Chapter 4 - The Warehouse Trap
While the police processed my home, I rushed back to the hospital.
Emily had finally regained consciousness. She was pale, attached to oxygen and fluid IVs, but her eyes were open. When I walked into her room, she looked at me, and tears immediately pooled in her gray eyes.
“Ethan…” she sobbed, her voice barely a whisper. “Noah… where is Noah?”
“He’s in the NICU, baby,” I said, rushing to her side, kneeling beside the bed, and grasping her cold hand tightly. “The doctors are cooling his fever. He’s stable. He’s going to survive.”
Emily pulled my hand against her cheek, weeping uncontrollably.
“They wouldn’t let me up, Ethan,” she whispered, terror trembling through her chest. “Every time I tried to stand up, your mother gave me water… it tasted bitter. Then my head felt heavy. I tried to feed Noah, but I couldn’t lift him… I heard him crying… oh God, Ethan, I heard him crying for hours and I couldn’t reach him…”
A wave of crushing guilt slammed into my chest, heavy enough to take my breath away. I pressed my forehead against her knuckles. “I’m so sorry, Emily. I’m so sorry I left you. I should never have gone.”
“Why did you leave?” she asked softly. “You said you had to stay home with us…”
That question hit me like an electric shock.
My job. The emergency at the warehouse.
Why had I been called away in the first place?
I remembered the call from my district manager, Greg Vance. He had said that emergency stock paperwork had been flagged under my electronic signature at the Cincinnati branch—a branch I hadn't visited in six months. The paperwork claimed that $80,000 worth of copper piping and heavy machinery parts were missing, and if I didn't come down immediately to audit the inventory, I would be fired and reported to the authorities.
I pulled out my phone and called Greg immediately.
“Ethan,” Greg answered, his voice tense. “Where are you? You left the Cincinnati branch audit unfinished—”
“Greg, listen to me,” I said coldly. “Who logged those missing stock documents under my account last week?”
“What do you mean? It came from your terminal ID—”
“Check the login IP address, Greg!” I demanded, my voice echoing in the hospital hallway. “Check it right now! My family was almost murdered while I was at that branch!”
There was a long silence on the line. I heard the frantic clicking of a keyboard.
“Ethan…” Greg’s voice suddenly sounded completely drained of blood. “The terminal login came from a personal laptop registered under an employee named Marcus Kane.”
Marcus Kane.
My sister Ashley’s boyfriend.
He worked as an inventory clerk in the main Columbus office. He was the one who had introduced Ashley to my family two years ago.
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The blood in my veins turned to ice.
It wasn't a coincidence. It was never a coincidence. The stock error was a fake setup designed to lure me out of the house for four days. Marcus had cleared the way so my mother and sister could isolate Emily without me around to stop them.
