Chapter 9 - The Wolf at the Door
The county jail in South Mercer was a grim, brutalist concrete complex surrounded by high chain-link fences and razor wire.
At nine-thirty the following morning, Travis Manion sat in the visitor booth behind a thick pane of scratched, bulletproof acrylic.
He was wearing a faded orange correctional jumpsuit that hung loosely over his slumped frame.
His hair was unwashed, sticking up in greasy tufts, and his jaw was covered in dark, patchy stubble.
Across from him on the other side of the glass sat his father, Arthur Manion, looking pale and haggard beneath the flickering fluorescent tubes.
Arthur had spent all night liquidating secondary securities to raise the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash bail.
The paperwork was currently being processed in the clerk’s office down the hall.
Travis picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver with shaking hands, pressing it against his ear.
“Did you get the money?” Travis rasped into the receiver, his voice desperate and frantic.
“When am I getting out of this hellhole, Dad?”
“They put me in a holding tank with armed robbers!”
“I haven't slept in thirty hours!”
Arthur picked up his receiver slowly, his hand trembling as he leaned his forehead against the cold glass.
“The bail bondsman is filing the cash deposit right now, Travis,” Arthur said, his voice flat, exhausted, and devoid of warmth.
“You will be released within two hours.”
Travis let out a ragged breath of relief, running his dirty hand through his hair.
“Good,” Travis muttered, a spark of his old arrogance flaring back to life.
“The moment I walk out of here, we are going to Marcus Hayes’s office.”
“We are going to make that bastard drop the injunction.”
“I will confront Lana myself. She’s weak, Dad. She’s emotionally dependent on me.”
“Once I get her alone in a room without that bulldog lawyer whispering in her ear, she will crumble.”
“She always crumbles.”
Arthur looked up at his son, his gray eyes hollow and lifeless.
“She isn't crumbling, Travis,” Arthur said softly.
“She took the blue folders from your wall safe yesterday.”
Travis froze, the plastic receiver nearly slipping from his sweaty fingers.
“What?”
“The judge issued an emergency writ,” Arthur explained, his voice shaking with suppressed rage.
“Lana came to the house with two armed deputies while you were locked in here.”
“She cleaned out Harper’s room.”
“And she opened the wall safe.”
“She took the Dover County planning blueprints, the municipal correspondence, and your private transaction ledger.”
Travis’s face drained of every ounce of blood, turning a sickening shade of chalky white.
“No,” Travis stammered, his breath coming in short, panicked wheezes against the phone speaker.
“No, no, no... that safe had a digital code!”
“She knew the code, you idiot!” Arthur roared, slamming his open palm against the acrylic glass with enough force to make the visitor guard take a step forward.
“She knew the code because you used your anniversary like an arrogant, careless amateur!”
“Do you have any idea what was in that ledger, Travis?”
“You wrote down every cash payment to the zoning consultants!”
“You documented the Delaware pass-through transfers to Sovereign Horizon!”
“The state attorney’s office received a digital copy of that ledger at eight o'clock this morning!”
Travis began to hyperventilate, his orange jumpsuit trembling violently against the metal bench.
The room seemed to spin around him as the full, inescapable reality of his destruction closed in like a noose.
“Dad... you have friends on the judicial committee,” Travis pleaded, his voice breaking into a pathetic whine.
“Call Senator Sterling! Call Judge Vance’s brother!”
“There are no calls left to make, Travis,” Arthur whispered, looking down at his worn, trembling hands.
“The state transportation board met in an emergency session ninety minutes ago.”
“They have formally cancelled the private infrastructure RFP for the Dover County interchange.”
“They are issuing a public eminent domain acquisition notice directly to Lana Manion as the sole private owner.”
“And because our LLC failed to deliver clear title by the preliminary deadline, the infrastructure fund has invoked the default clause.”
“One point five million dollars, Travis.”
“The bank executed a freeze on my personal collateral accounts thirty minutes ago to satisfy the indemnity bond.”
“We are completely ruined.”
Travis stared at his father through the scratched glass, tears of pure, selfish terror finally spilling down his unshaven cheeks.
“What about the house?” Travis choked out.
“What about Oakridge Crest?”
“The mortgage is three months delinquent because you lied to me about your consulting income!” Arthur spat, his eyes burning with bitter resentment.
“First National served a foreclosure notice on the front door this morning.”
“The sheriff’s sale is scheduled for the end of February.”
“Danielle is having a nervous breakdown in her bedroom, and your mother is destroying her own furniture in a blind rage.”
“And you sit here crying about your comfort.”
A heavy buzzer sounded above the visitor booths, signaling the end of the visiting period.
A correctional officer stepped up behind Travis, tapping his shoulder with a heavy nightstick.
“Time’s up, Manion. Step away from the glass.”
Travis gripped the plastic receiver with white-knuckle desperation, pressing his face against the acrylic.
“Dad! Don't leave me out there alone!” Travis screamed into the dead phone line as the guard cut the power.
“Dad!”
Arthur Manion slowly hung up his receiver, turned his back on his screaming son, and walked out of the visitor room, leaning heavily on his cane like a man heading to his own execution.
Two hours later, the heavy iron side doors of the South Mercer County Jail slid open with a loud, metallic clatter.
Travis Manion stepped out into the freezing winter drizzle, wearing his wrinkled charcoal blazer and carrying his personal effects in a clear plastic bag.
There was no luxury SUV waiting for him at the curb.
There was no chauffeur, no family, and no entourage.
The icy rain soaked through his thin leather loafers within seconds, numbing his toes against the cracked concrete.
He pulled his smartphone from the plastic bag and pressed the power button.
The screen lit up, displaying sixteen missed calls from debt collection agencies, four eviction warnings from his business office landlord, and a single, unread text message from an unknown number.
Travis tapped the text message with trembling, freezing fingers.
It was a photograph.
It was a picture of Marcus Hayes, Beth, and me sitting in the sunlit boardroom of the Dover County Municipal Authority.
On the table before me sat a certified municipal check made out to Lana Manion in the amount of four million two hundred thousand dollars.
Beneath the image was a short, simple message from Marcus Hayes:
“Merry Christmas, Travis. Your mother was wrong. Lana didn't need your permission for January. But you will definitely need a public defender.”
May you like
Travis dropped the phone onto the icy pavement, watching the glass screen shatter into a spiderweb of cracks in the slush.
He fell to his knees in the freezing mud beside the highway, clutching his head in his hands as the cold winter rain washed over him, completely and utterly destroyed.
