Chapter 2 - The Wrong Medicine
Dr. Elias Hart arrived seven minutes later carrying the black medical case he had brought to the Vale residence dozens of times.
He had treated Lily since she was eighteen months old.
He had treated Claire before her death.
And when Adrian placed the silver-marked inhaler on the kitchen counter, Elias stopped walking.
The reaction lasted less than a second.
But Adrian saw it.
“You recognize it.”
Elias looked at him.
“Where did you get this?”
Adrian did not answer.
He watched the physician pull on gloves.
Elias lifted the inhaler.
He turned it beneath the light.
His face became increasingly troubled.
“This is not Lily’s current prescription.”
Meredith sat in a chair across the room with Marcus standing behind her.
Owen guarded the door.
Lily had been taken upstairs by Grace Bennett, the housekeeper who had cared for her since birth.
Adrian had refused to let Meredith leave.
He had also refused to allow anyone to call the family attorney until he understood what was happening.
“What is it?”
Elias removed the canister carefully.
“I cannot tell you without testing it.”
“You reacted before opening it.”
Elias looked at Meredith.
Then he looked back at Adrian.
“Where did you get it?”
Adrian’s voice sharpened.
“Answer my question.”
Elias removed his glasses.
“Claire had an inhaler with a silver identification strip.”
The room went silent.
Adrian felt something cold move through him.
“Claire’s medication was destroyed after the accident.”
“That is what the hospital inventory said.”
Adrian stepped toward him.
“You signed that inventory.”
Elias looked down.
“Yes.”
“So how is my dead wife’s inhaler inside my house?”
“I don’t know.”
Meredith laughed once.
It was not amusement.
It sounded like disbelief.
Adrian turned toward her.
“You find something funny?”
Meredith looked at Elias.
“Tell him.”
Elias remained still.
“Tell him what?”
“You know.”
Elias’s eyes hardened.
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Meredith leaned forward.
“You recognized the tape.”
“Because Claire used that system.”
“You recognized more than that.”
Elias looked toward Adrian.
Adrian saw fear.
Not surprise.
Fear.
“Marcus.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Take Lily and Grace to the east guest suite.”
Marcus hesitated.
“I thought you wanted me here.”
“I want Lily away from every person whose name I have not personally cleared.”
Marcus nodded.
Adrian looked at Owen.
“Bring the medical storage logs.”
Owen left.
Elias placed the inhaler down.
“You are treating this like a criminal investigation.”
Adrian stared at him.
“My four-year-old daughter was denied medication by a woman carrying something that belonged to my dead wife.”
He leaned closer.
“You tell me how I should treat it.”
Elias said nothing.
Meredith suddenly spoke.
“Ask him about the night Claire died.”
Elias turned on her.
“Stop.”
Adrian’s gaze moved between them.
“What about that night?”
Meredith smiled without humor.
“This is the part where everyone starts lying.”
Elias stood.
“I will not participate in this.”
Adrian blocked his path.
“You are not leaving.”
“You cannot keep me here.”
“No.”
Adrian’s voice lowered.
“But I can call the district attorney who attended my wife’s funeral and tell her Claire’s former physician just recognized an inhaler found in the pocket of a woman endangering my daughter.”
Elias’s face changed.
Adrian noticed.
“So sit down.”
Elias sat.
Meredith looked almost relieved.
Adrian faced her.
“Start talking.”
Meredith swallowed.
“I was hired nine months ago.”
“I know when you were hired.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“You know when I started working here.”
Adrian waited.
“I was hired six weeks before that.”
“By whom?”
Meredith looked at Elias.
“Not him.”
“Then who?”
“I never saw his face.”
Adrian’s patience thinned.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I spoke through encrypted calls.”
Owen returned carrying a laptop.
Adrian did not look away from Meredith.
“What were you hired to do?”
“At first?”
Meredith’s voice softened.
“Observe Lily.”
“Observe what?”
“Her routines.”
Adrian’s stomach tightened.
“Her medication.”
Elias closed his eyes.
“Her nurses.”
“Continue.”
“Who stayed with her when you traveled.”
Meredith looked down.
“When she slept.”
Marcus’s hand tightened around the back of her chair.
Adrian’s voice became dangerously calm.
“What else?”
“When she had attacks.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Lie to me again and this conversation ends with you speaking only to police.”
“I swear.”
Meredith leaned forward.
“I thought it was a custody investigation.”
Adrian frowned.
“Custody?”
“You had just announced your engagement to Victoria.”
Adrian’s expression hardened.
Victoria Laurent had been his fiancée for five months.
She was in Paris negotiating the acquisition of a hotel group.
She had met Lily gradually.
Carefully.
She had never been allowed to discipline her.
And Adrian had never detected anything resembling hostility between them.
Meredith continued.
“The person paying me said someone was preparing a case that you were emotionally neglecting Lily.”
“Who?”
“I told you.”
“You are giving me shadows.”
“Because shadows are all I had.”
Adrian moved closer.
“When did the inhaler become part of it?”
Meredith looked at Elias.
“Three weeks ago.”
Elias lifted his head.
Meredith continued.
“A package arrived at my apartment.”
“What was inside?”
“The inhaler.”
Adrian stared at the silver tape.
“And instructions.”
“What instructions?”
