Chapter 18 - The Last Trap
The photograph meant Pike had been inside the house recently.
Maybe minutes before the raid.
The safe had not been forced.
He knew the combination.
Someone had told him.
Margaret.
Brooks ordered a full review of Margaret’s jail calls.
One call stood out.
She had spoken to a number registered to a legal answering service.
The call was privileged only if it truly connected to counsel.
It did not.
The service routed to a prepaid phone.
Margaret had warned Pike.
Again.
When confronted, she finally broke.
“He said he would kill Ethan.”
Ethan stared through the interview-room glass.
“You expect me to believe that?”
Margaret looked smaller than Ava had ever seen her.
“I did everything for you.”
Ethan’s voice rose.
“You drugged my wife.”
“I was trying to keep you safe.”
“You arranged my marriage to get near her company.”
“I thought I could control Pike.”
Ava almost laughed.
There it was.
Margaret’s fatal belief.
That she was always the smartest person in the room.
Margaret told them Pike wanted the ledger because it contained access routes to old escrow accounts still holding tens of millions.
More importantly, it could connect him to bribery, fraud, and conspiracy across two decades.
“He’ll come for it,” she said.
Brooks looked at Ava.
A plan formed.
They announced that the ledger would be transferred from the police evidence facility to a federal courthouse at 6:00 a.m.
The transfer route leaked through channels Pike had previously compromised.
But the real ledger stayed locked away.
A decoy traveled in an armored van.
At 6:18 a.m., a delivery truck blocked the route inside a tunnel.
Two masked men approached the van.
Police teams moved in.
One suspect surrendered.
The other ran.
Neither was Pike.
Then Ava’s phone rang.
He had predicted the trap.
“You disappoint me,” Pike said.
“Likewise.”
“You know where I am now.”
Ava did.
The background sound gave him away.
Three slow chimes.
Then a fourth.
A clock tower.
She had heard it every summer as a child.
The old Monroe foundation chapel beside her father’s first research lab.
Abandoned for years.
Pike continued.
“Bring the ledger.”
“No.”
“Then bring Margaret.”
Ava went cold.
“Why?”
“Because she owes me.”
Ava looked through the observation window.
Margaret sat under fluorescent lights, unaware.
Pike whispered, “And because she is the only person who can tell you whether your father’s death was really a heart attack.”
The line went dead.
Ethan grabbed the table.
“My grandfather’s doctor said Samuel died in his sleep.”
May you like
Ava looked at Margaret.
Suddenly the crash was no longer the oldest death in the story.
