Chapter 10 - The Escape Clause
Panic, raw and animalistic, tore through my veins. For all my anger, for all the bitter resentment I held toward Claire for walking out on me, for taking my son, for looking at me with those cold, pitying eyes in the prison visiting room—she was still the mother of my child. And she was walking directly into the jaws of a monster.
"You need to get me out of here," I said, slamming my hands onto the steel table so hard the coffee cup rattled.
"Out of here?" Agent Vance raised an eyebrow. "Julian, you're serving a twelve-year federal sentence for wire fraud and conspiracy. I can't just open the door and wave goodbye."
"You want Arthur Sterling? You want the Meridian Circle?" I leaned across the table, my voice dropping to a desperate, gravelly whisper. "Arthur thinks I'm locked away safely in a federal cage. He thinks I'm irrelevant. But I know the inner workings of Carter Logistics better than anyone alive. I know the physical architectural blueprints of our private Swiss vaults. I know my father's cryptographic keys."
Vance studied me for a long, agonizing moment, weighing the risk against the reward of bringing down an international syndicate that had evaded federal authorities for decades.
"This isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card, Carter," Vance said slowly, standing up and buttoning his suit jacket. "This is a suicide mission. If I pull you out of general population and put you on active federal deployment, you aren't walking free as a hero. You're walking out as a confidential informant under armed guard. One wrong move, one attempt to flee, and the marshals won't read you your rights. They'll put a bullet in your spine."
"Just get me off this island," I muttered.
Two hours later, I was stripped of my orange jumpsuit, fitted with a heavy GPS-enabled Kevlar vest under a civilian suit, and bundled into the back of an unmarked black SUV flanked by four heavily armed federal marshals.
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As the gates of Allenwood Federal Correctional Institution rolled open, parting the gray mist of the Hudson Valley, I looked out the tinted window at the bleak landscape. I was heading into a storm from which I knew I might never return. But as I closed my eyes and pictured Noah’s tiny face—laughing on that Nantucket beach with his blue teddy bear—I knew I had no other choice.
I was going to hunt down the monsters who stole my family, even if it cost me my life.
