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The heat on the second floor was a living, breathing wall. It hit Evelyn Brooks the moment she cleared the top of the grand mahogany staircase, singing the hairs on her arms and filling her lungs with the acrid, chemical stench of burning synthetic carpets and antique lacquered wood. / Chapter 10 / 15

Chapter 10 - The Digital TrapInstead of calling local emergency dispatch—where corrupt local precinct connections might still leak her location—Evelyn drove the crippled car at a crawling speed using only the emergency brake all the way back to the secure safehouse where Noah was staying under federal protection.

Chief Marcus Vance arrived twenty minutes later, accompanied by a specialized cyber-forensics unit from the FBI.

They examined the severed brake line in the safehouse garage while Evelyn briefed them on the recent developments.

"Richard Sterling," Chief Vance said, tapping a pen against his notepad. "He was Charles Whitmore’s right-hand man for over twenty years. When Charles went down, Sterling managed to distance himself just enough to avoid immediate indictment. But if he’s trying to silence you, Evelyn, it means you're standing right on top of his hidden offshore vaults."

"He thinks I don't know where they are," Evelyn replied coldly, walking over to her encrypted laptop. She opened a secure folder containing digital files recovered from the titanium safety box in the east wing library. "Daniel didn't just leave a will. He left a complete ledger of every illicit shell company Richard Sterling operated under pseudonyms in Zurich."

Noah wheeled himself into the garage, his face set with a mature determination far beyond his fourteen years. He handed Evelyn a small, encrypted flash drive he had kept hidden inside the lining of his old winter jacket.

"My dad gave me this the week before the plane crash," Noah said softly. "He told me that if anything ever happened to him, I should give it to the person who cared enough to sneak crackers into my desk when Victoria locked me away."

Evelyn looked down at the boy, her heart swelling with fierce pride. She plugged the flash drive into her laptop.

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"Let's see what Richard Sterling has been hiding," Evelyn whispered, pressing enter.

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