Chapter 17 - The Hunt Begins
"How does a high-security inmate vanish from a federal penitentiary during a blackout?" I demanded, standing up so fast my office chair rolled backward against the wall.
"Inside help," Marcus said grimly, flipping open the folder to reveal prison security stills. "Someone on the inside disabled the secondary diesel generators and spliced the thermal camera feeds. By the time backup power kicked in thirty minutes later, Richard was already gone, smuggled out in an industrial laundry truck."
"He doesn't have any money," I said, pacing across the room. "We stripped every offshore account he ever touched. He’s completely broke, blacklisted, and hunted by every federal agency in the country."
"That's the part that doesn't make sense," Marcus replied, handing me a printout of a recent financial wire transfer. "Someone wired two million dollars in untraceable cryptocurrency to an anonymous wallet tied to Richard's prison commissary account two days before the blackout."
I stared at the transaction hash. The numbers were familiar—the exact same algorithmic routing sequence used by Julian Vance’s legacy syndicates before we raided the Swiss bunker.
"Vance had a contingency plan," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "He didn't just fund his own network; he kept a hidden reserve to bail Richard out if things went south. They're working together again."
"Or Richard is just a blunt instrument being pointed in our direction," Marcus corrected, his hand resting on his sidearm. "He knows he has nothing left to lose. Which makes him more dangerous than ever."
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I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, looking out over the rain-soaked cliffs of Big Sur. The storm clouds were gathering over the Pacific once more.
"Double the perimeter guards," I instructed coldly. "Activate the thermal drones. And get my son into the secure safe room."
