Chapter 3 - Poison in the Bloodline
The private medical suite on the estate’s lower level smelled of rubbing alcohol, cold damp towels, and the coppery tang of Dean’s bleeding arm.
For forty-five agonizing minutes, the world narrowed down to the sound of Owen’s fragile respiration. Grace had taken over the room with a calm, surgical precision that baffled even the house physician, Dr. Vance, who had finally arrived through the security gates with two trauma bags.
Grace had stripped Owen down, placing tepid cloths across his groin, underarms, and neck, constantly monitoring his core temperature while Lily stood solemnly on a metal step stool beside the examination table, holding Owen’s left foot in both of her tiny hands.
"He's cooling down," Grace murmured, her eyes locked on the digital thermometer. "Ninety-nine point eight. The seizure threshold has passed."
As if responding to her voice, Owen let out a sudden, loud, indignant wail.
It was the sweetest, most violent sound Dean had ever heard in his life.
Dean stood against the tiled wall, his shirt soaked in sweat and glass dust, his arm wrapped in a rough pressure bandage that Dr. Vance had slapped on without cleaning the cuts. He didn't care about the glass in his flesh. His eyes were pinned to the baby on the table, who was now kicking his legs, his skin fading from dangerous crimson back to a flushed, healthy pink.
Owen was alive.
Dr. Vance exhaled a long, trembling breath and lowered his stethoscope. "He’s going to be fine. No neurological deficits that I can detect. His reflexes are intact. If he had stayed in that vehicle another ten minutes, Dean... his brain would have cooked. You would have buried him next to Natalie."
Dean didn't answer.
The silence that filled the medical room was colder than the Arctic. When Dean Mercer stopped speaking, people in the Savannah lowcountry usually started praying.
"Grace," Dean said. The voice was quiet, level, and lethal.
Grace looked up from Owen’s crib, her hands still resting gently on the baby’s stomach. "Yes, Mr. Mercer?"
"Take Lily upstairs to the sunroom. Have the kitchen prepare whatever she wants to eat. Stay there until I come for you."
Grace hesitated, looking at the dark circles under his eyes, then nodded. "Come on, Dr. Lily. Let’s let Mr. Mercer speak with the doctor."
Lily hopped down from her stool, but before she walked past Dean, she stopped. She looked up at the towering, blood-streaked man, tilted her head, and pulled her plastic stethoscope from around her neck.
"Your arm is broken," she informed him seriously.
"It’s just cut, Lily," Dean said, his voice unconsciously softening by a fraction of a millimeter.
"You need this more than me," she said, extending the cheap red plastic toy toward him. "It fixes bad hearts."
Dean looked down at the tiny piece of plastic. He slowly reached down with his uninjured hand, took the toy, and closed his fingers around it. "Thank you, Doctor."
The moment the door clicked shut behind Grace and Lily, Dean’s face turned to stone. He turned to Dr. Vance.
"Where is Marcus?"
Marcus Ray was Dean’s chief of security—a former Navy SEAL who had managed the Mercer family’s private army for eight years.
"He's in the surveillance hub, Dean," Vance said nervously. "He was checking the perimeter footage."
Dean walked out of the room without another word.
He didn't take the elevator. He took the back stairs two at a time, entering the subterranean security room where eight flat-screen monitors cast a cold, flickering glow over the concrete walls.
Marcus was sitting at the central console, his brow furrowed, a cup of black coffee steaming beside a bank of digital recorders. Standing beside him was Martha, her apron wringing in her hands, her eyes puffy from crying.
"Tell me," Dean said, stepping into the room.
Marcus didn't turn around immediately. "The south wall camera was disabled at one-fifteen this afternoon, Boss. Someone executed a local loop bypass. It requires a hardline connection from the interior server closet."
"An inside job," Dean said.
"Had to be," Marcus replied grimly. "Whoever did it knew the patrol rotations. The pool car wasn't scheduled for maintenance until next Tuesday. Nobody checks that gravel turnaround until the shift change at six in the evening. If the little girl hadn't noticed..."
Marcus didn't need to finish the sentence.
Dean walked over to the desk, his eyes resting on the silver key fob he had pulled from his pocket and dropped onto the console.
"This was beside the tire," Dean said. "Run the serial number on the transponder."
Marcus picked up the key with a pair of tweezers, typed the seven-digit manufacturer code into his terminal, and waited for the database to return the match.
The screen blinked. A single name and authorization clearance popped onto the monitor.
*CARD ASSIGNED TO: JULIAN MERCER - EXECUTIVE CLEARANCE.*
Julian. Dean’s younger half-brother. The polished, Harvard-educated face of the Mercer family’s legitimate logistics holdings, and the man who had filed the three-page petition on Dean’s desk that very morning, claiming Dean was psychologically unstable and demanding legal guardianship of baby Owen.
Martha let out a strangled gasp. "Julian? No... no, Julian loves that baby! He wouldn't—"
Dean didn't shout. He didn't punch the wall. He simply stared at the name on the screen, his chest rising and falling with slow, measured breaths.
"Where is my brother right now, Marcus?"
"He's in Atlanta, Boss. At least... his private plane logged a flight plan to Peachtree-DeKalb this morning at ten."
"Check his transponder," Dean said. "Not the plane. His personal phone."
Marcus worked the keyboard. Three seconds later, the GPS ping lit up on a map of Savannah.
The red dot wasn't in Atlanta. It was six miles away, sitting quietly in a private booth at the River Street Yacht Club.
May you like
Dean turned toward the door. "Marcus. Bring two vans. No sirens. No local police. And tell the gate guard that if anyone tries to leave this estate before I get back, put a bullet through their engine block."
***
