Chapter 8 - THE INTERROGATION OF JAMES MILLER
-8-
The interrogation room at the federal holding facility was a sterile cube of gray cinderblock and brushed aluminum. There were no windows, no clocks, and no decorative comforts—just a bolted stainless-steel table, two bolted chairs, and a two-way mirror mounted on the wall that undoubtedly housed a team of federal prosecutors and corporate attorneys watching my every twitch.
I sat with my hands cuffed to the metal loop in the center of the table, my shoulders aching from the rough takedown at the cabin.
The heavy steel door clicked open.
Julian Vance stepped into the room. He wasn't wearing handcuffs. He wore a bespoke charcoal-gray Brioni suit that probably cost more than my first car, his silver-trimmed hair parted with pristine precision. He carried a slim leather portfolio under his arm like a conquering general entering a defeated province.
He didn't sit down immediately. He walked around the table, stopping just behind my right shoulder, leaning down to whisper in my ear with a sickeningly sweet corporate cadence.
"You really thought you could outplay the house, didn't you, Mr. Miller?" Julian murmured, pulling out the chair opposite me and sitting down with deliberate slowness. He opened his portfolio, sliding a single sheet of paper across the table.
I glanced down at the paper. It was a formal plea agreement, drafted by Sterling Enterprises' legal team.
“I, James Miller, hereby confess to the premeditated homicides of two private contractors, acknowledge sole responsibility for corporate data theft, and forfeit all digital evidence currently in my possession to Sterling Enterprises.”
"Sign it," Julian instructed smoothly, uncapping a gold-plated fountain pen and sliding it across the metal table. "Sign it, confess to the murders, and the U.S. Attorney’s office will quietly drop the capital specifications, ensuring you only spend twenty to thirty years in a medium-security facility instead of facing a lifetime behind bars."
I looked at the pen, then up at Julian, letting out a dry, calm chuckle.
Julian’s eyes narrowed slightly, the smooth corporate mask slipping for a fraction of a second. "You find something amusing about a double homicide charge?"
"I find it amusing that you walked into this room assuming I’m still playing your game," I said, my voice steady and unyielding. "You think arresting me stops the file, Julian? You think a pair of handcuffs erases what was uploaded to the Department of Justice thirty minutes before your tactical team kicked my front door in?"
Julian’s expression didn't change, but his fingers twitched against the edge of the portfolio. "A bluff. Standard desperate suspect behavior. Our digital forensics team scrubbed your network router before the warrant was even executed. Nothing left that cabin."
"Your forensics team is good at deleting local hard drives," I agreed, leaning forward against the restraints. "Too bad they don't have jurisdiction over secure international mirror servers bouncing data straight to the federal integrity division."
Before Julian could formulate a retort, the heavy steel door of the interrogation room banged open with a deafening crash.
Agent Miller—not the corrupt local cops, but the real federal investigator I had been secretly coordinating with for weeks—strode into the room, his face flushed, holding a secure tablet in his hand. Behind him stood Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas, a woman with a fearsome reputation for prosecuting white-collar corruption.
Julian stood up abruptly, smoothing his suit jacket, flashing a confident, polished smile toward the federal prosecutor. "Ah, A.U.S. Attorney Thomas. I was just reviewing the confession parameters with Mr. Miller here. Once he signs—"
"Shut up, Julian," A.U.S. Attorney Thomas cut him off, her voice like cracking ice. She didn't even look at him; she walked straight past his chair and stopped right beside me.
She looked down at the tablet in her hand, then looked up at Julian with absolute disgust.
"Mr. Vance, your firm’s primary servers in downtown Raleigh have just been seized under a federal warrant issued thirty seconds ago," Thomas announced, the words dropping into the room like lead weights. "Simultaneously, my office received an unredacted, cryptographically verified financial ledger detailing thirty years of systemic bribery, kickbacks, and black-budget arms smuggling orchestrated by Arthur Sterling."
Julian staggered backward, his polished corporate composure completely shattering. "That... that's impossible. We had firewalls—"
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"Your firewalls were built on thirty-year-old legacy code that Mr. Miller here handed us on a silver platter," Agent Miller added, stepping forward and dropping a heavy stack of printed financial reports directly onto the table on top of Julian’s fake confession form.
Julian stared at the stack of papers, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. The trap hadn't snapped on me. It had just decapitated the Sterling empire.
