Chapter 6 - The Traitor’s Trap-6
The sheer weight of the revelation left Abigail feeling hollowed out, but beneath the grief, a cold, unyielding iron had formed in her soul. They had killed her husband. They had corrupted her son. They had spent a decade treating her family like cattle to be slaughtered for financial gain.
“They think I’m a weak, broken widow,” Abigail said, standing up from her chair, her eyes blazing with a fierce, terrifying focus. “They think they can take everything from me and I’ll just cry in the corner.”
Pendelton smiled grimly. “They have no idea who they are dealing with, Mrs. Riley. The Attorney General’s office has granted us complete authorization to run a sting operation. But we must be careful. Richard Sterling is a master of legal loopholes. If he senses a trap, he will burn every paper trails and disappear.”
“What’s the plan?” Abigail asked.
“We proceed with the wire transfer,” Miller explained, laying out a schematic of Dr. Vance’s private clinic and hospital quarters. “You will go to Dr. Vance’s office tomorrow morning. You will hand him a certified cashier’s check for $12,000—funded directly by our task force bank account, which contains embedded digital tracking protocols. Simultaneously, Naomi will download the remaining internal server logs from Vance’s clinic that connect Sterling’s shell company to Spencer’s insurance policies.”
“And Spencer?” Abigail asked. “He’s still sitting in that hospital bed, getting poisoned every time they adjust his IV.”
“We’ve already arranged for a trusted, independent medical team to intervene,” Pendelton reassured her. “At 10:00 AM tomorrow, while you are delivering the check to Vance, a team of federal marshals and state health inspectors will enter Spencer’s room under the guise of a surprise hospital audit. They will immediately replace his IV lines, secure his blood samples for toxicological evidence, and place him under federal protective custody.”
“Will he know what’s happening?”
“Not immediately,” Pendelton said. “He will be told that Dr. Vance’s clinic is under quarantine investigation. We cannot let Spencer know he is facing criminal charges until the primary targets—Vance, Brenda, and Sterling—are in handcuffs.”
That night, Abigail returned to her empty house in Independencia. She walked into Spencer’s old bedroom. The room was frozen in time—poster of sports teams on the walls, trophies from his high school baseball days sitting on the dust-covered bookshelves.
She remembered holding him when he was a baby, teaching him how to ride a bicycle, staying up all night when he had the flu. Where had she gone wrong? Was he born with this seed of deceit inside him, or had Richard Sterling’s sinister influence twisted him beyond recognition?
Her phone chimed. It was a text from Spencer:
“Mom, Dr. Vance says if the money isn't here by 10 AM, he has to give my bed to another emergency patient. Please tell me you have the check.”
Abigail stared at the text. A week ago, this message would have sent her into a panic. Now, it read like a ransom note written by a child who didn't realize he was holding the gun to his own head.
She typed back:
“I have the check, Spencer. Everything is taken care of. I will see Dr. Vance at 9:30 AM tomorrow. Rest easy.”
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She set her phone down, walked into her own bedroom, and opened the bottom drawer of her dresser. Beneath a stack of old winter sweaters, she pulled out a small wooden box. Inside was Thomas’s old wristwatch—a silver Timex with a worn leather band. She strapped it onto her wrist.
“I’m going to finish what you started, Thomas,” she whispered to the quiet room. “They won't get away with it. Not this time.”
