Chapter 6 - The Trap
Word count: ~1,500 words
At 7:00 PM, my phone rang. It was Warren calling from a burner number he had presumably borrowed from a cheap motel manager.
I answered, placing the call on speaker while sitting in my quiet hotel suite while Sadie and June drew pictures at the dining table.
"Allison! Allison, please don't hang up!" Warren’s voice was hysterical, cracked with panic and exhaustion. "They’ve frozen everything! The police are looking for me! My investors are threatening to kill me!"
"You brought this on yourself, Warren," I said calmly.
"Please, Allison!" he begged, weeping openly into the receiver. "I was wrong! Mom was wrong! I’ll make her apologize to Sadie and June! I’ll make her get on her knees in front of you! Just unlock the secondary corporate account so I can pay off the immediate warrants and leave the country!"
"You want me to help you flee federal prosecution?" I asked, a cold smile touching my lips.
"Just fifty thousand dollars!" Warren pleaded. "That’s all I need! You have millions in your father's trust! Fifty thousand is nothing to you!"
"Meet me," I said flatly.
There was a sudden, desperate pause on the line. "Meet you? Where?"
"The San Pedro estate," I instructed. "In the garden patio. At nine o'clock tonight. Come alone. If you bring your mother, the deal is off."
"I’ll be there! I’ll be there! Thank you, Allison! Thank you!" he cried before hanging up.
I turned to Arthur, who was standing near the hotel window. "Is the perimeter team ready?"
"Federal investigators and local police are already stationed around the estate perimeter, Major," Arthur confirmed. "The moment he steps onto the property, he will be taken into custody for grand corporate fraud and tax evasion."
At 8:55 PM, a battered taxi dropped Warren off at the side gates of the San Pedro estate.
The grand property was completely dark, save for a single warm light illuminating the marble fountain on the garden patio. Warren hurried through the open gate, his jacket pulled tight around his shoulders, looking frantically around the quiet grounds.
I was sitting in a dark teak chair near the fountain, wearing my military dress coat, holding a single folder in my lap.
"Allison!" Warren gasped, running toward the patio. "God, you’re here! Do you have the cashier's check? Do you have the cash?"
He stopped three feet from me, breathing heavily, his face haggard, unwashed, and twisted with desperation.
"Where is the money, Allison?" he demanded, extending his trembling hands.
I looked down at the folder in my lap, then up at his desperate face.
"There is no money, Warren," I said softly.
He froze. "What... what do you mean? You said if I came here—"
"I said meet me," I corrected him. "I needed you on property grounds where the federal arrest warrant could be executed cleanly without a chase."
Warren’s eyes widened in horror. He turned around to run back toward the gate.
From the dark shadows surrounding the columns, four armed federal officers stepped into the moonlight, their weapons drawn, flashing red and blue identification badges.
"Warren Vance!" an officer shouted. "Freeze! Put your hands on your head!"
Warren fell to his knees on the very same marble patio where twenty-four hours earlier his mother had humiliated my daughters. He sobbed uncontrollably as the officers pulled his arms behind his back, clicking steel handcuffs around his wrists.
"Allison!" Warren screamed as he was pulled to his feet. "You set me up! You ruined my life! I’m your husband!"
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I stood up, adjusting the collar of my uniform coat, looking down at him with utter detachment.
"You ruined your own life the moment you thought my daughters were worth less than your vanity," I told him as the officers led him away into the night.
