Chapter 2 - The Contraband
Panic threatened to choke me entirely, but fifteen years as an emergency room nurse had trained me to suppress raw fear.
I grabbed the burner phone, the cash, and my father's brown leather medical bag.
I left my real phone sitting on the bed to serve as a useless decoy.
"Is there a back exit to this building?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm.
Elias nodded sharply and gestured for me to follow him down the dimly lit hallway.
We moved quietly past the rumbling ice machine and pushed heavily through a rusted fire door.
The freezing October air hit my face as we stepped out into a narrow, trash-filled alleyway behind the hotel.
A nondescript gray sedan was idling smoothly near the overflowing dumpsters.
"Get in the back and stay completely out of sight," Elias ordered.
I threw myself onto the dirty floorboards just as the unmistakable sound of shattering glass echoed from the front of the hotel.
Gareth’s men were already breaking down the main lobby doors.
Elias slammed the car into gear and sped aggressively down the alley without turning on the headlights.
We merged blindly onto the highway, leaving the flashing lights of the hotel far behind us.
I finally pulled myself up onto the backseat, taking a deep, shuddering breath.
"Why is Gareth deploying a private mercenary team just to bring back his wife?" I asked.
Gareth was a wealthy investment banker, not a ruthless mafia boss.
"He doesn't care about you leaving, Irene," Elias said, his dark eyes darting rapidly to the rearview mirror.
"He cares about what you accidentally took with you tonight."
I looked down at my worn leather medical bag in absolute confusion.
"I only packed my nursing supplies, clothes, and documents," I argued.
"Check the lining of the bottom compartment," Elias instructed calmly.
I unzipped the lower section of the bag, where I strictly kept emergency trauma dressings.
I felt carefully along the dark fabric until my fingers brushed against a hard, rectangular object sewn directly into the seam.
I borrowed a small pocket knife from Elias and sliced the thick fabric open.
A small, heavily encrypted flash drive fell instantly into the palm of my hand.
"Bernard hid that in your bag months ago," Elias explained.
I pulled out my laptop and immediately plugged the drive into the USB port.
A hidden medical file appeared on the screen, labeled exclusively with Bernard's name.
I opened the document and felt the blood drain completely from my face.
The file contained incredibly detailed toxicology reports from Bernard's private physician.
Bernard had never actually suffered a stroke in his life.
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My husband and his mistress had been quietly injecting him with a synthetic paralytic for the past two years.
And according to the expertly forged nursing logs attached to the file, I was the one officially administering the deadly injections.
