a4“Don’t inject that into my wife!” I shouted, but the girl was faster than I was.

Behind Rodolfo stood two private clinic security guards, their hands resting ominously on their holstered sidearms.

Rodolfo stepped into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. He looked at me, then at the detached IV line, and finally at the open gurney locks. A slow, poisonous smile spread across his fleshy face.

“Alejandro,” he said softly, shaking his head with mock sorrow. “You always were too sentimental for this business. When a building's foundation cracks, you don't pour more concrete. You demolish it and collect the insurance.”

“You bastard,” I rasped, stepping between him and Verónica’s bed. “Two years. You kept her trapped in a living coffin for two goddamn years.”

“And it cost me a fortune, too,” Rodolfo sighed, adjusting the emerald signet ring on his finger. “Do you have any idea how much Salgado charges to falsify daily neurological reports? Two hundred thousand dollars a quarter. But the Cuernavaca corridor is worth fifty million. An acceptable overhead expense.”

“The board meeting isn’t until noon,” I said, stalling, calculating the distance between myself and the nearest security guard.

“Plans change when a stray street dog knocks over eighty thousand dollars' worth of custom synthetic paralytic,” Rodolfo sneered. “Salgado called me in a panic at two in the morning. He told me you took the shards. He told me you ran. I knew you’d go looking for answers, and I knew you’d come back here. You're predictable, Alejandro. You love her too much.”

Rodolfo motioned with his chin toward the guards. “Take him. Make it look like a tragic domestic breakdown. Devastated husband snaps, kills comatose wife, then throws himself out the fourth-floor window. The media will eat it up. The board will vote me sole executive trustee before the markets close.”

The guard on the left lunged forward, reaching for his stun baton.

I didn't wait.

I grabbed the heavy stainless-steel IV pole and swung it with all the leverage my body possessed. The metal bar smashed across the guard's temple with a sickening crack. He collapsed like a sack of wet cement.

The second guard drew his weapon, but before he could raise the barrel, the emergency fire alarm began to wail with ear-splitting ferocity.

The overhead fire sprinklers exploded into life, drenching the suite in an icy deluge of water.

In the chaos, the service door behind the bathroom swung open. Morales stood there, brandishing a massive industrial fire extinguisher. He pulled the pin and blasted a blinding, suffocating cloud of white dry chemical straight into the face of the second guard and Rodolfo.

“Alejandro! Move!” Morales roared, coughing through the white fog.

I grabbed the handle of Verónica’s gurney and threw my entire weight against it. The heavy hospital bed surged forward, crashing through the double doors of the room and out into the flooded hallway.

Alarms shrieked. Strobe lights flashed crimson. Water poured from the ceiling, turning the linoleum into a slick, frantic river.