The sterile, fluorescent-lit hallway of the surgical ICU felt a million miles away from the freezing bus terminal, but the cold inside me remained absolute.
I stood staring through the small, reinforced glass window of the heavy double doors.
“She’s out of the woods, Eleanor,” Dr. Aris, the lead trauma surgeon, said quietly as he stepped out into the hallway, pulling off his surgical cap. His scrubs were stained, his face exhausted. “It was incredibly close. She suffered a ruptured spleen, three broken ribs, a fractured orbital bone, and a severe concussion. But she is a fighter. We stabilized the internal bleeding. She will live.”
I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, letting out a long, slow breath. A massive, crushing boulder was lifted from my chest.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I whispered.
I opened my eyes. The relief was instantaneous, but it was immediately followed by a crystalline, hyper-focused tactical clarity. Chloe was safe. The hospital was a fortress.
Now, I had a job to do.
I turned away from the surgical suite and walked briskly down the hospital corridor toward a secluded, empty waiting room. Sitting in a plastic chair, flipping through a thick file folder, was Chief of Police Miller.
Miller was a hardened veteran of the force, a man whose career trajectory had been significantly accelerated twenty years ago by a series of high-profile, successful joint task force operations we had run together. He owed me. And he knew it.
“Eleanor,” Miller said, standing up as I entered the room. He tossed the file onto a small coffee table. “I saw the preliminary forensic photos the ER nurses took. It’s a bloodbath. The responding officers have secured the bus terminal, but if Marcus and his mother did this, they’ve had hours to clean the crime scene at their house.”
“Don’t pity me, Miller,” I said, walking over and tapping a manicured finger sharply against the folder. “And don’t worry about the bleach on their hardwood floors. Get to work.”
Miller sighed, crossing his arms. “I can send a squad car to pick them up right now for questioning. Based on Chloe’s condition, we have enough for an arrest warrant for aggravated assault.”
“I don’t want a simple arrest, Miller,” I said, my voice dropping into a low, dangerous rumble. “I don’t want them quietly escorted into the back of a squad car so Marcus can call his expensive defense attorney from the back seat and make bail by noon. I want absolute, total annihilation.”
I pulled a small, digital tablet from my purse and set it on the table.
“Chloe told me Marcus nearly killed her to make room for his mistress,” I said, swiping the screen to bring up a dossier I had compiled in the hospital waiting room over the last three hours. “I ran a background check on the woman Marcus has been seen with over the last six months. Her name is Victoria Vance.”
Miller’s eyes narrowed. “Vance? As in…”
