Chapter 7 - The Assassin in Scrubs
I clamped my hands forcefully over my ears, completely paralyzed by the sheer evil radiating from my husband's mouth.
He hung up the phone, grabbed a file from his desk, and walked out of the office, humming a cheerful tune.
I waited until I heard the heavy engine of his pickup truck start in the driveway and pull away down the street.
I burst out of the closet, not caring that I knocked over a stack of heavy boxes in my panic.
I sprinted toward the window, throwing it open and hurling myself over the ledge to avoid going back through the main house.
The jagged edge of the window frame sliced a deep gash into my forearm, but I barely registered the stinging pain.
I ran to the borrowed sedan, my hands slipping on the steering wheel as blood dripped down my wrist.
I drove back to the hospital, completely ignoring speed limits and red lights, praying to a God I hadn't spoken to in years.
I practically kicked the heavy double doors of the pediatric ward open, ignoring the startled shouts of the security guards at the front desk.
I rounded the corner to room 412 and looked through the small glass pane in the wooden door.
A tall man wearing generic green hospital scrubs and a surgical mask was standing directly over Chloe's sleeping body.
He held a large, unlabelled syringe in his gloved right hand, slowly reaching toward the port on her IV line.
I didn't think; I just reacted with the primal, violent instinct of a mother protecting her child.
I smashed the door open with my shoulder, letting out a blood-curdling scream, and launched my entire body at the man's back.
We crashed heavily onto the hard linoleum floor, the syringe flying out of his hand and skittering under the hospital bed.
I punched him blindly in the face, screaming for help until three hospital security guards rushed in and ripped him away from me.
They pinned the struggling man to the ground and slapped heavy iron handcuffs on his wrists while nurses rushed to check on a terrified Chloe.
The police arrived ten minutes later and immediately confiscated the hitman's burner phone.
The lead detective walked over to me, his face grim, and confirmed they found a text message matching the exact sum Mark had mentioned.
May you like
However, the detective sighed heavily, explaining that the text came from an encrypted, untraceable number.
"Without hard proof linking your husband to this man, he will just claim it was a random hospital killer," the detective warned.
