Chapter 15 - The Trap Selina Could Not Resist
By the next morning, police knew how Rusk had entered the apartment building.
He used a cloned maintenance badge.
Security footage showed a man in a baseball cap entering a service elevator twenty minutes before I arrived.
He never appeared leaving.
The building was searched floor by floor.
No Rusk.
Then officers found a ceiling access panel open in a mechanical room.
Inside the ventilation space were water bottles, a camera lens, and a small receiver connected to the building's security feed.
Rusk had watched me arrive from inside the building.
He had been close enough to see my sweater.
I felt violated in a way that was difficult to describe.
My home had stopped being safe before I even unpacked.
"Where did he go?"
Alvarez answered carefully.
"We believe he exited through a neighboring construction site."
"So he is still with Selina."
"Likely."
"Then use me."
Nathan looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
"No."
Alvarez did not react immediately.
"Explain."
"Selina keeps contacting me because she wants the shares."
"Yes."
"She also wants Flynn to know I am the reason he lost the company."
"Probably."
"Then she wants a meeting."
Nathan stepped forward.
"Absolutely not."
I ignored him.
"Offer her escrow papers."
Camille stared at me.
"Fake ones?"
"Real enough to make her believe she can sign."
Alvarez leaned back.
"You are describing a controlled operation."
"Yes."
"You are not law enforcement."
"I know."
"And you are recovering from major surgery."
"I know."
"And the woman you want to bait has already tried to kill you more than once."
"I know."
Nathan threw up his hands.
"Apparently knowing things no longer matters in this family."
I turned toward him.
"She will keep coming."
"Then let police find her."
"They have been trying."
Alvarez raised an eyebrow.
I added quickly.
"No offense."
"Some taken."
I almost smiled.
Then I looked at her seriously.
"Selina believes she still controls the board outcome through my fear."
"You removed the Gray Book leverage."
"So she needs a new one."
"You."
"Exactly."
The room went quiet.
Alvarez did not say yes.
She did not say no.
She called her supervisor.
For the next six hours, plans were discussed without me.
Camille objected to nearly all of them.
Nathan objected to the concept of geography.
Dr. Reed, when informed, threatened to personally tell police I was medically unfit to participate in anything more dangerous than reading a paperback.
"You are not using my patient as bait."
Alvarez crossed her arms.
"That is not the plan."
"Good."
"The plan would use controlled communication and a decoy location."
"With Mabel nowhere near it."
"Correct."
I frowned.
"Then Selina may not believe it."
Dr. Reed turned toward me.
"I am comfortable with that risk."
For once, I lost the argument.
The operation began that evening.
I sent Selina one text from the phone she already knew.
I will escrow the shares if I see the complete Gray Book first.
She replied six minutes later.
No police.
I wrote:
Then no deal.
Twenty minutes passed.
Selina replied:
Tomorrow, 10 p.m.
Old Lakeshore Terminal.
Come alone with signed transfer authority.
Lakeshore Terminal was an abandoned ferry building south of the city.
Remote.
Dark.
Surrounded by service roads and water.
Exactly the kind of place television criminals seemed to love and sensible people avoided.
Police had no intention of sending me.
They prepared an undercover officer with my height and coat color.
A vehicle matching Camille's rental car would approach.
Tactical teams would surround the area before the meeting.
I would remain at the safe residence.
At 9:40 the next night, I sat beside Alvarez's command radio listening to the operation.
Nathan paced again.
Camille pretended to read email.
Dr. Reed had made me promise to call if my pain increased.
At 9:58, the decoy vehicle entered the terminal road.
At 10:01, the undercover officer stepped out carrying a document case.
Nothing happened.
At 10:03, a light flashed inside the abandoned terminal.
At 10:05, the officer received a text.
Walk inside.
Alvarez spoke into the radio.
"Hold perimeter."
The officer entered.
I could hear every breath through the microphone.
Footsteps echoed.
Then a woman's voice came through.
"Stop."
Selina.
My entire body went cold.
She was there.
The officer stopped.
