Chapter 16 - The Trap at the Gate
Instead of unplugging the auxiliary server, Daniel left it untouched. He crawled back down the ladder, washed the insulation dust from his arms, and sat down with Margaret and Sarah Lin in the garage with the door closed and the radio turned up high.
"If we cut the line, he knows we found it," Daniel said. His voice was no longer that of the shattered, defeated man who had pleaded for forgiveness in front of a judge. It was steel. "He’s coming for Lily on Monday. He has an audit scheduled. He thinks I’m still the same broken coward who freezes when pressure builds."
"We don't have enough for an arrest warrant in Illinois yet," Lin cautioned, leaning against the hood of Daniel’s sedan. "The text messages are from spoofed servers. The bank accounts Rachel logged are tied to shell companies. If Chicago PD knocks on his door with circumstantial evidence, his high-priced lawyers will bury the warrant in procedural delays for months."
"Then we make him come to Connecticut," Margaret said, her jaw set firmly. "Harold is arrogant. He spent five years watching Daniel through a pinhole camera, convinced he had destroyed his brother’s spine. Let’s show him what he wants to see."
The plan was brutal in its simplicity. They would stage a relapse.
The next afternoon, Daniel adjusted the kitchen blinds just enough to give the attic camera a clear view of the living room. He brought out the old whiskey bottles from the back of the pantry—empty bottles Margaret had filled with iced tea. He left them scattered across the granite island.
He turned off the cheerful autumn lights. He pulled the heavy curtains closed.
At 3:15 PM, when the school bus dropped Lily and Noah at Margaret’s house down the street, Daniel sat on the couch in the dim living room. He opened his phone, let his posture slump, and let his head drop backward against the cushions, perfectly mimicking the vacant, dissociated stare from the darkest day of his life.
Upstairs, Sarah Lin’s tech team monitored the auxiliary server’s outgoing traffic.
Within twenty minutes of the feed going live, the Chicago IP address locked onto the stream. The viewer stayed connected for two solid hours.
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At 5:45 PM, a notification pinged on Lin’s encrypted tablet: Harold Vance had just purchased a one-way first-class ticket on a red-eye flight from O’Hare to Bradley International Airport in Hartford.
He was coming to finish the job.
