Chapter 9 - The Woman Who Hired Me
I turned on Mrs. Thornbury.
She did not run.
That made it worse.
“You touched Fern’s medicine?”
“No.”
Mrs. Alvarez frowned.
“I saw you leave this apartment three weeks ago.”
“I was here.”
My voice rose.
“Why?”
Mrs. Thornbury looked at Stellan.
He shook his head.
“Don’t look at me. Answer her.”
She took a breath.
“I came to check the apartment after one of the hallway cameras was disabled.”
“You had a key?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you did.”
“I did not touch the medicine.”
Mercer opened my kitchen trash and began searching.
I stared at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for packaging.”
He found an empty pharmacy vial under a bag of coffee grounds.
Not mine.
The label had been peeled off.
Darius bagged it.
Mrs. Alvarez crossed herself.
“This is why I don’t trust mail-order pharmacies.”
Nobody had the energy to explain.
Stellan looked at Mrs. Thornbury.
“You entered Selene’s apartment without telling her.”
“Yes.”
“You hired her at my house.”
“Yes.”
“You created the safe-house network receiving money from Ava’s account.”
“Yes.”
“And you expect me to believe you don’t know who is moving the money?”
“I don’t.”
I stepped closer.
“Why bring me to the mansion?”
She looked at Fern.
“Because the person watching you changed patterns.”
“What does that mean?”
“For ten months, they only observed. Then three weeks ago, someone entered the apartment.”
“The night you came?”
“Yes.”
“What did they take?”
“Nothing.”
Stellan understood first.
“They left something.”
Mrs. Thornbury nodded.
“The vial.”
My knees weakened.
“So Fern’s medicine may have been diluted before you got here.”
“Yes.”
“And instead of telling me, you got me a job in a mafia mansion?”
“I needed you somewhere the watcher could not enter easily.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“You could have called the police.”
Mrs. Thornbury looked at Stellan.
Then at me.
“The person watching you has access to police reports before officers do.”
The room went silent.
Darius checked his phone.
“Lab result on the medicine.”
Mercer read it.
“Forty-two percent of prescribed concentration.”
I closed my eyes.
Someone had been making Fern’s medication weaker.
Not enough to kill her quickly.
Enough to keep her sick.
Stellan’s voice was deadly calm.
“Why?”
Mercer answered.
“To keep Selene using Saint Catherine’s emergency department.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“If Fern kept having respiratory episodes, you kept returning to the same hospital.”
My skin prickled.
Darius pulled my hospital history.
Nine emergency visits in eleven months.
Every single one at Saint Catherine’s.
“Someone wanted us there,” I whispered.
Stellan looked at the records.
“Why?”
Darius zoomed in on the billing data.
Each visit generated a blood draw.
Each sample was routed through the same private pathology contractor.
Cross Biomedical Services.
Stellan stared at the company name.
“I shut that division down two years ago.”
Darius looked at him.
“No, sir.”
“What?”
“It reopened six months ago.”
“By who?”
Darius’s face went pale.
“Your father.”
Stellan’s voice sharpened.
“My father was already in rehab.”
Darius nodded.
“That’s the problem.”
He turned the screen.
The authorization to reopen Cross Biomedical had been signed four months after Gideon Cross lost the ability to hold a pen.
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