The Marks on My Husband’s Back Were Not a Rash

I didn't wait for the police to escort me. If I waited, the Hale family lawyers would tie up the warrants for days, giving Brent and Paige enough time to erase every trace of their crimes. I slipped out of the clinic’s side exit, jumped into my SUV, and drove toward the historic, sprawling estate in Richmond’s West End that I had called home for twelve miserable years.

The drive was a blur. I knew the risks. I was entering a crime scene without backup, but my instinct told me that the evidence wouldn't survive an hour if Paige got there first.

When I pulled up the long, winding driveway, the estate looked deceptively peaceful. The manicured lawns and blooming hydrangeas gave no hint of the darkness lurking within. I sprinted to the front door, unlocked it, and headed straight for the kitchen, where the door to the basement was located.

The heavy oak door was secured with a massive, heavy-duty padlock—the one Brent had installed eight months ago.

I didn't have the key, but I knew where he hid his spares. I walked over to the antique grandfather clock in the hallway, reached inside the top casing, and pulled out a small magnetic key box. Inside was a heavy brass key.

My hands shook slightly as I fit the key into the padlock. It clicked open.

As I pushed the door open, a blast of hot, humid air hit my face. The scent was overwhelming—a mixture of damp earth, copper, and a strange, sickly sweet chemical aroma.

I descended the wooden stairs, flipping the light switch. The basement had been completely transformed. The storage boxes and old furniture had been pushed to the perimeter. In the center of the room stood a sophisticated, climate-controlled laboratory setup.

Row after row of glass terrariums lined the walls, lit by specialized ultraviolet lamps. Inside the tanks, foliage shifted. I stepped closer to one of the enclosures and gasped.

Crawling along the glass were dozens of massive, iridescent blue centipedes, their armored segments clicking softly. A label printed on the glass read: Scolopendra paradoxa - Solomon Islands. Highly venomous. Neurotoxic isolate.

"My god, Brent," I whispered.

I turned toward the workbench. There, sitting next to a digital scale and several glass vials filled with a clear, viscous liquid, was the "device" Paige had mentioned in her texts.

It was a custom-made plexiglass harness, shaped to fit the curve of a human spine. Inside the harness were small, individual mesh compartments—exactly three straight rows of them. It was designed to hold the centipedes flat against a person's skin, forcing them to bite repeatedly within a controlled area.

Brent hadn't been attacked. He had been harvesting their venom using his own body as a biological incubator, or perhaps testing a delivery system.

Beneath the workbench sat the small steel safe.

I approached it, my heart pounding. This was what Paige wanted my fingerprints on. They wanted to frame me for whatever illicit operation was happening here.

I pulled a pair of winter gloves from my coat pocket and slipped them on. I wasn't going to make it that easy for them. I knelt before the safe, studying the digital keypad.

Suddenly, I remembered the passcode I had tried on Brent's phone. If the phone was a six-digit code, maybe the safe used a similar logic. I looked at the chemical labels on the vials: Isolate 88-B.