Chapter 71
[ 472 words ]
Chapter 71:
Caroline stayed pressed against the wall. Her eyes darted around the room, cataloging the heavy brass paperweight, the metal scissors on the desk, the sharp edge of the bookshelf. Her body was a coiled spring, ready to strike.
“What are you doing, Julian?” Caroline asked. The soft, submissive nurse voice was completely gone.
Julian didn’t react to the sudden hostility in her tone. He walked over to the window and pulled the blinds down tight, sealing them in.
He turned and reached for the high-intensity medical examination light on his desk. He flipped the switch. A blinding, pure white beam cut through the dim office, spotlighting the center of the desk.
р𝘰𝘱𝘂𝗅a𝗋 s𝗍𝗈𝗋𝘪eѕ 𝗈n 𝗴a𝗅𝘯о𝘷еl𝘴.𝖼𝘰𝘮
Julian pulled open a drawer and took out a pair of blue latex gloves, snapping them onto his hands. He reached into his coat pocket and carefully withdrew a small, clear evidence bag. Inside it was a single, empty glass vial. Its aluminum seal was visibly warped, the rubber stopper beneath it pierced by a tiny, almost invisible needle hole.
He looked up at her and gestured with his chin.
“Come here,” Julian said. His voice was heavy with a dark, undeniable seriousness. “Look at what I found.”
Caroline hesitated. Her pulse throbbed in her throat. She slowly pushed off the wall and closed the distance, stopping on the opposite side of the desk.
She stared down at the vial in his gloved hand. The cold certainty that had driven her to smash the decoy vial in the hallway resurfaced, coiling tight in her stomach. She didn’t need convincing. She already knew.
Julian opened another drawer and pulled out a small, high-powered jeweler’s loupe. He handed it to her, then pointed a gloved finger at the microscopic puncture mark in the rubber stopper.
“Look closely,” he instructed.
Caroline took the loupe. She leaned over the desk, bringing her eye inches from the glass.
Under the intense magnification and the blinding white light, she saw it: the tiny perforation where a hyper-thin needle had been forced through the rubber to extract and replace the original liquid without breaking the aluminum seal.
She lowered the loupe. Her expression was stone, but her knuckles were white where she gripped the edge of the desk.
“I dug this out of the sharps disposal bin in the east wing supply closet,” Julian said, his low voice vibrating in the quiet room. “I saw Melanie slip in there during the commotion. She stashed this while you were dealing with the cart crash. She kept the vial she swapped onto your tray, that’s probably long gone by now, but she was sloppy. She saved the original container she used to bring the toxin in.”
He tapped the evidence bag with his finger. “I suspect the residue inside will test positive for a lethal concentration of potassium chloride. That’s what she injected into the vial she placed on your tray.”
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