Chapter 8 - The Confrontation
The digital viewer count on Kayla’s livestream exploded. 50 viewers. 500 viewers. 2,000 viewers. The entire high school, sitting at the prom tables on their phones, suddenly tuned in to the real-world thriller happening downtown.
I scrambled out of the car and followed her into the lobby, my phone also recording.
The elevator doors chimed. Richard Vance and his two guards stepped out into the lobby, holding a black briefcase and a hard drive they had clearly seized from Arthur and Sarah upstairs. Arthur and Sarah followed behind them in handcuffs, held tightly by one of the guards.
Richard stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Kayla standing in the center of the shattered lobby, her bald head gleaming under the fluorescent lights, her phone aimed directly at his face.
"What is the meaning of this?" Richard snarled, stepping forward. "Turn that camera off, you little bitch."
"I'm live to the entire town, Mr. Vance," Kayla said, her hand steady as a rock. "Everyone at the prom is watching right now. They can see my dad in handcuffs. They can see Sarah Jenkins. And they’re about to hear exactly what your son said on this tape."
From the shadows of the lobby entrance, a small figure stepped out. It was Reese. She had slipped out of Mrs. Gable’s house and followed us downtown. She raised her little pink tape recorder and pressed play.
Steven’s voice echoed through the high glass ceiling of the lobby:
"...get her wasted... put something in her drink so she can't say no... getting her pregnant will keep her from leaving for college..."
Richard’s face went from angry to completely pale. The sheer, undeniable clarity of the recording, combined with Kayla's striking, shaved appearance and the live broadcast, created a public relations nightmare that no amount of money could fix in real-time.
"You think this changes anything?" Richard hissed, trying to maintain his composure. "Your father is a thief. I have the files right here."
"No, Richard," Sarah Jenkins spoke up, a triumphant smile breaking through her bruised face. "You have the copy drive. While you were busy wrestling that out of my hands, I used the building's administrative override to upload the entire federal double-ledger directly to the FBI's secure tip portal via the cloud. The transmission completed thirty seconds ago."
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A sudden, sharp wail of sirens broke through the night air.
But they weren't the local police cars that Richard owned. They were the deep, roaring sirens of federal black SUVs, tearing down Main Street from the highway bypass.
