I slammed my foot on the accelerator.
The sedan surged forward down the spiral exit ramp, tires screeching against the painted arrows, narrowly missing a commercial delivery van as I blew through the automatic toll gate, my plastic transponder beeping once as the gate snapped upward!
I merged onto the Dulles Toll Road heading east toward Fairfax, my knuckles turning bone-white against the worn polyurethane steering wheel.
In my rearview mirror, a black armored **Cadillac Escalade** with dark-tinted ballistic glass pulled onto the highway two hundred yards behind me, matching my speed through the midday traffic.
They weren’t trying to pull me over.
They were boxing me in.
I reached for my phone on the passenger seat, tapping the hands-free dialer for my older brother, Garrett Mercer, who worked as an industrial mechanical technician for the municipal water authority in Alexandria.
Garrett answered on the second ring, the background noise filled with the deep, mechanical hum of high-pressure pumps:
“Emily?
Did Tyler get off safely?”
“Garrett, listen to me,” I gasped, my voice shaking as I watched the black Escalade close the distance in the center lane: “Harrison’s security team is tailing my car on Route 267.
Tyler slipped an encrypted titanium bank card into my coat before he went through security.
He sent me three messages warning me that Harrison is looking for it.”
The noise on Garrett’s end vanished instantly as he stepped away from the machinery:
“An encrypted card?
What did Tyler say?”
“He said there is three point eight million dollars attached to it,” I sobbed, tears finally cutting hot tracks down my cheeks: “He said his grandfather hidden files before he died, and that Harrison doesn’t know Tyler found them.
Garrett, he told the judge he wanted to live with Harrison to get inside that house!
He did it to protect whatever his grandfather left!”
A heavy, terrifying silence settled over the line.
When Garrett spoke again, his voice was completely devoid of its usual easy-going warmth.
It dropped into a flat, deadly, clinical frequency I had never heard from my brother:
“Emily, do not drive to your townhouse in Fairfax.”
“What?
Why?”
“Because Harrison’s attorneys filed an emergency ex parte motion with the county sheriff forty minutes ago,” Garrett revealed, the sound of papers rustling over the phone:
“They obtained an immediate writ of domestic search and seizure against your residence, claiming Tyler inadvertently left proprietary corporate financial tokens inside your apartment before the custody transfer.”
My stomach dropped into a bottomless, icy pit:
“He’s raiding my home?!”
“He already has two deputy marshals and three private investigators kicking down your front door, Emily,” Garrett said:
“Drive straight to the old pumping substation on River Road in Great Falls.
Take the gravel access trail behind the abandoned stone mill.
I will meet you at the gate in twenty minutes.”
“Garrett, who owns that substation?
That’s federal property!”
“Just drive, Emily,” Garrett commanded, his voice tight:
“And whatever you do, do not let that Escalade run you off the pavement.”
*CLICK.*
