Chapter 7: The Man Upstairs
Chapter 7: The Man Upstairs
Ryan picked up an iron fireplace poker.
Maya stayed behind him as they climbed the stairs.
The hallway was dark.
At the far end, a bedroom door stood open.
A man stumbled into view.
His clothes were soaked.
Blood stained one sleeve.
It was Dr. Samuel Vale.
“Close the curtains,” he whispered.
Ryan pushed him against the wall.
“You were in my son’s nursery.”
Vale did not resist.
“Your mother forced me.”
“You altered Maya’s records.”
“I know.”
“You helped her plan the attack.”
Vale looked toward Maya.
“I was supposed to place a sedative in her tea.”
Maya’s face drained of color.
“The tea Evelyn brought me.”
Vale nodded.
“The drug would have made you confused and aggressive. The camera would record only the final minutes.”
“Why didn’t it happen?” Ryan demanded.
“I changed my mind.”
Vale explained that he entered the nursery through the adjoining service hallway while Evelyn distracted Maya.
He removed the sedative from the tray.
Evelyn realized what he had done.
She took Oliver’s inhaler and created the confrontation herself.
Vale tried to stop her, but when he heard Ryan arriving downstairs, he fled through the back stairs.
“Then why did you disappear?”
“Because Evelyn’s security chief found me.”
Vale showed them the wound in his arm.
He had escaped from two men near the river and left his car to make them believe he was dead.
Ryan held up his father’s medical report.
“Did you change his medication?”
Vale’s eyes filled with shame.
“Not directly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your father discovered that Evelyn was moving money from the family trust. He planned to remove her from the foundation.”
Vale had been a young resident at the hospital.
Evelyn paid him to enter a false medication instruction into Charles’s chart.
He believed the new dosage would make Charles tired and confused.
Instead, Charles suffered cardiac arrest.
“You killed him,” Ryan said.
Vale shook his head desperately.
“I did not know the dosage was lethal.”
“But my mother did?”
“I believe so.”
A car door slammed outside.
Headlights swept across the bedroom ceiling.
Vale moved toward the window.
“She found us.”
Several men entered the house below.
Ryan locked the bedroom door.
Maya searched for another exit.
Behind an old wardrobe, she found a narrow servants’ staircase.
They slipped inside moments before the bedroom door burst open.
As they escaped through the basement, Vale grabbed Ryan’s arm.
“There is one more thing you need to know.”
“What?”
Vale glanced at Maya.
“Evelyn was not planning to raise Oliver herself.”
May you like
Ryan stared at him.
“She had already chosen another family.”
