Chapter 40
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While Noah was securing the star witness in Boston, Marcus Vance was hunting ghosts in Greenwich.
He sat in the digital forensics lab—the same room where Rachel had once unraveled Senator Thorne’s finances—surrounded by monitors displaying hundreds of hours of traffic camera footage.
"The saboteurs were professionals, yes," Marcus muttered to himself, rubbing his tired eyes. "But professionals have to get paid."
He zoomed in on a specific frame from a traffic camera located two blocks away from the aquatic center, timestamped at 2:00 AM on the night of the attack. It showed a plain white commercial van running a yellow light. The license plate was obscured by mud, but Marcus wasn't looking at the plate. He was looking at the faint, glowing logo on the driver's side door.
Using image enhancement software, he cleared up the logo. Apex Industrial Solutions.
Marcus quickly ran the company name through a national corporate registry. It was a local demolition company. But when he dug one layer deeper into their parent holdings, his heart leaped with triumph.
The parent company of Apex Industrial Solutions was a massive private equity firm headquartered in Boston. A firm whose primary shareholder was Dr. Silas Mercer.
"Got you," Marcus smiled fiercely.
He immediately called Evelyn, who was managing the chaos in the main lobby.
"Evelyn, I found the connection," Marcus said rapidly. "Mercer didn't just hire random thugs. He used one of his own subsidiary demolition companies to destroy the aquatic center. We have the corporate link, and we have the van on camera."
"Can we have him arrested?" Evelyn asked, hope rising in her voice.
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"We don't have enough to arrest Mercer directly yet, but we have enough to arrest the demolition crew," Marcus explained. "Once the police bring them in, they will roll on whoever paid them to save themselves. The trail leads straight back to Aegis."
"Noah just texted me," Evelyn said, her voice ringing with a fierce, impending victory. "He is on his way back from Boston with a former Aegis patient willing to break his NDA. We have the sword, and we have the shield. Set up a press podium in front of the destroyed aquatic center. We are ending this today."
