"The machine is inside the climate-controlled mobile transport unit in your driveway, sir," Agent Vance replied, lowering his hand.
He turned slowly, his slate-gray eyes locking onto Margaret, Beverly, and Trevor with the clinical, merciless diagnostic stillness of a surgeon examining an open infection.
"Now," Agent Vance said, reaching into his windbreaker and pulling out a heavy, three-inch-thick manila file bound with red judicial tape.
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"Let us discuss the fifty-five thousand dollars in counterfeit commercial conveyance notes that Mrs. Whitfield accepted from an unregistered criminal asset broker at nine-thirty this morning."
The air inside my living room turned into pure liquid nitrogen.
Margaret’s knees actually buckled. She didn't fall to the floorboards; she slid backward against the kitchen doorframe, her hands clawing at the wallpaper, her mouth opening and closing like a landed carp.
"Counterfeit...?" Margaret wheezed, her voice dropping into a dry, breathless croak. "Arthur Vance is the premier classic automobile dealer in Buncombe County! His family has owned dealerships in Asheville since the nineteen-fifties! He gave me fifty-five thousand dollars in certified cashier's checks drawn on the First Horizon Bank!"
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