Chapter 5 - The Flight and the Confrontation
By midnight, the snow began to fall in earnest, covering Cedar Rapids in a thick, suffocating blanket of white. The police had descended upon my mother’s house, but Megan was gone. She had slipped out the back door into the wooded ravine behind the property before the first cruiser arrived, leaving her phone, her purse, and her husband behind.
Chris had been detained for questioning, weeping in the back of a police car, insisting he knew nothing about the pesticide or the money. My mother had been taken to the hospital by ambulance, her blood pressure spiking to dangerous levels from the sheer shock of her family crumbling in her dining room.
Lauren, Ethan, and I refused to leave the clinic. We camped out in the waiting room, wrapped in scratchy hospital blankets. Around 3:00 a.m., Dr. Kincaid walked out, wiping her brow.
"He’s through the worst of it," she said, a small, tired smile breaking through her fatigue. "The atropine worked. His lungs are clearing up. He’s weak, and his liver took a hit, but Buddy is a fighter. He’s awake."
Lauren burst into tears, hugging Ethan tightly. For the first time in nine hours, the knot in my chest loosened slightly. I followed them into the recovery ward. Buddy was lying on a padded mat, an IV line taped to his front leg, a cone around his neck. When he saw Ethan, his ears perked up slightly, and his golden tail gave two weak, rhythmic thuds against the floor.
"Good boy, Buddy. Good boy," Ethan whispered, burying his face in the dog’s soft fur, his small shoulders shaking with relief.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. It was an unknown number.
I stepped out into the quiet hallway to answer it. "Hello?"
"Daniel," a voice rasped. It was shivering, breathless, and laced with a manic, terrifying desperation. It was Megan.
"Where are you, Megan?" I asked, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper as I signaled to a nearby police officer stationed at the clinic doors. The officer immediately pulled out his radio to trace the call.
"You ruined everything," she hissed, her voice cutting through the static. I could hear the sound of wind howling in the background, the crunch of snow beneath her boots. "We were going to be fine. Chris and I... we just needed that money. You have so much, Daniel. You have the perfect house, the perfect son, the perfect life. You never had to worry about the bills piling up until you couldn't sleep. You never had to look at your children and wonder if you'd lose your home."
"You tried to kill my son, Megan," I said, my teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached. "You tried to kill an eleven-year-old boy, and my child, and me. For a piece of dirt? For money?"
"It wasn't supposed to be them!" she screamed into the phone, her voice breaking into a sob. "It was supposed to be you! You were supposed to eat it! Why couldn't you just eat it?"
"Where are you?" I demanded.
"I’m at the office," she whispered. "The old commercial building on 3rd Avenue. The one your father loved so much. I wanted to see what I killed for before they take me away."
The line went dead.
I looked at the police officer. He nodded grimly. "We got a cell tower ping. She’s at the downtown property. Our units are five minutes away."
"I’m coming with you," I said.
"Sir, that’s against protocol—"
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"That’s my building, my father’s building, and my family," I said, stepping closer to him. "I’m not sitting in this waiting room while she burns it down or jumps."
The officer looked at the raw determination in my eyes and sighed. "Stay in the car. No matter what happens, you stay in the car."
