Chapter 5 - THE LIVE STREAM
"Hold on!" Bennett yelled, turning on the siren and throwing the cruiser into drive. Tires screeched as we tore through the rain-slicked city streets toward the county morgue.
My head was spinning. Jason wasn't dead. He hadn't boarded Flight 409, and he wasn't running away. He was right here in the city, pushed to the absolute brink of insanity.
"Why would he go to the morgue?!" I yelled over the wail of the siren.
"The morgue is where the city stores unclaimed evidence from major financial fraud cases before trial!" Bennett yelled back, expertly weaving through late-night traffic. "Or... he thinks someone he loves is already inside!"
When we pulled up to the concrete complex of the county coroner's office, three squad cars had already set up a perimeter. Red and blue emergency lights flashed against the wet pavement.
A lone police megaphoned officer was shouting toward the shattered glass doors of the lobby: "Jason Vance! Step out with your hands up! The building is surrounded!"
Suddenly, every smartphone in the area—including mine and Bennett's—chimed simultaneously with a emergency push notification.
It was a public live-stream broadcast link being broadcast from a dummy account on Facebook. The title of the stream was written in jagged capital letters:
THE TRUTH ABOUT EVELYN VANCE'S MILLIONS. LIVE.
Bennett slammed her hand on the steering wheel. "He hijacked a local streaming server!"
I tapped the link. The screen opened to show Jason standing inside the cold-storage unit of the morgue. He was holding a flare in one hand and a heavy remote control detonator in the other. Behind him, strapped to a stainless-steel autopsy table, was Clara.
She was bound with heavy chains, her eyes wide with terror, tape pulled across her mouth.
"If anyone cuts this feed, I press the button!" Jason screamed into the camera, his eyes wild and bloodshot. "Everyone thinks I’m the monster! Everyone thinks I tried to kill my wife for money!"
He pointed the flare directly at Clara's face.
"Tell them, Clara! Tell the thousands of people watching right now who really came up with the plan! Tell them who sold our daughter to the Russian syndicate to pay off your gambling debts in Monaco!"
Clara shook her head violently, tears streaming down her bruised face, muffled screams coming through the heavy duct tape.
"Evelyn!" Jason screamed into the camera lens, looking directly into the phone camera as if he knew I was watching from the street outside. "I know you're listening! I know you're alive! I left you in that house because it was the only place they couldn't reach you! The locks were to keep their hitmen out until I could clear the debt! I never took your pills to kill you—I took them to analyze the poison Clara was slipping into your tea for two years!"
My breath caught in my throat.
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Was he lying? Was this another sick, twisted manipulation to save his own skin in front of an audience of thousands?
"If you want the truth, Evelyn..." Jason sobbed, lowering the flare slightly. "...come inside alone. If a single cop steps through those doors, I blow this entire facility to hell, and the evidence of who really controls your family's fortune dies with us!"
