Chapter 8 - THE BADGE IN THE WINDOW
The man Madison described was Lieutenant Paul Mercer.
Ruiz’s supervisor.
He had attended Thomas’s funeral in plain clothes and stood near the back for less than ten minutes.
When Ruiz checked access logs, she found something worse.
Mercer had personally approved the closure of Thomas’s original death investigation after only six hours.
“No autopsy,” Rachel said.
Ruiz nodded. “He marked it medically attended. Natural death.”
“Even though Thomas was forty-two?”
“He had a documented arrhythmia. It was enough to make the paperwork look clean.”
They moved Rachel and Madison to a safe house before dawn. Thomas remained under guard at the hospital. At 6:40 a.m., Ruiz received a text from an unknown number:
YOUR PARTNER IS DIRTY TOO.
Her partner, Ben Hall, had worked beside her for seven years. Suddenly that history meant very little.
Rachel sat at the safe-house kitchen table while Madison colored.
“Everybody keeps saying Thomas was trying to protect me,” Rachel said. “But nobody tells me why he didn’t trust me with the truth.”
Ruiz looked exhausted.
“Sometimes people confuse secrecy with protection.”
Madison looked up.
“Daddy does that.”
Rachel almost laughed.
Instead, she cried.
That afternoon, Thomas called from the hospital.
His voice was weak but clearer.
“Rach.”
She closed her eyes.
“I’m here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You better be.”
A pause.
Then Thomas said, “I remembered the coffee.”
Rachel straightened.
“Who gave it to you?”
“Marla brought it into my office.”
“So it was her.”
“No. I didn’t drink it.”
Rachel frowned.
“What?”
“I dumped it in the sink after she left.”
“Then how did the drug get into you?”
Thomas breathed slowly.
“Someone injected me.”
“When?”
“After I collapsed.”
Rachel’s skin prickled.
“That means whoever did it was there after everyone thought you were having a heart attack.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Thomas whispered one name.
“Mercer.”
Then the phone line went dead.
Ruiz immediately called the hospital.
No answer from the officer outside Thomas’s room.
She called again.
Still nothing.
May you like
Then her phone buzzed with a hospital alert.
PATIENT THOMAS CLARKE — MISSING.
