Chapter 10 - Ryan’s Last Desperate Bluff
Even in plastic flex-cuffs, even soaked in rain and smelling of defeat, Ryan’s diseased ego refused to die quietly.
As the MP patrol unit opened the rear cage door of the tactical transport vehicle to load him in, Ryan suddenly wrenched his torso sideways, slamming his back against the side of the truck. He turned his face toward Jessica and his remaining relatives, his eyes bulging with frantic, venomous energy.
"Don't let her do this!" he screamed, his voice carrying across the entire lake shore. "Jessica! Pull out your phone! Livestream this right now! Put it on Facebook! Put it on TikTok! Stream it to the local news!"
Jessica froze, her phone trembling in her hand. "Ryan... please, stop..."
"STREAM IT!" Ryan roared, thrashing against the MP’s grip. "Show the world how the big, bad United States military abuses poor American families! Show them this power-tripping psycho using federal tax dollars to evict little kids from their summer camp! We'll ruin her! We'll tag the Pentagon! We'll call the congressional oversight committee! They’ll strip her rank before breakfast! She won't have a pension left by Monday morning!"
Harrison Vance didn't even flinch. He simply turned his head toward the CID investigator. "Agent Vance. Record this interaction. Add verbal witness tampering and public defamation threats to the preliminary charge sheet."
"Already rolling, Colonel," the agent responded, holding up an encrypted body-camera device.
I walked over to the back of the transport truck. The MP holding Ryan stepped slightly to the side to give me clearance, maintaining a firm iron grip on the back of Ryan's neck.
I looked down at Ryan. Up close, the pathetic nature of his entire existence was laid bare. He was thirty-four years old, had never held a job for more than nine consecutive months, had lived entirely off his wife's fraudulent access to my deployment fund, and had masked his staggering inadequacy behind a facade of suburban bravado and rented luxury.
"Go ahead, Ryan," I said, my tone as calm as still water. "Livestream it."
He glared at me, his lip quivering with rage. "You think you’re untouchable, Emily?! You think because you wear those little eagle pins you can treat people like dirt?!"
"You broke into a federal officer’s classified residence during an active deployment mobilization window," I said. "Every second you were inside, the hard-drive integrity sensors were recording your biometric attempts to decrypt my communications terminal. You didn't just break a door, Ryan. You committed an act of espionage under the Espionage Act of 1917, Subsection E. Do you have any idea what the minimum mandatory sentence is for unauthorized digital penetration of a military command node?"
Ryan’s breath caught in his throat. The defiance in his eyes flickered, replaced by a sudden, hollow void.
"Ten years," I whispered, leaning in so only he could hear. "Ten years in a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. No parole. No country club yard. No family reunions. Just concrete, iron bars, and the realization that you traded your entire youth because you wanted to pretend to your daddy that you owned a lake house you could never afford to paint."
The fight completely drained from his body. His knees went soft, and if the MP hadn't been holding him by the collar, he would have collapsed flat into the mud.
"Emily..." he whimpered, a strand of saliva hanging from his trembling bottom lip. "Please... don't do this... I have Leo... I have Maya... think about the kids..."
"I thought about the kids for eleven years while I was eating sand in Kandahar and dodging mortar fire in northern Iraq so your family could sleep under clean sheets," I replied. "Now, it's your turn to think about them."
May you like
I nodded to the MP. "Load him."
The MP ducked Ryan's head down, shoved him into the steel cage of the transport van, and slammed the heavy door shut. The lock engaged with a deafening, metallic CLACK.
