Chapter 12 - The Architect’s Blueprint
The interrogation room back at the precinct was no longer a place where I sat as an aggrieved father; it was a cage of my own making.
Detective Vance slammed a thick stack of printed cyber-forensic logs onto the metal table. "The IP address trace on that broadcast points directly to a dead-man's switch server programmed by Julian. The moment he was detained at the asylum, the server automatically uploaded thirty gigabytes of encrypted files directly to federal servers."
"He manipulated it," I whispered, staring blindly at the scratches on the table. "He fabricated the timeline to make it look like..."
"Like you were a fugitive hiding behind a staged kidnapping to keep your ex-wife quiet," Vance finished coldly, pacing the narrow room. "Elena didn't frame herself because of mind control or scopolamine, Miller. She took the fall because she was blackmailed with this exact footage three years ago. Julian didn't just stumble into your lives. He engineered your divorce, married your ex-wife, and set the ultimate trap the moment you started asking questions."
The doors flew open, and two armed federal marshals stepped into the room, their handcuffs clicking ominously in the fluorescent light.
"David Miller, you are under arrest for the vehicular manslaughter of Liam Vance—my nephew—and the subsequent cover-up," a stern, gravelly voice echoed from the doorway.
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I looked up to see a senior federal investigator stepping forward. But it was the detective behind him that made my blood run cold. Detective Vance—the man who had supposedly been helping me all night—was looking at me with a cold, triumphant smile, pulling off his badge and tossing it onto the table.
"Did you really think a local detective would happen to be first on the scene of a remote forest asylum, Miller?" Vance sneered, adjusting his jacket. "Julian and I have been business partners for five years. You were just the final piece of the puzzle."
