Chapter 9 - The Digital Upload
The police officer standing on the patrol boat was not there to rescue them from the deadly syndicate.
He wore a sinister smirk that proved he was just another corrupt official lingering on Marcus's massive payroll.
The corrupt cop boarded their disabled speedboat, keeping his high-powered rifle trained on Lucas's chest.
He aggressively confiscated the waterproof backpack from Elena, securing the precious USB drive.
Lily clung to her mother, crying softly in the freezing ocean wind as all their hope vanished.
The military-grade pursuit boat finally emerged from the thick fog, pulling up right alongside them.
Vanessa stepped onto the deck, her pristine white wedding dress now ruined by mud and saltwater.
She happily accepted the waterproof backpack from the dirty cop, laughing victoriously at her absolute triumph.
She ordered the officer to sink their disabled boat and leave them to drown in the freezing bay.
Lucas watched in silent agony as the villains prepared to erase his family from existence.
But Vanessa did not realize that Lucas had used the chaotic boat chase to execute a brilliant backup plan.
When he had wrestled the bag from Arthur earlier, he secretly plugged the USB drive into his waterproof smartwatch for exactly ten seconds.
He had initiated a massive, encrypted data transfer directly to the highly secure cloud servers of the FBI.
Lucas slowly lowered his left hand, checking the glowing digital screen hidden beneath his soaked suit sleeve.
The upload progress bar was currently sitting at ninety-nine percent, needing only a few more seconds to complete.
He just needed to keep Vanessa distracted long enough for the final packet of data to transmit.
Lucas started yelling insults at Vanessa, mocking her for needing a corrupt father to fight her battles.
Vanessa's fragile ego shattered instantly, and she marched angrily across the deck to confront him.
As she raised her hand to slap his face, her sharp eyes caught the blue glow radiating from his wrist.
She realized exactly what he was doing and screamed in absolute, unhinged panic.
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Vanessa grabbed a heavy iron crowbar from the boat's emergency toolkit and swung it with terrifying force.
She smashed the face of the smartwatch completely, shattering the screen into a hundred useless pieces.