Meredith’s mouth tightened.
“To replace Lily’s rescue inhaler for short periods.”
Elias stood abruptly.
“You did what?”
Marcus pushed him back into his chair.
Meredith’s eyes filled with tears.
“I never left the replacement with her overnight.”
Adrian looked at her with disgust.
“You want credit for that?”
“No.”
“You knowingly took medication from a four-year-old.”
“I was told the replacement was harmless.”
“You watched her collapse.”
“I panicked.”
“You held the real inhaler in your hand.”
Meredith looked away.
Adrian stepped closer.
“You listened to my daughter beg you for air.”
“I know.”
“And you still kept it from her.”
“I know.”
“No.”
Adrian’s voice shook.
“You do not get to say you know.”
Meredith stared at the floor.
Adrian forced himself to turn away before anger made him do something he could not undo.
He looked at Elias.
“What would happen if Lily tried using the replacement?”
Elias inspected it.
“If it contains what I suspect, nothing therapeutic.”
Adrian stared at him.
“What do you suspect?”
“A non-medicated training canister.”
“Then she would keep struggling.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“That would depend on the severity of the episode.”
Adrian understood the answer Elias did not want to say.
Long enough to die.
Meredith began crying.
Marcus showed no sympathy.
Adrian pointed toward the inhaler.
“Why did Claire have one like that?”
Elias remained silent.
Adrian repeated the question.
“Why did my wife have one like that?”
Elias looked toward the window.
“The week before Claire died, she told me her medication did not seem to be working consistently.”
Adrian’s heart began pounding.
“You never told me that.”
“She asked me not to worry you.”
“My wife thought her medication was failing and you decided I did not need to know?”
“I replaced everything.”
“Everything?”
“Her inhalers.”
“Did you test the old ones?”
Elias did not answer.
Adrian stepped closer.
“Did you test them?”
“Yes.”
Meredith looked up.
Adrian’s voice dropped.
“What did you find?”
Elias’s face became gray.
“One canister was empty.”
“That is not unusual.”
“It was almost new.”
Adrian stared at him.
“There was another?”
Elias nodded.
“What was wrong with it?”
“It was a training canister.”
The same sentence seemed to echo through the room.
Adrian looked at the silver-marked inhaler.
“Like this one.”
Elias nodded.
“Exactly like this one.”
Adrian gripped the countertop.
Claire had not died because her body suddenly failed her.
Someone had known she would reach for medication.
Someone had made sure the medicine would not be there.
“Who knew?”
Elias lowered his head.
“Claire.”
“Who else?”
“My clinic manager.”
“Name.”
“Paul Brenner.”
“Who else?”
Elias hesitated.
Adrian saw it.
“Name.”
“The family attorney.”
Adrian froze.
“Conrad?”
Elias nodded.
Conrad Hale had been Adrian’s chief legal officer for fourteen years.
He had handled Claire’s estate.
He had helped Adrian bury his wife.
He was Lily’s secondary trustee.
And he was supposed to arrive at the Vale house that evening for dinner.
Owen immediately reached for his phone.
Adrian raised one hand.
“Don’t call him.”
Owen stopped.
Adrian looked at Elias.
“What happened after you found the training canister?”
“Claire asked me to keep quiet.”
“Why?”
“She said she wanted to know who was doing it.”
Adrian’s voice nearly disappeared.
“She knew someone was trying to hurt her?”
“She suspected someone was interfering with her medication.”
“And you let her leave your clinic?”
“She refused protection.”
“You should have called me.”
“I know.”
“You should have called the police.”
“I know.”
Adrian grabbed the back of a chair.
He wanted to throw it through the window.
Instead he held on until his knuckles whitened.
“When did you last speak to her?”
Elias looked directly at him.
“Forty-eight minutes before her car left the road.”
No one moved.
“What did she say?”
Elias inhaled slowly.
“She told me she had figured it out.”
Adrian’s chest tightened.
“Figured what out?”
“She said the inhaler was not the beginning.”
“She said it was the proof.”
“Proof of what?”
Elias shook his head.
“She never told me.”
Adrian stared at him.
“That is all?”
“No.”
Elias’s voice trembled.
“She said she had hidden something in Lily’s nursery.”
Lily had been eleven months old when Claire died.
The nursery had been renovated twice since then.
“What?”
“She did not say.”
Adrian turned toward Owen.
“Seal the nursery.”
Owen nodded.
“No one enters until I’m there.”
Meredith suddenly stood.
Marcus pushed her back.
“Wait.”
Adrian looked at her.
“There is something else.”
He said nothing.
“When the person paying me called yesterday, he asked a question.”
“What question?”
Meredith looked toward the ceiling cameras.
“He asked whether Lily still slept in her old nursery during thunderstorms.”
Adrian felt cold.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you answer?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“I said sometimes.”
Adrian looked at Owen.
“Move Lily now.”
Owen hurried toward the door.
Then the lights went out.
Every lamp.
Every ceiling fixture.
Every screen.
The entire mansion disappeared into darkness.
Marcus drew his weapon.
Adrian heard a distant alarm chirp once.
Then silence.
A child screamed upstairs.
“Daddy!”
May you like
Adrian ran.
And behind him, somewhere inside the dark house, a door that had been sealed for three years slowly opened.
