Chapter 4 - THE TOXICOLOGY REPORT
The interior of my armored SUV was dead silent as we sped back toward the city.
The lockbox sat between Malcolm and me on the leather seat, still warm from the fire.
I snapped the zip-tie, took the tiny silver key, and slid it into the lock. It clicked heavily.
I opened the lid.
Inside lay a thick, manila folder sealed with red tape.
I broke the tape and pulled out the documents.
They were medical records. But not from the hospital where Juniper had been treated. These bore the crest of a highly exclusive, private diagnostic clinic in Switzerland.
I flipped to the second page. A toxicology report.
My eyes scanned the medical jargon, searching for a summary. When I found it, the words blurred together.
Patient: Juniper Vale. Cause of failure: Acute introduction of synthetic digitalis. Toxin matched to targeted cardiac arrest.
Juniper didn’t die of a natural defect.
She was murdered. Poisoned.
A guttural, ragged breath tore from my throat. I crushed the paper in my hands, a blinding, white-hot rage overriding three years of hollow grief.
My head of security ran Elise off the road tonight. Which meant Marcus was involved. Which meant the people I paid to protect my daughter were the ones who killed her.
“Malcolm,” I said, my voice eerily calm. The kind of calm that precedes a massacre. “Find Marcus. Do not kill him. Bring him to the warehouse.”
We arrived back at the penthouse. I needed to see Norah. I needed to know what else Elise had told her before the crash.
I walked into the living room. Cole was standing guard by the door.
Norah was sitting exactly where I left her, still clutching the stuffed rabbit with the pink thread on its ear.
I knelt in front of her, the crushed toxicology report in my hand.
“Norah,” I said softly, trying to hide the violence simmering beneath my skin. “Did your mother tell you why she was running away tonight?”
Norah looked at the paper in my hand. Her green eyes—so much like Juniper’s—locked onto the crest of the Swiss clinic at the top of the page.
“That’s the bad doctor’s house,” Norah whispered.
My blood went cold. “What do you mean?”
“Mama used to work there. Before she came to your house. She said the bad doctor makes people sick on purpose.”
The Swiss clinic. I recognized the crest now. It was owned by a holding company. A holding company controlled by my late wife’s father.
Senator Sterling. My own father-in-law.
Before I could process the magnitude of that betrayal, Norah began picking at the pink thread on her rabbit’s torn ear.
She pulled hard. The thread unraveled, revealing a hidden zipper sewn into the seam of the rabbit’s head.
She unzipped it, reached her small hand inside, and pulled out a heavy object.
She handed it to me.
It was a man’s steel wristwatch. The glass face was shattered. The metal band was smeared with dried blood.
“Mama said this belongs to the man who hurt her tonight,” Norah whispered. “She took it when they crashed.”
I turned the watch over.
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Engraved on the back casing were the initials: M.V.
Marcus Vance.
