Part 3 The Devil Inside the Family
Part 3
The Devil Inside the Family
The first attempt to kill Grace Keller looked like an accident.
It happened just after six o'clock the following evening.
Rain hammered against the windows of St. Catherine's Medical Center while the emergency department overflowed with patients from a pileup on Interstate 90. Every available nurse had been reassigned, every physician was running behind, and the seventh floor—usually insulated from the chaos below—felt strangely understaffed.
Grace was reviewing Noah Mercer's latest blood work when her pager vibrated.
PHARMACY LEVEL B. STAT.
She frowned.
There was no reason for a NICU nurse to be called to the pharmacy.
Assuming someone needed clarification on Noah's medication profile, she took the service elevator downstairs.
The basement corridor was nearly empty.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
The air smelled faintly of disinfectant and machine oil.
Something felt wrong.
The pharmacy door stood half open.
No voices.
No movement.
"Hello?" Grace called.
No answer.
She stepped inside.
Rows of automated medication cabinets lined the room, their indicator lights blinking quietly in the dim light.
The computer terminal was still logged in.
But no pharmacist was there.
Her instincts—honed during four years as an Army combat medic—began screaming.
Run.
She turned toward the door.
It slammed shut.
A heavy metal shelving unit tipped toward her without warning.
Grace threw herself sideways.
The steel rack crashed onto the floor with a deafening explosion of glass vials and shattered medication trays.
The impact missed her head by less than a foot.
Heart pounding, she crawled backward through broken glass.
Someone had loosened the shelving bolts.
It hadn't fallen.
It had been pushed.
She looked toward the doorway just in time to catch a glimpse of a man disappearing into the hallway.
Black coat.
Baseball cap.
Hospital ID badge turned backward.
Gone.
Within seconds, security officers rushed into the room.
One of them looked at the wreckage and shook his head.
"That was close."
Grace stared at the fallen shelf.
"No," she whispered.
"That wasn't an accident."
Upstairs, Dominic Mercer was standing beside Noah's incubator when Vincent entered carrying two coffees.
"You should eat," Vincent said casually.
Dominic never looked away from his son.
"I'm not hungry."
Vincent set one cup on the counter.
"The doctors say they're still searching."
"They've been searching for three weeks."
"They'll figure it out."
Dominic's eyes remained fixed on Noah.
"They already have."
Vincent blinked.
"What do you mean?"
Dominic answered quietly.
"I think someone already knows exactly why my son is dying."
For the first time, Vincent's smile faltered.
Only for a fraction of a second.
But Dominic saw it.
Years of surviving betrayals had taught him one lesson:
Fear always appeared before guilt learned how to hide.
Dominic accepted the coffee without drinking it.
Instead, he handed the cup to one of his bodyguards.
"Anthony."
"Yes, boss?"
"Throw it away."
Vincent laughed awkwardly.
"You think I'd poison your coffee?"
Dominic finally looked at him.
"I don't think anymore."
His voice was calm.
"I verify."
Vincent forced another smile.
"After everything we've been through together?"
Dominic stepped closer until only inches separated them.
"My wife is dead."
"My son is dying."
"And somebody has been lying to my face."
The silence between the cousins felt colder than the hospital air conditioning.
Neither man blinked.
Neither man moved.
Then Dominic simply walked away.
For the first time in years, Vincent watched his cousin leave... and felt something dangerously unfamiliar.
Not confidence.
Not control.
Fear.
That same night, Grace requested access to every surveillance recording covering the NICU medication room.
The hospital's IT technician frowned.
"That's strange."
"What?"
"The footage from Noah Mercer's hallway..."
He clicked several more files.
"...is missing."
"Missing?"
"Twelve hours."
"Can you recover it?"
He shook his head slowly.
"It wasn't corrupted."
"It was deleted."
Grace's pulse quickened.
Deleted intentionally.
Someone inside the hospital had administrator privileges.
Someone who knew exactly which cameras to erase.
Someone protecting the person who injected Noah.
She wasn't chasing medical negligence anymore.
She was chasing a conspiracy.
And conspiracies always became more dangerous the closer someone came to the truth.
Grace looked back toward the NICU through the glass corridor.
Someone inside those walls was watching her.
She couldn't prove it.
Not yet.
But she could feel it.
May you like
And somewhere else in the hospital...
Someone was already planning the next attempt to make sure she never uncovered the rest of the truth.
