Chapter 7 - The Confrontation at the Hangar
"Love?" Warren spat, his fingers tightening around the handle of the metal case. "Don't talk to me about love! She never looked at me the way she looked at you! For forty years, I was the consolation prize! The reliable pharmacist while you were the brilliant surgeon saving lives!"
"She married you, Warren!" Charles yelled over the thunder. "She built a life with you for thirty years! She was loyal to you until the moment you tried to poison her!"
"She was going to leave me!" Warren screamed, his voice cracking. "She found out about the accounts! She was going to take half of everything and leave me with the debt! I built those pharmacies! Me! I wasn't going to let her destroy my legacy!"
"You destroyed it yourself," Teresa warned, taking two steps to the left to flank him. "Drop the case, Mr. Prescott. Now!"
Warren looked frantically between Teresa's gun and Charles's resolute face. The sound of approaching police sirens grew louder from the main perimeter gate. He realized the runway was blocked, the fence was locked, and his escape route had evaporated.
In a moment of pure desperation, Warren reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small glass vial and an auto-injector syringe.
"If I'm going to prison, Charles, you get to watch me die right here!" Warren shrieked, positioning the syringe over his neck. "You couldn't save my marriage, and you won't save me!"
"Warren, don't!" Charles yelled.
Without hesitating, Charles didn't wait for the detective to act. He charged forward, tackling Warren to the muddy ground just as Warren pressed the plunger. The force of the impact knocked the syringe free, sending it skidding across the asphalt into a drainage grate.
The two men tumbled in the mud—the surgeon and the pharmacist, forty years of shared history collapsing into a violent, desperate struggle. Warren scratched and clawed like a madman, but Charles managed to pin his wrists to the ground, leveraging his body weight until Teresa rushed in, slapping heavy steel handcuffs onto Warren’s wrists.
Warren lay face-down in the mud, panting heavily, sobbing in defeat as the rain washed over him.
Charles stood up slowly, wiping the rain and mud from his face. He looked down at the man who had been his brother in all but blood, feeling no anger left—only a profound, hollow sadness.
"Take him away," Teresa ordered her deputies.
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As they dragged Warren toward the waiting squad car, Teresa turned to Charles, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You saved his life, too, Charles. Even after what he did."
Charles looked back at the city lights glowing through the storm. "I'm a doctor, Teresa. I save lives. Now let's go back to the hospital. Lillian is waiting."
