Chapter 17 - The Interrogation of the Scion
"Get me the Houston Federal Detention Center immediately," I barked into my satellite communicator. "Miller, set up a satellite relay uplink on this terminal. Vance, establish an override bridge!"
Within ninety seconds, a high-definition video link cracked through the static on our laptop screen.
On the other end sat Jake Carter. He was stripped of his bespoke polo shirt, his expensive Italian leather watch, and his styled hair. He wore a bright orange prisoner jumpsuit, his face pale, his eyes swollen from crying, his hands shackled to a cold steel table in an interrogation room. Behind him stood two stone-faced FBI special agents.
"Emily?!" Jake screamed the moment my image appeared on his monitor. "Emily, oh my God, Emily, tell them to let me go! Dad said you were running some black-ops division! Tell them this is a mistake! I didn't know those boxes were illegal! I swear to God I just thought they were telecommunication chips! Dad signed the bank notes! It was Dad's idea to expand the credit line!"
Even facing federal charges, his first instinct was to throw our father under the bus to save his own skin. The golden boy of Oak Ridge had no spine, no honor, and no courage.
"Jake, shut your mouth and listen to me," I commanded, my voice carrying the crushing authority of a commander on a battlefield. "In precisely seven minutes, a guided torpedo will strike an American aircraft carrier. The only thing that can deactivate the homing protocol is your personal security passkey for the shipping ledger."
"I... I don't remember it!" he stammered, hyperventilating. "I have it written down in my desk! In my penthouse in Uptown!"
"Remember it, Jake," I leaned close to the camera, my face streaked with carbon scoring and salt spray, my tactical vest splattered with the blood of the hostile operative I had just eliminated. "Because if that torpedo hits, you won't spend the rest of your life in a comfortable minimum-security federal camp. You will be transferred to a black site under military jurisdiction. You will never see the sun again. You will never see our mother again. And you will watch from a monitor as our father is prosecuted as a state traitor until he dies in a federal supermax."
"No... no! Please!"
"The code, Jake! Give me the code!"
"It's... it's *TexasStateChamps08!*" he screamed, breaking down completely, tears streaming down his face as he choked on his own sobs. "It's the year I won state! *TexasStateChamps08!*"
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Of course it was. The pinnacle of his entire existence was a high school football championship fifteen years ago—the moment our father had decided Jake was a king and I was a ghost.
"Vance, enter it," I said, stepping back from the screen.
