Chapter 4 - Shadows of Sterling BioTech
The hooded intruder turned with blinding speed.
Before I could tackle him, he slammed his elbow into my jaw. Pain exploded behind my eyes, and I crashed against the crash cart, sending tray tables, syringes, and heart monitors clattering across the linoleum floor.
The intruder bolted for the emergency exit door at the end of the hall, shoving an elderly nurse to the floor as he disappeared into the stairwell.
"Security! Lock down the floor!" Dr. Hayes yelled, rushing into the room behind me.
I scrambled to my feet, wiping blood from my lip, and threw myself beside Lena’s bed. Her face was still ghost-pale, an oxygen tube taped across her small nose, but her vital signs on the monitor were steady. The syringe lay shattered on the floor—the unknown killer hadn't managed to plunge the drug into her line.
Ten minutes later, hospital security officers were patrolling the hallways, but the hooded figure had vanished into the rainy afternoon through the basement loading docks.
I sat on a stool beside Lena’s bed, clutching her cold, limp hand against my cheek. Across the room stood Detective Maya Lin—a sharp-eyed homicide investigator with a non-nonsense demeanor who had been assigned to investigate the funeral incident.
"Mr. Cole," Detective Lin said, flipping through her small notepad. "I just spoke with the county registrar. The original death report filed for your wife three days ago states she suffered fatal drowning trauma after her vehicle left the road on Route 9."
"It was a lie," I said, my voice shaking with rage. "Lena didn't drown. She’s an Olympic-level swimmer. She grew up on the coast. A car falling into three feet of creek water wouldn't kill her, and it certainly wouldn't put tetrodotoxin in her bloodstream."
"Why would someone go to such extraordinary lengths to fake her death and bury her alive?" Lin asked, leaning against the window frame. "What did your wife do, Ethan?"
"She wasn't just my wife," I said, looking at Lena’s peaceful, motionless face. "She was the lead genetic toxicologist at Sterling BioTech. She had been working in their high-security lab for eighteen months."
"Working on what?"
"Project Lazarus," a weak, rasping voice whispered from the bed.
I snapped my head around.
Lena’s dark eyes were open—slits of cloudy brown beneath swollen eyelids. Her lips moved agonizingly slow, dry and cracked beneath the oxygen mask.
"Lena!" I gasped, dropping to my knees and kissing her forehead, her cheeks, her hair. "Oh God, Lena! You’re awake!"
"Ethan..." she breathed, a tear leaking from the corner of her eye. "The baby... is he...?"
"He’s alive, sweetheart," I sobbed, holding her hand like a lifeline. "Our boy is in the NICU. He’s small, but he’s fighting. He’s breathing."
A look of immense, beautiful relief passed over her face, followed immediately by pure terror. She squeezed my fingers with surprising strength for someone who had been paralyzed for three days.
"You have to get him out of here," Lena whispered, her voice gravelly and trembling. "Richard... my stepfather... he found out what I discovered."
"What did you discover, Mrs. Cole?" Detective Lin stepped forward, pulling out her recorder.
May you like
Lena looked at the detective, her breath catching in her throat. "Sterling BioTech didn't invent a new cancer drug. They created a synthetic paralytic agent designed for military black-ops. They were testing it on terminally ill patients in offshore clinics... and Richard was about to sell the formula to a foreign defense syndicate for eighty million dollars."
She swallowed hard, her chest heaving. "I threatened to go to the FDA and the FBI last week. Two days later, my steering wheel locked on the highway... and the last thing I remember was Richard standing over my car with a syringe."