"Put the case down."
The voice came from somewhere above.
A catwalk.
The officer obeyed.
"Turn around."
She did.
Silence.
Then Selina laughed.
"You are not Mabel."
Alvarez's face changed.
"Move," she ordered.
Police teams entered from three sides.
A gunshot cracked through the radio.
Nathan froze.
I stopped breathing.
Then another shot.
An officer shouted.
"Suspect moving east catwalk."
Alvarez spoke rapidly into the radio.
"Contain east exit."
The audio became chaos.
Footsteps.
Commands.
Metal banging.
Then silence.
"Status?"
No answer.
"Team One, status?"
Static.
Then a voice.
"One suspect detained."
I gripped the chair.
"Which one?"
Alvarez waited for the radio.
"Male suspect."
Rusk.
"Female suspect moving toward water."
Selina was running again.
Police chased her onto the rear loading pier.
A tactical camera caught her climbing over a barrier.
She jumped into a small motorboat hidden below the dock.
The engine started.
Then died.
The boat moved three feet and stopped.
Selina pulled the starter again.
Nothing.
Police lights flooded the water.
She looked toward the shoreline.
Officers surrounded the pier.
For the first time, there was nowhere left to run.
Alvarez's radio carried the commands clearly.
"Hands where we can see them."
Selina stood inside the boat.
She held something in her right hand.
A phone.
"Drop it."
She looked down at the screen.
Then she shouted one sentence.
"Tell Mabel she still does not know the worst part."
And threw the phone into the lake.
Officers pulled her from the boat thirty seconds later.
Selina Cole was finally in custody.
I thought I would feel relief.
Instead, her last words sat inside me like ice.
She still does not know the worst part.
At 1:20 a.m., police divers recovered the phone.
It was damaged but not destroyed.
At 6:30, a forensic technician extracted part of its cloud backup.
At 8:15, Alvarez came to the safe residence.
She did not sit down.
"We found a video Selina recorded the day before the stabbing."
My pulse quickened.
"Another practice video?"
"No."
"Then what?"
Alvarez looked toward Camille.
Then back at me.
"It shows Selina meeting someone in a parking garage."
"Daniel?"
"No."
"Rusk?"
"No."
My stomach tightened.
"Who?"
Alvarez placed a still image on the table.
The man was turned partly away from the camera.
But I knew the suit.
I knew the posture.
I knew him.
Flynn.
The timestamp was 7:42 p.m.
The night before he stabbed me.
The hours after Selina's arrest were strangely harder than the chase itself.
For days, every phone call had carried the possibility that she was moving closer.
Now she was behind a locked door, and my body did not know how to stop preparing for impact.
I checked the window twice.
Then the front lock.
Then the window again.
Nathan noticed.
"She is in custody."
"I know."
"Rusk too."
"I know."
"Then why are you checking the lock?"
I stared at my hand on the deadbolt.
"Because knowing and believing are apparently different systems."
He nodded slowly.
"That sounds annoyingly healthy."
"Do not ruin it."
The next morning, a victim advocate explained what would happen now.
Pretrial hearings.
Evidence motions.
Depositions in the civil matters.
More interviews.
More waiting.
I had expected an arrest to feel like an ending.
Instead, it was a door into another corridor.
That realization frustrated me until the advocate said something I remembered for months.
"The justice system moves on court time."
She looked at me.
"Your recovery does not have to."
I wrote the sentence in my notebook beside Iris and James's names.
It became a rule.
I would attend what I needed to attend.
I would tell the truth when asked.
But I would not put my life on hold until every guilty person had received a final number from a judge.
That afternoon, I worked for ninety minutes on Meridian North's first possible acquisition target.
The company was small, boring, profitable, and completely unrelated to Vance Global.
It made warehouse inventory software.
I loved it immediately.
For ninety minutes, no one was a suspect.
No one was a witness.
No one was asking who knew about my pregnancy.
There were only margins, customer retention, and a messy cap table.
May you like
It was the most peaceful thing I had done in weeks.
