Chapter 28 - The Bureau's Blind Spot
Setting a trap inside a federal intelligence building required a terrifying level of precision. If Sarah made a mistake, the mole would instantly realize they were being hunted, destroy their tracks, and vanish.
Sarah needed help, but she couldn't rely on federal resources. She needed the one person who had already outsmarted the cartel's top cryptographer.
She drove to the Harper mansion under the cover of darkness, parking her unmarked sedan three blocks away and walking the rest of the distance to avoid surveillance.
Nathan let her in through the secure side entrance, leading her directly to Ethan’s basement cyber-lab.
"Agent Collins," Ethan said, looking up from his massive array of monitors. "Is something wrong? Did Arthur's lawyers find a loophole?"
"Arthur is locked away tight," Sarah assured him, pulling up a chair. "But the nightmare isn't over. I need your help, Ethan. Off the books. Highly illegal."
Nathan crossed his arms, frowning deeply. "Sarah, what are you talking about? My son isn't hacking the government for you."
"He doesn't have to hack the government," Sarah explained, looking between Nathan and his son. "I need him to build a ghost. A digital illusion."
She explained the situation. The leaked operational timelines. The encrypted communications on Arthur's tablet. The undeniable proof of a high-level mole inside her own task force.
"If I launch an internal affairs investigation, the mole will scatter," Sarah said, her voice laced with intense frustration. "I need to feed them a piece of bait so irresistible, they have to bite. And when they bite, I need you to trace their teeth."
Ethan leaned forward, the challenge instantly igniting the brilliant, analytical part of his brain.
"What's the bait?" Ethan asked.
"The cartel's missing fifty million dollars," Sarah replied. "Currently, those funds are locked in a heavily guarded federal holding account. I want you to create a fake offshore routing ledger. I want it to look exactly like a backdoor vulnerability in the federal firewall—a vulnerability that would allow someone to quietly siphon the fifty million dollars out of federal custody and back to the cartel."
Nathan’s eyes widened. "You want to tempt a federal agent into stealing cartel money?"
"I want to tempt the mole into trying to steal it, to prove to their cartel bosses that they are still useful now that Arthur is gone," Sarah corrected.
"Can you build it, Ethan?" she asked.
Ethan cracked his knuckles, turning back to his keyboards.
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"I can build a honey-pot so sweet, a cyber-security expert wouldn't even know it was fake until the cage dropped on them," Ethan smiled confidently. "I'll embed a micro-tracker in the fake ledger. The second the mole accesses the file on the FBI intranet, I'll have their terminal ID, their IP address, and their exact physical location in the building."
"Do it," Sarah ordered. "Let's catch a traitor."
