Chapter 6 - The Rat Trap
At 3:00 AM, the Beverly Hills mansion was dark and silent.
Christopher had locked himself in the guest house down near the tennis courts, drinking himself into a stupor while frantically calling his high-priced defense attorneys, none of whom were answering their phones at such an hour.
Inside the main house, Luke and I sat in the darkened second-floor security monitoring room.
On the quad-split monitors, night-vision cameras covered every angle of the estate’s perimeter, from the wrought-iron front gates to the side service entrances.
"She’s coming," Luke said softly, watching a digital signal pinging on his laptop screen.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Brenda was released on a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bail fifty minutes ago," Luke explained, pointing to a tracking dot moving rapidly down Sunset Boulevard. "Her bail was posted by an anonymous bail bondsman—a bondsman I secretly funded through a shell company. She thinks she has six hours before the federal freezing order hits her personal bank accounts. She needs cash, passports, and the physical backup drives stored in Father’s safe."
Ten minutes later, a sleek black sedan pulled up two blocks away from our gates.
A figure dressed in dark clothing, wearing a hoodie and carrying a leather backpack, slipped out of the vehicle and approached the side service gate of our estate.
It was Brenda.
She used a master keycard—one Christopher had given her months ago—to unlock the service gate. She moved quickly through the darkened rose garden, slipping toward the rear terrace doors of the main house.
She didn't know that every single motion sensor had been re-calibrated by Luke two hours earlier.
Brenda pulled a small crowbar from her backpack and pried open the wooden latch of the study’s French doors. She slipped inside, her flashlight beam cutting through the darkness as she rushed straight toward my father’s floor-to-ceiling painting on the wall.
She pushed the painting aside, revealing the heavy wall-mounted steel safe hidden behind it.
She frantically punched in a six-digit code: 0-8-1-2-7-4. Christopher’s birthday.
The electronic lock beeped green. CLICK.
Brenda grinned in triumph, pulling the heavy steel door open. Inside lay stacks of hundred-dollar bills, velvet jewelry boxes, and three encrypted black hard drives containing offshore account keys.
She began shoving the cash and hard drives into her backpack as fast as her trembling hands could move.
Suddenly, the bright overhead crystal chandelier snapped on, blinding her with brilliant white light.
"Looking for these?" I asked.
Brenda spun around with a sharp gasp, dropping her flashlight onto the rug.
I stood in the doorway of the study, holding a quiet cup of coffee. Beside me stood Detective Miller and two federal agents in dark suits holding official search warrants.
Luke walked out from behind the velvet curtains, holding a smartphone that was recording every second in 4K resolution.
"Brenda Vance," Detective Miller said calmly, walking into the room with his hands resting on his belt. "Breaking and entering, burglary, attempted destruction of evidence, and violation of your bail conditions."
Brenda dropped her backpack, her eyes wild with terror as she looked back and forth between me, the police, and the hidden cameras.
"Vivian! Please!" Brenda sobbed, dropping to her knees and reaching her hands out toward me. "Christopher made me do this! He told me the hard drives were in the safe! He said if I got them out, we could fly to Dubai tomorrow morning! He set me up!"
"No, Brenda," I said softly, taking a slow sip of my coffee. "You set yourself up the moment you thought you could enter my home and take what belonged to my family."
The federal agents stepped forward, grabbing her arms and pulling her up forcefully.
"Take her away," Detective Miller ordered. "And get a team down to the guest house. It’s time to pick up Mr. Albright."
As the officers dragged a screaming, hysterical Brenda out through the terrace doors, Luke walked over to the open safe. He reached in, pulled out the three black hard drives, and weighed them in his hand.
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"That was easy," Luke smiled faintly.
"It was only the warm-up, sweetie," I replied, looking out the window toward the glow of the Los Angeles skyline. "Tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM... we take back the company."
