Chapter 8
Z
By dawn, the fog had yielded to a cold, dreary morning light. We had walked three miles along the river bank until we reached an automated truck stop near the interstate. Using cash from my purse, Mara bought us dry sweatshirts, two hot coffees, and a prepaid disposable cell phone from the convenience store.
We sat in a corner booth of the greasy-spoon diner attached to the truck stop, wrapped in oversized sweatshirts, steaming mugs between our hands. We looked like two battered survivors of a shipwreck, but for the first time in twenty-four hours, we had a moment to breathe.
I dialed the number written in the ledger on the prepaid phone and held it to my ear.
It rang three times before a sharp, professional female voice answered.
"Vance Legal Services."
"Evelyn Vance?" I asked, keeping my voice low.
A brief pause on the line. "Who is speaking?"
"My name is Irene Miller," I said carefully. "I was married to Zane Miller. Or Zane Vance, as your brother knew him."
Silence deadened the line. The quiet stretched for so long I thought the connection had dropped.
"Irene," Evelyn's voice finally returned, lower now, stripped of its formal receptionist tone. "Zane's widow."
"Yes," I said. "I'm with Mara. Zane's daughter."
"Is Zane dead?" Evelyn asked directly.
"Yes. Cancer. Two days ago."
A deep sigh sounded through the speaker. "Then Victor Thorne knows."
"He already sent men after us," I said, glancing at Mara, who was watching me intensely across the booth. "We barely escaped. Evelyn, we have the ledger. And we have the flash drive."
I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.
"Where are you right now?" Evelyn demanded, her tone suddenly urgent.
"I'm not giving you our location," I replied flatly. "Not until I know whose side you're on."
"Listen to me very carefully, Irene," Evelyn said, her voice dripping with sharp intensity. "My brother Arthur has been sitting in a maximum-security federal facility for ten years for a crime Zane and Victor Thorne planned together. Arthur took the fall because Thorne threatened to murder his entire family if he spoke. My family has been living in fear for a decade!"
"Then help us destroy him," I urged. "The drive has everything. Wire transfers, murder orders, political bribes. Everything Thorne tried to hide."
"A flash drive isn't enough to take down a man like Victor Thorne," Evelyn countered coldly. "Thorne owns judges, federal prosecutors, and half the police precinct in Chicago. If you walk into a police station with that drive, it will vanish into an evidence room and you'll both wind up dead in a ditch before nightfall."
"Then what do we do?" Mara chimed in, leaning closer to the phone. "We can't keep running forever!"
"You need leverage," Evelyn said. "You need to force Thorne into the open where his money can't protect him. Arthur knows the exact vault where Thorne keeps his hard-copy physical offshore assets—the actual paper bearer bonds and signed ledgers that prove his international tax fraud. That's the one thing not on that flash drive."
"Where is it?" I asked.
"It's inside Thorne's private estate in Lake Forest," Evelyn revealed. "In his private study behind a biometric safe. But Arthur is the only one who has the secondary bypass code. Zane designed the system, but Arthur held the key."
"Arthur won't talk to us from prison," I said. "They monitor every call."
"He doesn't have to," Evelyn said. "I'm visiting him today at eleven for a legal consultation at Stateville Correctional. I can get the code from him. But I won't give it to you unless you agree to meet me in person."
I narrowed my eyes. "Why?"
"Because if Thorne falls, I want my brother's name cleared," Evelyn said fiercely. "I want Arthur out of prison. We do this together, or not at all."
I looked at Mara. She gave me a slow, cautious nod. We were in too deep to pull back now.
"Name the place," I said.
"The public library on 8th Street in downtown Chicago," Evelyn said. "Third floor, manuscript archives. It's crowded, full of cameras, and neutral ground. Two o'clock sharp. Don't be late."
The line went dead.
I set the burner phone on the table and took a slow sip of my black coffee.
"Do you trust her?" Mara asked softly.
"I don't trust anyone connected to Zane's past," I said truthfully. "But she's right about one thing—we can't just hand this to the police. Thorne's tentacles run too deep."
"So we're going to Chicago," Mara said, a grim humor in her tone. "From a quiet suburban life to bringing down a billionaire mob boss in forty-eight hours."
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"Zane spent thirty-four years making us victims of his secrets," I said, my voice hardening as I looked at my late husband's secret daughter. "It's time we start using those secrets against the men who built them."
We left the diner, stepped out into the cold morning air, and walked toward the train station bound for Chicago.
