Chapter 6 - The Trap
"You can't cover this up, Eleanor," I said, backing up slightly against the workbench, trying to buy time. "The police know I'm here. Dr. Ellis called them from the clinic."
"The police were dispatched to the clinic, not to this house," Paige intervened, stepping forward with a malicious grin. "And by the time they think to look here, you will have tragically perished in an unfortunate accident. A devastating gas leak in the basement, perhaps? A faulty heater? The explosion will destroy all this... organic material, and you along with it."
Brent looked at me, a flicker of something resembling regret passing through his eyes, though it was quickly replaced by cold self-preservation. "We tried to do it the easy way, Claire. If you had just touched the safe like we planned, we would have framed you for embezzlement and industrial espionage. You would have gone to prison for twenty years, but you would have been alive. You forced our hand."
"So the marks on your back," I said, staring at Brent. "You let the centipedes bite you this morning to finish the batch for the 5:00 PM courier."
"Exactly," Brent said. "The final delivery. A fifty-million-dollar contract with a client who requires a very specific problem solved in Europe next week. But you intercepted the phone."
"Where is it, by the way?" Eleanor asked, her eyes scanning my clothes. "The phone, Claire. Give it to Arthur's replacement, and maybe we will ensure your death is painless."
I smiled, a slow, deliberate expression that catch them off guard. "I don't have it."
Paige blinked. "What do you mean you don't have it?"
"I left it with Dr. Ellis at the clinic," I lied smoothly. "Along with a full digital backup of the text messages you sent this morning, Paige. The police already have the cloud encryption keys."
Eleanor’s face paled slightly, her aristocratic composure slipping for the first time. She turned to Paige. "Is this true? Did you leave the phone there?"
"She's lying!" Paige screamed, her voice cracking. "She's trying to bluff us!"
"Am I?" I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my own phone. It was actively recording a live-stream video feed to a secure federal cloud server I still maintained access to from my forensic days. "Look at the screen, Eleanor. Say hello to my former colleagues at the State Attorney General’s Office."
The guard with the gun hesitated, looking at Eleanor for instruction.
"Kill her!" Paige shrieked. "Delete the feed later! Kill her now!"
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"No, wait!" Brent yelled, realizing the legal implications of a live-streamed murder.
In that split second of hesitation and chaos, I grabbed a heavy glass jar filled with volatile chemical solvent from the workbench and hurled it directly at the ultraviolet heat lamps illuminating the centipede enclosures.
