Chapter 8 - The Final Ledger
Sterling’s yacht surged forward, churning the icy waters of Lake Michigan into a violent froth as it broke away from the slip and headed toward open water.
"He’s getting away!" Vance yelled, radioing maritime patrol. "All units, intercept vessel departing Navy Pier—"
"He's not getting away," I interrupted, pulling my laptop out of my backpack and flipping the screen open on the frozen hood of our cruiser.
"Natalie, what are you doing? Get down, he has a gun!" Vance shouted, pulling me back slightly.
"Sterling thinks he transferred the four million to Zurich," I said, my fingers flying across the keyboard with cold, precise speed, bypassing the yacht's satellite navigation relay using a backdoor diagnostic code I had secretly installed into the corporate network three months ago. "He didn't. When he forced my father to sign those fraudulent wire documents, I rewrote the routing protocols in the core banking API."
Vance stared at me in disbelief. "You rerouted the stolen funds?"
"I didn't steal them. I redirected them back to the original beneficiary trust accounts—the resident escrow funds he tried to pillage," I said, hitting the enter key with definitive finality. "And right now, I just locked his navigation systems, disabled his steering servos, and triggered the emergency coast guard transponder."
Across the water, the sleek black yacht sputtered violently. The twin engines whined, coughed black smoke into the crisp air, and died completely. The vessel drifted aimlessly in the freezing swells, trapped less than a mile offshore.
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Within three minutes, two Coast Guard interceptor boats emerged from behind the breakwall, their searchlights locking onto the stranded yacht as heavily armed federal agents swarmed the deck.
Sterling dropped his duffel bag, raised his hands in surrender, and sank to his knees on the wet fiberglass deck as the handcuffs clicked into place.
