Chapter 4 - The Sister Who Flinched
I caught Bethany on the second-level parking deck beneath the hospital.
The concrete cavern was dim and freezing, echoing with the drip of condensed water from overhead pipes. Bethany was frantically trying to unlock her white Mercedes coupe, her keys rattling against the door handle with a frantic, metallic clatter.
“Bethany.”
She dropped the keys. They bounced across the oil-stained concrete and slid to a stop against my boot.
She spun around, flattening her back against the driver’s side door, her chest heaving as if she had run a marathon. Her pupils were blown wide with terror.
“Don't touch me,” she sobbed. “Please, Wesley. I didn't want them to do it. I told them she wouldn't talk! I told them she was too stubborn!”
I picked up the keys, walked slowly toward her, and held them out flat in my palm.
“Who held her down, Bethany?”
She covered her mouth with both hands, shaking her head violently. Tears cut clean tracks through the foundation on her cheeks. “I can’t. Constance will kill me. You don't know what she does to people who step out of line. She... she erased Adeline’s trust fund in an afternoon. She had the bank foreclose on the sanctuary house Adeline wanted to build. She controls everything.”
“She doesn't control the federal prison in Butner,” I said evenly. “Which is where your mother and your sisters are heading. The only question left is whether you’re going with them as an accessory to attempted murder, or whether you walk away as a witness.”
Bethany slid down the side of the Mercedes until she was sitting on the cold concrete, her knees pulled tight against her chest.
“It was Renata and Vivian,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the ventilation fans. “They went to the house last night. They had the code. Vivian took it from Adeline’s desk during Thanksgiving dinner two years ago.”
“Go on,” I said, recording every syllable on my encrypted field radio.
“Vivian brought... she brought Marcus Kane.”
Marcus Kane. The name hit me like an electric charge. Kane was the director of corporate security for Voss Aeronautics—a former contractor who had been dishonorably discharged from the private military sector after an incident involving civilian casualties in Kirkuk.
“Kane had the hammer,” Bethany choked out, her voice splintering into jagged sobs. “Constance stayed on the speakerphone the whole time. She sat at her vanity table at the estate, putting on her night cream, listening through Vivian’s phone. Every time Adeline refused to give up the offshore server passphrases, Constance told Kane to break another bone.”
My knuckles tightened until the skin felt as though it would split over the bone.
“Where is Kane now?”
“He’s at the Voss compound in Oak Ridge,” Bethany cried. “They’re burning the physical files. Constance ordered a complete purge of the Icarus records before the Department of Defense auditors arrive on Friday. Kane has an executive transport waiting at the private airstrip to take him to the Cayman Islands tonight.”
“And you?” I asked, looking down at her. “What was your job, Bethany?”
“I was supposed to stay with Adeline in the hospital,” she wept, looking up at me with raw shame. “If she woke up... if she started to regain consciousness before the brain swelling stabilized... I was supposed to slip two milligrams of potassium chloride into her IV line. Constance gave me the vial. She said it was an act of mercy for a traitor.”
She reached into the pocket of her cashmere sweater with trembling fingers and pulled out a small glass ampoule with a yellow plastic cap.
I took the vial from her hand. The clear liquid inside caught the dim yellow light of the parking garage lamps.
“Get in your car,” I told her.
Bethany blinked through her tears. “What?”
“Get in the car. Drive through the north exit. Colonel Vance has two federal marshals waiting at the perimeter gate. You hand them that phone, you repeat every word you just told me, and you sign the sworn deposition.”
“Will she survive, Wesley?” Bethany asked, her voice cracking. “Adeline... will she ever wake up?”
I looked down at the vial of poison in my hand, then looked back at her.
May you like
“She’s a Calloway now,” I said. “She’s tougher than anything your mother ever built.”
***
