Chapter 5 - Whispers in the Safehouse
The police safehouse was a drab two-bedroom apartment tucked above a commercial strip mall on the outskirts of the county. The blinds were kept permanently shut, casting horizontal bars of shadow across the beige walls.
Lena sat on the worn sofa, clutching a cup of black tea that had long gone cold. She hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw her father’s smug smile in the emergency room, or the cold, calculated look of the masked intruder holding the hard drive.
Across the small dining table, Eleanor sat with her head in her hands, her fingers tangled in her disheveled blonde hair.
"You need to talk to me, Mom," Lena said, breaking the suffocating silence. "No more crying. No more playing the fragile housewife. Miller told me what Dad said."
Eleanor lifted her head. Her eyes were bloodshot, hollowed by exhaustion. "Arthur is a liar, Lena. He’s lived his entire life creating scapegoats."
"Then explain the signature!" Lena slammed the singed life insurance policy—the only paper she had managed to shove into her hoodie pocket before escaping the fire—onto the laminate table. "Explain why your name is on an eight-million-dollar death benefit that triggers if I die of an accidental overdose!"
Eleanor flinched as if struck. She stared at the paper, then reached out, her fingernail tracing the line of ink beneath her name.
"I didn't sign this," Eleanor whispered, her voice cracking. "Look at the loop on the 'E'. Look at the tail of the 'r'. Arthur had power of attorney when I was hospitalized with pneumonia last winter. He had three different notary seals forged through his shell companies."
"And what about Project Aegis?" Lena pressed, refusing to let up. "The hard drive they stole? What was on it?"
Eleanor swallowed hard, casting a terrified glance toward the closed front door where two armed marshals stood guard in the hall.
"Arthur’s firm wasn't just distributing drugs, Lena. They were conducting unauthorized human trials for an unapproved synthetic neuro-inhibitor. A compound meant to suppress traumatic recall in military personnel."
Lena felt a chill run down her spine. "The sedative in my blood."
"It wasn't meant to kill you," Eleanor said, tears spilling freely now. "It was meant to erase your memory. Because six months ago... you saw something at his private laboratory that you were never supposed to see."
May you like
Before Lena could ask what she had seen, the power in the safehouse abruptly cut out.
The hum of the refrigerator died. The streetlamp light through the blinds vanished. Total darkness enveloped the room, followed immediately by the dull, muffled thwip-thwip of suppressed gunshots in the outer hallway.
