Chapter 9 - The Wire Beneath My Collar and a Deadly Rendezvous
At 8:00 AM the next morning, we set the trap.
Using Victor Vance’s burner phone, Detective Miller sent a pre-composed coded text message directly to Daniel Vance’s private encrypted line:
[Job done at Blackwood. Sarah managed to escape into the woods on foot. She’s hiding at the old abandoned marina on Pier 14. She's injured and terrified. She wants to negotiate directly with you to spare the kid.]
Three minutes later, Daniel replied:
[Do not call the police. I am coming alone to finish this. Keep the boy locked down.]
The bait was taken.
Inside the surveillance van parked three blocks from Pier 14, an FBI audio technician taped a miniature, ultra-sensitive wire transmitter across my collarbone, concealing the microphone beneath the high neck of my dark wool sweater. A discreet pinhole camera was woven into the top button of my coat.
"Listen to me very carefully, Sarah," ADA Marcus said, adjusting the receiver headset. "The moment Daniel arrives, you must get him to explicitly acknowledge three things: the poisoning of the dinner, the forged life insurance policy, and his payment to Victor to attack the safehouse. Once we have those three elements on this encrypted feed, Miller’s tactical team will move in and take him down."
"What if Evelyn is with him?" I asked.
"Two sniper teams have eyes on the entire pier perimeter," Detective Miller said, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. "You are never more than four seconds away from total lethal cover. But you have to keep him talking. Do not let him get within arm's reach."
Noah sat in the corner of the van, wrapped in a heavy fleece jacket. He looked up at me, his eyes full of a wisdom no fourteen-year-old should ever have to possess.
"Mom," Noah said softly.
I walked over and knelt before him, taking his cold hands in mine. "I'm going to finish what he started, Noah. He will never, ever scare us again."
Noah leaned forward and pressed his forehead against mine. "Make him pay, Mom."
Ten minutes later, I stood at the end of Pier 14.
The wind off the bay was biting and bitter, whipping salty spray across the weathered wooden planks. Rusted cargo containers and decommissioned tugboats loomed in the grey morning fog like monolithic ghosts.
The sound of tires crushing gravel announced his arrival.
A sleek black Mercedes-Benz sedan glided onto the pier, stopping fifty yards away. The driver’s door opened, and Daniel Vance stepped out.
He was wearing an expensive cashmere overcoat, his hair meticulously styled, looking like a man arriving for a corporate boardroom presentation rather than a murder scene. But beneath the polished veneer, his posture was tense, his movements jittery and manic.
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He walked toward me, his leather shoes echoing against the hollow wooden dock. He stopped ten feet away, eyeing me up and down, noticing the bruise on my cheek from the hitman’s attack.
"You look terrible, Sarah," Daniel said, his voice dripping with condescending pity. "You always were stubborn to a fault."
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