Lucky Spin: Godly Programming-Chapter 72: Manhunt

[Mass Released]

"I did not expect this, Alonzo. You’re actually smarter than I thought," Michael said, clapping his hands.

"You’re one step ahead of us, and you must have hidden him in plain sight, right?" he added with a knowing look.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about, Michael," Alonzo replied, his chuckle trailing off.

"If my son is really the criminal, then I’ll be the one to put him in jail."

Michael clapped slowly, his expression colder now.

"You’re a clever man, Alonzo. I’ll give you that. For seeing us coming maybe even days ahead. Hid your son somewhere public, maybe under a different name, maybe in another town. Very impressive." he said.

Alonzo stood there, his expression unchanged from the start, but Michael wasn’t done yet.

"But I’m giving you one chance take this last one I tell you. Bring him in willingly, and maybe just maybe, you can walk away without cuffs today. You keep playing games, and I’ll make sure you don’t just lose your son. You’ll lose everything tied to your name."

The investigation officer stepped forward, on the spot as he uttered respectfully.

"Sir, as of now, denying knowledge is still not obstruction, unless we find proof that you’re lying. But once we confirm you harbored or aided him, it becomes a direct violation of Article 19, RPC. Turning him over now could reduce your liability. Ignoring this will not, so please choose wisely"

Alonzo shrugged his shoulders, his face feigning confusion.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about from the very start. Hiding him? Why would I do that?" Alonzo said, spreading his arms in like he was mocking them.

Michael, Gabriel, the investigation officer, and the others watching saw through the act, their eyes narrowing from his actions.

"So, you want to play this game?" Michael said coldly.

Slapping the table with his hands, the sound echoing through the room.

"You still dared to hide the criminal, huh? Remember that girl was a visitor in my home, and I’ve known her since she was little. Let me tell you this," he added, pointing at Alonzo.

"I’ll find your son, and make sure. I will really make sure he will never get out of prison ever again," Michael said calling everyone to leave the place.

The heavy gates creaked shut behind them as Michael stepped out of the Rivas estate, his jaw clenched, with hands behind his back.

The moon was already up in the horizon and the anger in his chest burned like it was morning.

Gabriel walked beside him, silent at first, waiting for orders. The team was already regrouping near the convoy.

The investigation officer approached, ready to debrief. After some time, Michael stops walking.

Then his voice came low, "We’re shifting to full search protocol. I want his photo distributed within the hour. Name, age, and the last known location, blast it across every checkpoint and terminal from here to Iloilo City."

Gabriel nodded, "Should I contact the regional stations?" he asked.

"All of them," Michael responded with authority.

"And send units to every Rivas property like their houses, warehouses, vacation spots, even undeclared land titles. I don’t care if it’s a nipa hut. Search it."

He stopped and turned toward the convoy, watching the flashing red lights dance across the street.

"He thinks this is a game," he said quietly.

"But the difference between me and him..." He glanced over his shoulder toward the mansion.

"Is that I finish what I start."

Gabriel gave a grim nod and moved quickly to dispatch the orders. Officers scattered, gears shifted, radios crackled to life.

Michael then turned to the plainclothes officer standing near the lead car, one from the unit that handled their digital operations.

Since they weren’t field agents. They are a low-profile team, quiet but lethal in the world of data.

"Put our surveillance unit on full sweep," he ordered.

"I want everything digital like phone activity, social media movement, bank transactions, even sari-sari store purchases if they’re logged."

He paused, then added, "Check every CCTV from terminals, gas stations, jeepney stops. If that bastard so much as blinked in front of a camera, I want eyes on it."

Michael climbed into the lead vehicle, the door slamming shut with finality. As the engine roared back to life, the hunt officially began.

Inside the mansion, as he watched them leave through the entrance door, Alonzo’s eyes were deep, filled with a cold lethal look.

"Didn’t you say that the evidence was cleared?" Alonzo didn’t look back, but his words were clearly directed at the man with glasses and a tall stature.

"Boss, I did," the man said quickly, his voice tight with confusion.

"I accessed the DVR remotely three hours after the incident. I bypassed the firmware lock, went straight into the root partition, and wiped everything. It wasn’t just deletion. I ran entropy injectors, performed random-pattern overwrites with a minimum of three passes. I even scrubbed the logs and erased the motion event metadata. The system was blank and I made sure to make it completely clean."

He adjusted his glasses, a slight twitch in his brow as he replayed the process in his head, trying to find the flaw.

"I monitored the backup node too. There was no cloud sync, no remote mirror, no trace left anywhere. It was a total purge. Even some expert with hundreds of experience couldn’t recover anything... so how the hell did they get that footage back?"

His voice dropped at the end, more to himself than to Alonzo. For the first time, uncertainty crept into his expression.

"This... this shouldn’t be possible." he stammered.

Alonzo’s eyes remained fixed on the doorway, but his silence was heavier now, and much colder.

The muscles in his jaw tensed, the faint sound of his knuckles cracking as he clenched his fist behind his back.

"So you’re telling me someone out there beat you?" he said slowly, the words sharp like broken glass.

"After everything I paid for? your tools, your access, your reputation, you’re telling me some nobody recovered what even government forensics couldn’t?"

The man with glasses flinched slightly, sweat beginning to form on his temple.

"You call something like that a nobody? Whoever that was must really be an expert and well-known," he groaned inwardly but didn’t say it out loud. Instead, he responded.

"It doesn’t make sense The only way to pull anything back after what I did would require something advance. I don’t know maybe some advanced memory echo reconstruction, predictive byte reassembly, maybe even some AI-guided cache forensics."

He trailed off, his voice lowering, "But no one has that, clearly no one should have that."

Alonzo finally turned to face him, and in his eyes was something far more terrifying than anger, a quiet, gaze filled with killing intent. frёeωebɳovel.com

"Find out who did," he said, voice sounded calm but laced with menace.

"Because if someone out there has the power to undo everything you did, they’re a problem I need to erase that person before they erase me."

The man swallowed hard, then gave a shaky nod, "Yes, boss. I’ll... I’ll start tracing the breach point." With that, he left, leaving the three behind.

"Try to investigate who brought that piece of evidence to the police. Make sure that what that person did ruins something precious in my hands and make it regret it forever" his voice was cold as ice as he gazed at the moon.

...

Special thanks to ’Meiwa_Blank👑’ – the GOAT for this month, for the Golden Tickets! Love you, brotha!

Special thanks to ’Devon1234👑’ – the GOAT for this month, for the Gifts! Love you, brotha!