Chapter 6 - The Private Investigator
I stared at the barrel of the gun pointing directly at my chest.
Julian had anticipated every single move I could possibly make.
The driver ordered me to keep my hands visible and stay completely silent as we drove toward the city limits.
I slowly raised my hands, pretending to completely surrender to his terrifying demands.
As we approached a busy downtown intersection, the traffic light suddenly turned bright red.
The driver slammed on the brakes, temporarily distracted by a massive delivery truck cutting into our lane.
I seized the incredibly brief window of opportunity.
I lunged forward, grabbing the steering wheel and violently jerking it to the right.
The taxi swerved aggressively, crashing heavily into a concrete barricade on the side of the road.
The airbags deployed with a deafening bang, filling the cabin with thick, blinding white smoke.
The driver dropped the gun in the chaos, clutching his bleeding nose and cursing loudly.
I kicked the shattered passenger window out with my boot and scrambled out of the smoking vehicle.
I completely blended into the massive crowd of panicked pedestrians gathering on the sidewalk.
I ran for six continuous blocks until I reached a rundown diner in the industrial district.
I walked inside, borrowed the greasy landline phone behind the counter, and dialed a number I had memorized years ago.
It belonged to Marcus Vance, an elite, aggressively ruthless private investigator I had hired for a corporate case a decade ago.
He answered on the first ring, his gruff voice immediately calming my shattered nerves.
I explained the entire horrific nightmare in less than three minutes.
Marcus told me to stay exactly where I was and promised to be there in ten minutes.
He arrived in a heavily tinted black SUV, armed to the teeth and carrying a secure encrypted laptop.
We sat in the back booth of the diner while he aggressively hacked into Julian’s financial records.
"Your husband has been very busy, Jessi," Marcus muttered, his eyes scanning the endless lines of code.
"Julian Sterling is not a real person."
I stared at him in absolute shock as he turned the laptop screen toward me.
"His real name is Arthur Vance, and he is a wanted fugitive in three different countries."
Marcus pulled up a series of terrifying international police bulletins.
"He marries wealthy women, isolates them from their families, and murders them in staged accidents."
Clara was not his wife; she was his biological sister and long-time accomplice in the deadly con.
"They have successfully done this to four other women over the last ten years," Marcus explained grimly.
"And you are the only victim who has ever managed to survive the initial attack."
My blood turned to pure ice as I stared at the photographs of the previous victims.
Suddenly, Marcus’s encrypted laptop screen began to flash violently with a bright red warning banner.
"Damn it," Marcus cursed, aggressively slamming the laptop shut.
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"They just pinged the location of the cell phone you left in the hospital room, and they tied it to the taxi's tracker."
Before I could even process what he meant, the front window of the diner shattered violently into a million pieces.
