Chapter 2 - The Hallway Standoff
The heavy wooden door of the examination room felt devastatingly thin. Paige’s knocks came again, louder this time, accompanied by the frantic rattling of the brass doorknob.
"Brent!" she called out, her voice sharp with an artificial edge of panic. "I know you're in there. Open this door right now. The clinic receptionist said you were still with the doctor."
Brent’s smile widened, a cruel, triumphant expression that erased any remaining trace of the man I thought I had married. He took a step toward me, his bare chest heaving, the three neat rows of puncture wounds on his lower back glistening under the harsh fluorescent lights.
"Give me the phone, Claire," he whispered, extending his hand. "If Paige is here, it means the timeline has moved up. You don't know what you're dealing with. My family... we control things in this town. A phone call to a dispatcher won't save you."
Dr. Ellis was still on the landline, his voice trembling as he updated the operator. "Yes, she's outside the door now. Please hurry."
My mind raced, falling back into the cold, analytical rhythm of my forensic days. Why was Paige here? She couldn't have known Dr. Ellis would lock the door. Unless... they had been tracking Brent's phone. Or worse, they had been tracking mine.
I looked down at the screen in my hand. Another text popped up from Paige, visible on the lock screen: The courier from the embassy is arriving at the house at 5:00 PM. If the container isn't cleared, we lose the contract.
"The device," I muttered, looking up at Brent. "The tropical specimens. You weren't just storing them. You were harvesting them."
Brent’s eyes narrowed. "You always were too smart for your own good, Claire. That's why my mother never liked you. You look for patterns where you should just look for shopping bags."
"Brent!" Paige shouted from the hallway, her tone shifting from frantic to demanding. "Dr. Ellis, if you are holding my brother in there against his will, I will have my lawyers strip your medical license before sundown! Open this door!"
"Don't open it," I told Dr. Ellis.
I backed up against the far wall, gripping Brent's phone tightly. I needed to see what was on it, but it was locked behind a six-digit passcode. I watched his face, remembering how he always used numbers that flattered his ego. His graduation year? No. The year his family's firm hit its first billion?
I tried a combination based on their corporate founding year: 1-9-8-8. The screen flashed red. Incorrect.
"You won't get into it," Brent sneered, taking another slow step toward the desk, trying to corner me. "And even if you do, the police won't find anything at the house. It's a clean operation."
"Clean operations don't involve forcing venomous insects to bite your own spine, Brent," I snapped.
Suddenly, the rattling at the door stopped. For a moment, there was absolute silence in the hallway. Dr. Ellis lowered the phone slightly, his brow furrowed. "Did she leave?"
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Before I could answer, a loud, metallic clack echoed through the room. Paige wasn't leaving. She had gone to the reception desk and taken the emergency master key.
The door began to swing open.
