Chapter 18 - The Courthouse
The courthouse went into lockdown.
Every exit was sealed.
Evan was moved to a secure holding room.
Agents searched floor by floor.
Diane’s authorization attempt came from a public terminal in the legal library.
The computer was abandoned.
A security camera captured her wearing a dark suit and glasses.
She looked like an attorney.
She entered the elevator at 9:14.
She never appeared on another camera.
Then I remembered something from Dad’s real estate business.
He had helped renovate the courthouse twenty years earlier.
The building contained service corridors behind the old records rooms.
Some had been sealed.
Some had not.
Building plans confirmed one corridor connected the legal library to underground parking.
Frost sent a team downstairs.
They found Diane near the service exit.
She was not running.
She stood beside a black car.
The trunk was open.
Inside were files.
Cash.
Passports.
And a portable device designed to access encrypted banking systems.
She had expected to leave after initiating the transfer.
Instead, she raised her hands.
“I surrender.”
Nobody believed it was that simple.
Neither did I.
Diane was brought to an interview room.
I watched from behind the glass.
She requested an attorney.
Then she requested me.
Frost refused.
I entered anyway after prosecutors approved a monitored conversation.
Diane looked at my healing bruises.
For the first time, her eyes lingered there.
Not with guilt.
With irritation.
“You always heal quickly.”
I sat across from her.
“You killed my father.”
“He was stubborn.”
“You killed Thomas.”
“Grant handled Thomas.”
“You planned to kill me.”
“You were becoming inconvenient.”
Her calmness was worse than anger.
I leaned forward.
“You lost.”
Diane smiled.
“No.”
She looked toward the observation glass.
“You think the forty million is still in that trust.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did you do?”
“I moved it months ago.”
Agent Frost entered immediately.
“That is impossible.”
Diane turned toward him.
“Is it?”
Frost called the financial team.
Five minutes later, we had the answer.
The forty million was still there.
Diane laughed.
“I never said I moved the money.”
She looked at me.
“I said I moved it.”
I understood slowly.
Not the funds.
The trust.
Dad’s recovery trust owned more than money.
It also controlled evidence files.
Original documents.
Recorded confessions.
Records naming every victim and every accomplice.
Diane had relocated the physical archive.
“Where?”
She smiled.
“That information is worth something.”
“What?”
“My son.”
I stared at her.
“You want Evan free?”
“I want him protected.”
“After you kidnapped him?”
“I was protecting him from cooperating.”
Even now, she called control protection.
I stood.
“We don’t need your archive.”
Diane’s smile widened.
“You do if you want to know who actually gave Richard Bennett the drug.”
I stopped walking.
She spoke softly.
“I ordered it.”
A pause.
“But I did not put it in his glass.”
My heart hammered.
“Who did?”
Diane looked through the glass toward the hallway.
May you like
Then she whispered.
“Ask Evan.”
