Chapter 15: The Airfield
Federal agents moved the moment Charles raised the weapon.
Floodlights ignited around the hangar.
“Federal agents! Drop the gun!”
Charles seized Ethan by the collar and pulled him backward.
Halston ran toward the jet.
Gunfire struck the runway, forcing agents behind vehicles.
Ethan twisted free for half a second.
It was enough.
Daniel, positioned behind a fuel truck, fired.
The bullet struck Charles’s shoulder.
His gun dropped.
Ethan kicked it away.
Agents surrounded them.
Halston reached the aircraft stairs before the pilot locked the cockpit and raised both hands through the window.
The senator turned.
Dozens of weapons were aimed at him.
He slowly lifted his hands.
“This is political persecution!” he shouted.
No one answered.
Charles remained on his knees, blood spreading across his coat but his injury not life-threatening.
He looked at Ethan with pure disgust.
“You betrayed your own blood.”
Ethan stared down at him.
“No. I finally stopped betraying everyone else.”
Charles was taken into custody.
Halston was arrested on charges including conspiracy, fraud, obstruction, bribery, and attempted murder.
The operation appeared successful.
Then Daniel noticed the open hangar door.
A black sedan raced toward a service exit.
Victoria sat in the back seat.
She had escaped federal custody during a transfer, helped by a compromised marshal.
She had not come to save Charles.
She had come for the ledger.
Agents pursued her through the rain.
The sedan crashed through the exit barrier and disappeared onto the highway.
Inside the hospital, Emily watched the tracking display.
The Silver Queen was moving with Victoria.
During the chaos, she had taken the replica.
She did not know it contained a tracker.
“She’ll go somewhere she believes Charles can’t reach,” Emily said.
Daniel’s voice came through the radio.
“Where?”
Emily thought of Victoria’s obsession with family history.
The silver.
The bloodline.
The inheritance.
Then she remembered the place Victoria visited every year on the anniversary of Charles’s supposed death.
May you like
The Montgomery mausoleum.
“She’s going to the cemetery.”
