Part 13: The Zurich Ledger
## Part 13: The Zurich Ledger
The private terminal inside the Custom House loft was the only machine connected to the Zurich data streams.
By 3:00 a.m. the next morning, the city of Boston was completely dark under a heavy mountain fog, leaving only the blue glare of my monitor to illuminate the granite walls.
Liam sat across from me, his sleeves rolled up, his fingers typing a sequence of encryption keys into the secondary drive.
"Hale & Associates isn't a legal firm, Cora," he said, his eyes tracking the scrolling columns of numbers.
"It’s a clearinghouse for the assets your father liquidated before he crossed the border in 2006."
"The five million dollars he took from your mother’s trust? It wasn't spent on his debts."
"It was used to buy twenty percent of the salvage rights for The Sovereign."
I looked at the digital signature on the 2006 transfer note.
The script was fluid, elegant, and familiar—the same handwriting that had signed my eighth-grade report cards before the world turned into a courtroom.
Julian Rossi.
My father.
The man who had left me in an orphanage with a box of old needles and a warning never to look for his name in the papers.
"He's still alive, Liam," I whispered, my hand resting flat against the screen.
"He's in Switzerland."
"He’s not in Switzerland, Cora," a voice came from the darkness of the doorway.
Arthur Vance walked into the room, his oak cane striking the floorboards with a dry, heavy thud.
Thud.
Thud.
He held a paper copy of a maritime arrival manifest from the Port of Miami, dated forty-eight hours ago.
"He landed in Florida on a private vessel registered to the Ashford estate," the old man said, his voice dropping the temperature in the loft.
"He bought the black boat that attacked The Elizabeth yesterday."
"He doesn't want the gold bullion for the syndicates, Liam."
"He wants it because he owes thirty million to the Russian buyers in New York, and they gave him until Friday to settle the balance."
I stood up from the mahogany table, my cotton gloves slipping from my fingers.
"He used me," I said, the realization settling over me like ice.
"He left the lace shroud in my studio because he knew the Ashford lawyers would monitor my work."
"He used his own daughter as a target to flush out your father's location codes."
Liam stood up beside me, his long coat casting a dark shadow across the white sheets of the desk.
"Then the target is about to turn around, Cora," he said, his gray eyes locking onto mine with a force that made the windowpane vibrate.
May you like
"Marcus has already tracked his satellite signature to a private marina in Palm Beach."
"We fly south in twenty minutes."
