The shoulder that stays too high. The child who flinches before a hand ever gets close. The bruise that never quite matches the story attached to it.

I didn't fall.

The moment her hands drove into my chest, the sluggish, poisoned nurse disappeared. My ER reflexes—honed by years of catching collapsing patients and restraining violent trauma victims—kicked in with instantaneous, explosive force.

I dropped my center of gravity, hooked my right boot behind the doorframe, and grabbed Maris’s wrists with hands like iron clamps.

The smile on her face vanished, replaced by an expression of pure, unadulterated bewilderment.

"What—" she gasped, trying to jerk her arms back.

"Your dosage calculations were off, Maris," I snarled, my voice clear, steady, and razor-sharp. "And you forgot rule number one of medicine: never underestimate your patient."

I twisted her wrists inward, spinning her away from the open basement drop and slamming her back against the hallway wall. The picture frames rattled against the plaster.

"You bastard!" she screamed, her face contorting into an animalistic rage. Her composure shattered completely. She lashed out with her booted heel, catching my shin, and clawed at my face with her leather gloves. "You lied to me! You set me up!"

"POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT! DROP TO THE FLOOR!"

The front door exploded inward with a deafening crash as a hydraulic ram took the deadbolt clean out of the jamb.

Flash-bangs didn't go off, but the sound of tactical boots pounding against the hardwood sounded like rolling thunder. Four tactical officers in body armor and helmets swarmed the hallway, their assault rifles raised, blinding weapon lights illuminating the dust swirling in the air.

"DOWN ON THE GROUND! BOTH OF YOU! HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!"

I stepped back instantly, raising my hands, pressing myself against the far wall.

Maris didn't drop.

Driven by pure, cornered feral panic, she lunged toward her designer handbag on the kitchen counter. She reached into the open pocket, her fingers closing around a small, snub-nosed .38 revolver she had kept hidden in the bottom compartment.

"Maris, don't do it!" I roared.

"DROP THE WEAPON!" Detective Miller’s voice cut through the chaos like a whip.

Maris spun toward the officers, the barrel of the revolver clearing the leather rim of her bag.

Before she could raise it, the lead tactical officer fired a single beanbag round from a 12-gauge breach shotgun. The heavy projectile struck Maris square in the solar plexus with the force of a sledgehammer.

The breath left her in a wet, explosive gasp. The revolver flew from her grip, skittering across the kitchen tiles to stop beneath the refrigerator.

Maris collapsed to her knees, clutching her ribs, gasping for air like a landed fish.

Within two seconds, two officers were on her. One pinned her shoulders to the floor while the other forced her arms behind her back, the ratcheting click of steel handcuffs echoing loudly through the silent house.

"Maris Cross," Detective Miller said, stepping through the doorway, her badge gleaming under the halogen lights. "You are under arrest for the attempted murder of Gideon Cross, and the first-degree murders of Marcus Vance, Julian Miller, and David Ross."

Maris lay pinned against the cold floorboards, her cheek pressed against the wood. Her dark hair was tangled across her face, her eyes wild, bloodshot, and filled with venomous hatred.

She looked up at me.

"She told you," Maris hissed, spitting blood onto the floor. "That little bitch told you, didn't she? I should have left her in the car with Julian. I should have smothered her in her crib!"

A wave of cold, righteous fury washed over me, but I didn't yell. I didn't step forward. I looked down at her with the same detached, clinical pity I felt for a tumor that had finally been excised from a healthy body.