A Midnight Package Delivered To My Desk Contains A Severed Hand And A 60-Minute Timer Pointing To My Son's Family
👉 Previous Decision: You chose to mobilize Detective Kowalski and the precinct SWAT unit to secure the perimeter.
Precinct tech officers swarmed the laptop, fingers flying across keyboards. The pre-recorded message had stopped. Now, lines of code scrolled rapidly across the screen.
“It’s not detonating anything, Captain,” the lead tech announced, pushing his glasses up his nose. “It’s a cryptographic timer. Linked to some kind of offshore escrow account.”
My blood ran cold. “An escrow account? How much?”
“Reading it now… $1.2 million, Captain. Scheduled for release when this timer hits zero.” He gestured to the cooler, where 14 minutes remained.
A faint commotion stirred outside the yellow police tape. A woman, sharp-eyed and tenacious, pushed past a patrol officer. Sarah Lindqvist, an investigative reporter for the Newark Ledger.
“Captain Novak,” she called out, her voice cutting through the hum of activity. “I’m looking into municipal real estate shell companies. Is this site tied to the old DeLuca operations?”
Her questions hung in the air, pointed and unsettling. She was digging into exactly the kind of mess I’d spent decades trying to bury.
Choose your next action
Confiscate Sarah Lindqvist’s recording equipment and force her off the perimeter — Read Chapter 5 to continue
Brief Sarah off the record to find out what financial data she already possesses — Read Chapter 6 to continue
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