Chapter 10 - The Trap Snaps Shut
Detective Harris from the Dallas Financial Crimes Division stepped out of the police cruiser, badge held high.
"Julian Croft?" Harris said, walking directly up to the restrained man.
Julian pulled away from the security guards, his eyes darting frantically. "This is a civil dispute! It's a divorce dispute! You can't arrest me for a domestic financial disagreement!"
"This isn't a domestic dispute, Mr. Croft," Harris replied smoothly, pulling a set of steel handcuffs from his utility belt. "You are under arrest for grand larceny, interstate wire fraud, and falsification of federal securities documents in connection with Apex Crest Capital. Turn around and put your hands behind your back."
"No! No, wait! It wasn't me! It was Vanessa Sterling!" Julian shrieked, his composure completely dissolving into pure panic as the cuffs clicked around his wrists. "She set up the shell companies! She told me how to bypass the Zurich safeguards! Elena, tell them! Tell them we can settle this!"
I stood on the marble steps, looking down at the man who had terrorized me for fourteen years. The man who had made me feel small, worthless, ugly, and powerless.
"I have nothing to say to you, Julian," I said softly. "Speak to my attorneys."
The press flashed their cameras relentlessly as Julian Croft—once hailed as the golden boy of Texas investment banking—was shoved into the back of a police cruiser in broad daylight on Mercer Street.
As the cruiser pulled away, Marcus walked up to my side, holding a tablet. "Julian is handled. But Vanessa didn't come with him."
"Where is she?" I asked, my pulse quickening.
"She cleared out of the Crescent Hotel twenty minutes ago," Marcus said, scrolling through real-time tracking data. "She withdrew two million in cash from an emergency bearer account and was spotted heading north on I-35 toward the private airfield in Addison."
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"She's fleeing the country," Rachel said.
"No," Marcus corrected, his brow furrowing as he analyzed the telemetry. "Her flight plan isn't registered for Mexico or Europe. She filed a flight plan for Aspen, Colorado. Elena... your mother's private mountain estate is in Aspen."