A small monitor lit up, casting a cold blue glow over his face.

“The auxiliary generator is on a separate grid,” Ryker said. “Gideon’s contacts couldn’t cut this.”

“What are you doing, Ryker?” I ask. “Your assets are frozen. If we fight the police, they’ll arrest you for resisting.”

“I’m not fighting them,” Ryker said.

His fingers flew across the keyboard.

“Gideon owns the local police chief,” Ryker said. “He does not own the federal government.”

I watched the screen. Lines of green code were compiling.

“The embezzlement files,” I realized. “The ones from your sister’s safe box.”

“Exactly,” Ryker said. “My team finished decrypting the transaction logs ten minutes ago. It isn’t just Gideon’s offshore accounts.”

He pointed to a name on the screen.

“That is the personal LLC of Chief Vance,” I whispered. “The head of the local police department.”

“He took three million dollars from the Steel estate over the last two years,” Ryker said. “Gideon paid him to look the other way when Mara died.”

The realization hit me like a physical blow.

“This isn’t a custody dispute anymore,” I said. “This is a federal conspiracy.”