Chapter 4
The smartphone screen framed the young woman speaking directly into the lens. Elena leaned forward, her eyes locked onto the tiny glass circle that connected this sterile bedroom to thousands of strangers sitting in dark rooms thousands of miles away. "Then make sure they hear everything. Everything," Elena said, her voice steady, stripped of all the trembling fear they had tried to cultivate for hours. Julian froze, his thumb hovering over the stop button. Margaret’s hand paused halfway to her pearl necklace. The chatroom feed scrolling at the bottom of the viewfinder suddenly accelerated, lines of text blurring into a chaotic waterfall of green and red icons. Elena didn't blink. She spoke the name of the county prosecutor, followed by the specific routing number of the offshore account Julian used to deposit the streaming revenue. She recited the exact street address of the safehouse basement where they had kept her since November. Julian’s face drained of color as he realized the stream wasn't filtering her audio through their delay server.
