But no one cared. Her tears only earned her contemptuous glances.
Tasha spent fourteen weeks in jail awaiting trial. During those hundred dark days, her life was torn apart. The hospital fired her for failing to retain a nurse involved with drugs. Her landlord threw her belongings out onto the street for not paying rent. Her fiancé, unable to withstand the pressure from his family and public opinion, quietly called off the wedding. Her medical license was suspended indefinitely. Back home, her frail elderly mother had to mortgage their only house to borrow money for legal expenses.
A small, hand-sized plastic bag shattered thirty-two years of hard work by an honest woman. She insisted that the bag had never been in her suitcase before the policeman touched it.
And then, the miracle (or truth) began to unfold when private investigators discovered a shocking anomaly: the cocaine package used as evidence in Tasha's case bore the fingerprints of a... forensic technician at the airport.
That discovery should have turned the case upside down. Tasha should have been released immediately and received an apology. But no. By some unseen force, this evidence was buried under mountains of complex administrative paperwork and the eerie silence of the local judicial system.
When Marcus took over the file, he didn't just read the report. He read every page of Tasha's tear-stained handwritten notes. He sat in a dark room for weeks, watching the airport's blurry surveillance footage over and over again.
And with the eyes of a seasoned hunter, he saw what everyone else missed.
He saw Officer Ryan Cole's hand.
In almost every inspection that led to an arrest, Cole always played the role of the man standing on the other side of the table. His thin body moved calculatedly to obscure the passengers' view. And then, in a split second, Cole's right hand would disappear beneath his uniform jacket. Just seconds later, the drugs would suddenly appear from the luggage.
The footage was enough to raise suspicion, but not enough to constitute evidence in court. The camera angle was terrible. Part of the inspection table was obscured. Worse still, there were always inexplicable "signal loss" periods in the recordings. Whenever investigators questioned these gaps, airport police always offered the same old refrain: A technical error in the server system.
Marcus understood perfectly well what those "technical errors" were. But in law, understanding is one thing, proving is another.
The FBI needed these corrupt cops to act right in front of them. They needed them to personally hide the drugs in their luggage, under high-resolution camera lenses that they couldn't control, manipulate, or erase. They needed them to believe that this target was just another vulnerable, easily bullied individual, like the dozens of victims before.
And so, Marcus added his name to the list of prey.
Back to reality, at 7:32 a.m., Marcus pulled his suitcase through the automatic glass doors of the domestic terminal. The air inside was filled with the aroma of roasted coffee, the blaring of loudspeakers, and the rattling sound of luggage wheels rolling on the polished granite floor.
He walked through the main security checkpoint calmly. With a suitcase in one hand and his boarding pass in the other, he blended into the bustling crowd. He looked just like the thousands of other passengers rushing to catch their flight at the start of the week.
At exactly 8:05 a.m., as planned, he approached Check Lane Number Seven.
This secondary check-in area was deliberately placed in a strategic location: near a row of large glass windows overlooking the center of the station, but half-obscured by signage partitions. A blue sign read, "Selected passengers please place your luggage on the counter."
Marcus complied. He placed the black suitcase on the cold metal table. He stood there, arms crossed, waiting.
A few seconds later, the hunter's figure appeared. Sergeant Dale Mercer stepped forward. He was forty-seven years old, massive in stature, his gait heavy but imposing. His short hair was streaked with gray, and his square face always wore a perpetually grumpy, irritable expression, as if the whole world owed him a favor.
Mercer scrutinized Marcus from head to toe with his hawk-like eyes. Then he stared at the suitcase. Then he looked back at Marcus.
"Traveling alone?" Mercer's voice was deep and resonant, like metal scraping against metal. "Yes," Marcus replied, his voice flat. "Where are you going?" "Washington." "Business or personal?" "Business."
Mercer smirked, a faint, sarcastic smile playing on his lips. "What kind of business?" Marcus looked him straight in the eye, unfazed: "A professional meeting."
Mercer's smile vanished. He disliked those who answered curtly and maintained such a calm demeanor. He tapped his fingers rhythmically on the metal table. "Open the suitcase."
Marcus said nothing, reaching out to unzip the black suitcase. Mercer immediately lunged forward, roughly pulling out each item. Shirts. A few pairs of trousers. A book. A bag of toiletries. He deliberately handled everything slowly, as if savoring his power in front of someone else.