Chapter 6 - The Terminal
The clock on the dashboard of Daniel’s car glowed 7:45 PM as they tore down the highway toward the private airfield in Teterboro. The highway was slick with spray from semi-trucks, but Daniel drove with a reckless intensity born of ten years of frustration and dead-end leads.
In the back seat, Vanessa held her mother's letter tightly against her chest, her eyes fixed on the darkening horizon. "My father spent his whole life trying to protect a company that Arthur was slowly turning into a graveyard."
"Your father chose to protect himself first," Maya said gently, though there was no malice in her voice now—only a deep, exhausted clarity. "He wasn't innocent, Vanessa. But he wasn't the monster at the top of the stairs."
Ethan sat beside Maya, turning Arthur's silver cufflink over and over in his palm. "My father trusted Arthur like a brother. When the board voted on the expansion project back in ninety-eight, Arthur was the one who insisted on moving the capital through shell accounts to avoid federal oversight. My father thought it was just aggressive tax strategy. He didn't know it was embezzlement until it was too late."
"And that's why they killed him," Maya said, the realization settling over her like cold water. "Your father and mine—they both discovered the same thing within forty-eight hours of each other."
Daniel glanced in the rearview mirror. "We're three miles out from the private hangar sector. If Arthur has a chartered Gulfstream waiting on the tarmac, we have about ninety seconds before he lifts off."
As they crested the final rise before the security perimeter, the sprawling expanse of the airfield opened up beneath them, dotted with blinking red obstruction lights and rows of sleek private jets.
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Through the chain-link fence, a single white Gulfstream G650 was already taxiing away from the private hangar, its jet turbines whining a high-pitched scream against the night sky.
Daniel slammed on the brakes, sliding the unmarked cruiser sideways across the gravel entrance of Gate Four.
