Chapter 59 - The Falcon Breaks Its Wings
"You're trespassing, Melissa," I called back across the frost. My voice didn't waver. "You have thirty seconds before Detective Miller places both of you under arrest for criminal intimidation and civil conspiracy."
Marcus laughed, a deep, rumbling baritone that echoed off the timber framing of the barn. "Detective Miller doesn't have jurisdiction here, little sister. This isn't a state matter anymore. This land was annexed into the municipal watershed zone at midnight. We have a writ of immediate entry signed by Judge Abernathy."
He held up a blue-backed document, the court seal catching the glare of the porch lamp.
"Abernathy was arrested at his summer home in Mystic two hours ago, Marcus," Miller’s voice rang out from the shadow of the porch pillar. He stepped down the stone stairs, his badge out, his gun at the low ready. "Federal agents took him in on five counts of judicial bribery linked to your shell accounts in Zurich. The writ you're holding is toilet paper."
Melissa’s smile froze. Her hand went to her throat, her cigarette dropping into the frosted weeds. "What did you say?"
"I said the game is over, Melissa," Miller replied steadily. "The Department of Justice intercepted the wire transfer Marcus sent from Switzerland to Abernathy's clerk. They have the IP address, the offshore routing numbers, and your signature on the electronic authorization."
Melissa spun toward Marcus, her face contorting in that hideous, familiar rage that had terrorized my childhood. "You said the Swiss accounts were completely sterile! You told me the feds couldn't touch them!"
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"Shut up!" Marcus snarled, stepping back toward the truck, his eyes darting toward the treeline where the faint flashing of blue and red emergency strobes had begun to tint the thick fog. "Get in the truck, Melissa. We're leaving."
"You aren't going anywhere, Marcus," Julian’s voice emerged from behind me. He stepped onto the porch, holding Henri Moreau's original 1982 ledger high in the air. "The reversionary deed is registered with the state recorder. The land doesn't belong to the water authority. It belongs to me. And as sole trustee of the Moreau estate, I am executing an immediate trespass order against both of you."
