dollar operation. Marcus came up with the brilliant idea to frame Sarah. Fingerprints, blood, a history of mild marital arguments—it was easy. The jury swallowed it whole because people want to believe the worst about spouses."
"The state prosecutor is your partner," I spat.
"Vance's father built the network; Vance keeps us legally clean," Rayner said, drawing his pistol and pointing it directly at my chest. "And you... you were supposed to just let your mother die quietly next week. If you had just stayed home and played the grieving daughter, Marcus would have taken care of you for life."
"He's a murderer!" I shouted.
"He's a businessman," Rayner corrected cold-bloodedly. "And right now, you two are a giant, loose thread that needs to be burned."
He clicked the safety off his gun.
BANG!
A shot echoed through the night sky, echoing against the mountains. But it didn't come from Rayner's gun.
May you like
Rayner gasped, dropping to his knees as a pool of crimson rapidly expanded across his shoulder. He collapsed onto the damp dirt floor of the greenhouse.
Standing behind him in the shattered doorway, holding a smoking hunting rifle, was my mother's former defense lawyer—a washed-up, disgraced ex-attorney named David Vance, the estranged brother of Prosecutor Vance.
