Chapter 48
“You better be careful,” Daniels said in a hushed voice after we left the interrogation room. “I’m guessing that guy has friends in high places and deep pockets. He may come for you.”
I dismissed it. “The last thing he, or anyone he’s associated with, wants is more scrutiny.
A civil suit is not in his best interest. And the crew…
? The crew and everyone on that boat knew what they were getting into working for a guy like that.
They’re all accessories to kidnapping, among other things. ”
“This isn’t the Wild West, but you guys keep acting like it is.”
“Maybe I should have just smiled and waved when they shot at me,” I quipped.
“FDLE and IA are going to be all over this. You better hope you haven’t made any enemies.”
JD and I were known to ruffle feathers.
“I don’t want to lose a good cop over this nonsense.”
I appreciated his concern.
I filled out an after-action report and may have left out certain details.
Wet and tired, I caught a rideshare back to the marina. I hustled down the dock through the pouring rain to the Avventura. The storm continued to rage and would all night. I greeted Buddy when I entered. JD and Madelyn were in the salon.
“Thank God you’re okay,” Madelyn said as she rushed to give me a hug. “We were getting worried about you.”
“How’d it go down?” JD asked.
I filled them in on the details over a cocktail. We sat at the bar, and I told my story.
Their jaws dropped.
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about from Kovalenko. I don’t think he’s getting out of prison anytime soon.”
Madelyn said, “Thank you for getting my brother back.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied with a grin. “I’m just glad we all made it back alive.” I glanced around. “Speaking of, where is your brother?”
“Sebastian caught a rideshare to the hospital to see Ava.”
I figured he was relatively safe on his own at the moment. The Consortium had bigger problems to worry about.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get out of these wet clothes and take a hot shower.”
“You’re excused,” Madelyn said.
I hustled up to my stateroom, peeled out of my clothes, and ran a hot shower. It felt great. But I kept thinking about Kovalenko and a potential FDLE investigation.
I toweled off, wrapped it around my waist, and stepped back into my room.
Madelyn had grabbed her laptop and sat at my desk.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“What I should have done a long time ago.” She inserted the HSM into a USB port and logged into the platform with her admin credentials.
After a few taps of the keys, she hesitated a moment.
“When I press enter, this is going to upload the final update to the platform. It will make it completely distributed and immutable, and will burn the key. No one will be able to make changes, not even me. It will belong to everyone and be completely autonomous.”
“No way to shut it down or hack the data?”
“In theory.”
Her finger hovered over the enter key. “I’ve been working on this code for a long time. Let’s hope it works, because there is no going back.”