Chapter 3: The Manhunt That Split a Billion-Dollar Empire
The Chicago Police Department raided Ethan Carter’s apartment in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago at 6 a.m. the next morning, finding a stack of cash totaling $1.2 million, a handgun that matched the one used in the gala attack, and a handwritten notebook that contained detailed plans for the attack, including the list of gala attendees and the security routes for the penthouse. Ethan had fled his apartment the night before, after he had gotten a call from Jake Miller telling him that Richard had found out about the plot, and he had been on the run ever since, using a fake ID to fly to Miami, where he had planned to take a private jet to a private island in the Caribbean that he had purchased with money he had stolen from Carter Global’s corporate accounts. The FBI joined the manhunt a few hours later, adding Ethan to their Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and offering a $250,000 reward for any information that led to his arrest.
The news of Ethan’s plot to kill his grandfather and take over Carter Global broke in the national media that afternoon, with outlets like The New York Times and CNN covering the story of the billionaire heir who had ordered a hit on his own father to take over the family business. Carter Global’s stock dropped 40% in a single day, losing over $2 billion in market value, as investors panicked and sold off their shares, and the company’s board of directors called an emergency meeting to discuss whether Richard should step down as CEO, saying that he had failed to protect the company and its employees. Richard attended the meeting, and he told the board that he had done everything he could to stop Ethan, that he had turned over all of the evidence to the police, and that he was committed to cleaning up the company and restoring its reputation. The board voted unanimously to keep Richard as CEO, but they ordered him to hire an outside consulting firm to conduct a full audit of the company’s financial records and security protocols, to make sure that no one else inside the company was involved in the plot.
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Over the next two weeks, Richard spent every waking hour working to clean up Carter Global, firing over 50 employees who had been involved in the plot, including Jake Miller and several other members of the company’s security team, and working with the FBI to track down Ethan. He received hundreds of tips from the public, including a call from a taxi driver in Miami who said he had picked up a man matching Ethan’s description at the Miami International Airport, and a call from a hotel clerk in Cancun, Mexico, who said a man matching Ethan’s description had checked into a hotel room under a fake name. Richard flew to Miami to meet with the FBI agents working on the case, and he spent three days going through security footage from the airport and the hotel, looking for any sign of Ethan. He was almost ready to give up when he received a call from a woman in Puerto Rico, who said she had seen Ethan at a beach resort in Rincon, Puerto Rico, where he had been staying with a girlfriend for the past week.
Richard flew to Puerto Rico the next day, and he met with the local police department, who had been keeping the beach resort under surveillance for the past three days. They told him that Ethan had been staying in a bungalow on the beach, and that he had been seen leaving the resort early that morning, carrying a backpack and a suitcase, and getting into a black SUV that had been waiting for him outside. Richard and the FBI agents followed the SUV to a small airport on the west coast of Puerto Rico, where they found Ethan loading a private jet with a stack of cash and a fake passport. The FBI agents surrounded the jet, and they ordered Ethan to come out with his hands up, but Ethan pulled out a handgun and fired at the agents, hitting one of them in the shoulder. The agents returned fire, hitting Ethan in the leg, and they pulled him out of the jet, arresting him and taking him back to Chicago to face charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and money laundering.
