Chapter 13 - UNMASKING THE MONSTER
13 -
“Stay back, Julian!” Rebecca shrieked over the deafening roar of the helicopter turbines, her eyes wide with unhinged, homicidal mania. “Stay back, or I’ll blow your heart out onto this concrete!”
I stopped fifteen feet away, holding my Glock steady with both hands, the rain streaming down my face.
“It’s over, Rebecca,” I said, my voice cutting through the roar of the engines. “The federal marshals have surrounded the building. The entire board of directors has been arrested. Your father’s empire is dead.”
Rebecca let out a high-pitched, hysterical laugh that was completely lost in the wind.
“Do you honestly think I care about the company?” she screamed, stepping toward me, her gun hand shaking with pure rage. “I hated Sarah! I hated her from the moment she walked into that university! She had the genius, she had the beauty, she had the moral superiority, and she had you!”
She stepped closer, her face contorted with an ugly, visceral envy that had festered for years.
“I took her patent! I took her life on that coastal highway! And I took her place in your bed!” she laughed wildly. “For two whole years, you kissed the woman who cut Sarah’s brake lines! You let me hold Emily’s hand! You looked at me with adoration while I slowly put Thallium into your morning coffee!”
Behind her, Marcus Sterling reached out a trembling, liver-spotted hand, gasping for breath against the wet asphalt.
“Rebecca...” Marcus wheezed, his voice pathetic and broken. “The helicopter... get me on the helicopter... my medication...”
Without even looking down, Rebecca raised her foot and violently kicked Marcus’s hand away.
“Shut up, you pathetic old parasite!” she snapped at her father. “You used me my entire life to steal other people’s brilliance! You were going to leave the entire trust to your shell companies while I did the dirty work! You are nothing to me!”
She turned her venomous gaze back to me.
“If I can’t have Sarah’s patent, and if I can’t have this empire, then neither can you. I’m going to kill you, Julian. Then I’m going to take that helicopter to Washington, find Harold’s safehouse, and make sure Emily joins her mother at the bottom of the cliff.”
She tightened her finger on the trigger.
In that fraction of a second, the entire world slowed down.
I didn't think about the fear, the pain, or the poison that had almost destroyed me. I thought about Emily’s tears behind the chapel. I thought about Sarah’s final, brave words written in the graveyard notebook.
Before Rebecca’s firing pin could strike, I lunged to the left, dropping onto the slick wet concrete.
BANG!
Rebecca’s bullet sliced through the air where my head had been a millisecond prior, sparking against the steel helipad railing.
As I rolled onto my back, I brought my Glock up and fired two precise, controlled rounds.
The first round struck the nickel-plated pistol in Rebecca’s grip, violently shattering the weapon and sending metal fragments ripping into the air.
The second round struck her right shoulder.
Rebecca let out a piercing shriek of agony, spinning around from the kinetic impact and collapsing onto the wet asphalt near the edge of the rooftop.
The heavy steel door of the stairwell banged open with concussive force.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation! Drop your weapons!”
A dozen heavily armed tactical FBI agents swarmed the rooftop helipad, laser sights cutting through the darkness and rain, instantly pinning the helicopter pilot, Marcus Sterling, and Rebecca to the ground.
Detective Thomas Miller stepped onto the roof, his service weapon drawn, followed by Judge Harold Vance.
Thomas walked over to Rebecca, who was writhing on the ground in her ruined emerald gown, clutching her bleeding shoulder and screaming curses into the rain.
He placed his heavy boot firmly over her wrist and clicked steel handcuffs around her wrists.
“Rebecca Sterling,” Thomas said with cold, absolute finality. “You are under arrest for the premeditated murder of Sarah Vance, attempted murder of Julian Vance, and conspiracy to commit corporate terrorism.”
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I slowly lowered my weapon, letting out a long, ragged breath that seemed to carry two years of suffocating grief and torment out into the cold night sky.
It was finally over.
