Chapter 6 - The Apex File
My hands were shaking so violently I almost dropped the manila folder.
Mayor Richard Vance. Detective Vance.
The puzzle pieces began to slam together with sickening force. Detective Vance wasn't just investigating the crime; she was controlling the investigation. She was keeping me away from Noah and Laura to make sure no one uncovered what her husband had done.
I collapsed onto the cold concrete floor of the storage corridor and opened the PROJECT APEX file.
Page after page revealed a massive pharmaceutical laundering scheme. Mayor Vance, before running for office, was a executive board member of Apex Bio-Tech, a local medical manufacturing firm. The documents detailed how Apex had been illegally dumping toxic chemical byproducts into the water supply of low-income Denver suburbs to cut disposal costs, causing severe neurological illnesses in dozens of residents.
Mason had been hired as a freelance forensic accountant six months ago to clean up Apex's books. But when Mason discovered the chemical dumping cover-up—and the millions of dollars in bribes paid to public officials, including city inspectors and police executives—he realized he was in over his head.
He didn't move to Kansas City. He went into hiding in Denver.
And when the threats against his life started, he reached out to the one person he trusted completely: my wife, Laura.
Laura had been helping Mason collect evidence to take to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were planning to fly out of Colorado—hence the forged passports Mason had secured for them—because they knew the local police were compromised by Mayor Vance's network.
I turned to the final page of the file. It was a printout of an encrypted text exchange from yesterday afternoon between Mason and an unknown contact:
Mason: We have the drive. The full chemical logs are on it. We leave tonight.
Unknown: You won't make it to the airport. Vance knows.
Mason: Laura is bringing the kid. We're meeting at the Blue Spruce. If anything happens to us, the key is in Noah's sleeve. Ethan will finish it.
Tears flooded my eyes. Mason and Laura weren't betraying me. They weren't having an affair. They were trying to protect our family from a ruthless corporate empire—and they trusted me to finish what they started.
Suddenly, the lights in the storage corridor flickered and died, plunging the hallway into pitch darkness.
The heavy iron door at the end of Hall C creaked open.
Footsteps echoed down the concrete floor. Slow. Heavy. Deliberate.
"Ethan," a smooth, calm male voice called out into the dark. "I know you're down here. Give us the folder and the drive, and we can make sure your boy wakes up safely."
It wasn't Detective Vance.
May you like
It was a man’s voice—deep, cold, and carrying a heavy suppressed firearm.
They had tracked me to Union Storage.
