Chapter 5 - Sterling's Impatience
The next morning, the temperature plummeted to ten below zero, freezing the waves of Lake Michigan into jagged shards of gray ice along the shore.
Dr. Alan Whitfield arrived earlier than usual, stomping snow from his designer boots in the doorway. He carried a heavy leather medical satchel, and his face was drawn tight with nervous tension. Behind him walked Sterling, his silver tie slightly askew, his eyes bloodshot from a night of drinking and frantic phone calls.
Willa was standing by the window, folding clean towels.
“Get out, Willa,” Sterling commanded without looking at her. “Alan needs to perform an arterial blood gas draw and an intracranial pressure assessment. It’s a closed procedure.”
Willa turned slowly, keeping her hands relaxed at her sides. “Dr. Whitfield has never needed privacy for an ABG draw before. The last time he did one, I assisted with the heparinized syringe.”
Whitfield turned on her, his silver-framed glasses flashing in the gray morning light. “Mrs. Kane, your interference has reached its limit. We are noticing signs of secondary neurological deterioration. Mr. Kane is experiencing autonomic dysreflexia. We need to administer an intensive central neuro-stabilizer immediately.”
Willa’s gaze dropped to the leather satchel on the table. Through the half-open zipper, she saw a large, amber glass vial labeled Potassium Chloride - 20 mEq/mL.
A concentrated bolus. A lethal injection disguised as a sudden, fatal cardiac arrest brought on by autonomic storming.
Sterling checked his gold wristwatch. “The emergency board meeting has been moved up to tomorrow night at eight. The Drake Hotel ballroom. If Everett’s death certificate isn't signed by noon tomorrow, the court will appoint a neutral conservator over Kane Freight. We don't have time for your little medical games, Alan.”
“I understand the timeline, Sterling,” Whitfield said, his hands shaking slightly as he drew a twenty-milliliter syringe from his pocket. “The procedure takes three minutes. Once the potassium enters the central line, the arrhythmia mimics a massive myocardial infarction. It is completely undetectable on a standard post-mortem toxicology panel for a comatose patient.”
From the corner of the room, Willa felt her pulse hammer in her ears like a war drum.
They’re going to kill him right now.
She looked at Everett. Beneath the sheets, his right hand was clamped into an iron fist, but his body remained utterly still, maintaining the charade of absolute helplessness.
Willa stepped between Whitfield and the bedside table, her voice suddenly high, frantic, and entirely feigned.
“Doctor, look at the monitor!” she cried out, pointing toward the digital display. “His rhythm—it’s throwing PVCs! The ventricular lead is dislodged!”
Whitfield instinctively lunged toward the monitor to check the leads. In that single second of distraction, Willa’s hand darted into his open satchel, snatched the amber vial of potassium chloride, and replaced it with an identical-sized glass vial of multi-vitamin concentrate she had hidden in her apron pocket.
Whitfield tapped the monitor screen in frustration. “The leads are fine, you idiot girl. It’s baseline artifact from the cold. Step away from the bed!”
He shoved her aside roughly. Willa stumbled against the wall, catching herself, her hand buried in her pocket around the heavy glass vial of potassium.
Whitfield turned back to his satchel, grabbed the swapped vial without looking at the faded label in his panic, and drew twenty milliliters of clear, yellowish fluid into the large syringe.
Sterling stood near the door, his jaw set, staring out into the hallway to ensure no servants were approaching. “Do it. Now.”
Whitfield swabbed the secondary port of Everett’s central line with an alcohol pad. He attached the syringe.
“A peaceful end, Everett,” Whitfield muttered under his breath, his eyes devoid of mercy. “You should have let Sterling have the docks five years ago.”
He pushed the plunger down. Twenty milliliters of harmless saline and water-soluble vitamins flooded into Everett Kane’s bloodstream.
For two agonizing minutes, Whitfield stared at the monitor, waiting for the jagged, lethal spikes of ventricular fibrillation.
The monitor beeped steadily: sixty-four beats per minute. Regular. Strong. Unbroken.
“What’s happening?” Sterling hissed, stepping closer to the bed, his face twisted in panic. “Why hasn't the alarm gone off?”
Whitfield checked the empty vial in his hand, his eyes widening in sudden, sickening horror as he read the small, faded manufacturer’s print: Infuvite Pediatric Multivitamin.
“What is this?” Whitfield stammered, his voice climbing into a panicked screech. “Where is the potassium? I put it in the side pocket!”
Willa stepped forward from the shadows, her eyes cold as arctic frost, her posture completely transformed. Gone was the timid, broken waitress from the Lakeside Grill. Standing before them was the charge nurse who had commanded trauma bays during four-alarm fires.
“Looking for this, Alan?” she asked quietly.
She pulled the amber vial from her cardigan pocket, holding it between two steady fingers.
Whitfield gasped, stumbling backward until his spine hit the mahogany bedpost.
Sterling’s eyes flashed with murderous rage. He reached inside his camel-hair coat, his hand closing around the grip of a small snub-nosed revolver. “You little gutter rat. You think you can play games with me?”
Before Sterling could draw the weapon, a voice shattered the silence of the room.
It was not Willa’s voice.
It was a voice that sounded like grinding granite, rusted steel, and absolute authority—a voice that had not spoken in eight months, but had lost none of its terrible, sovereign power.
“Take your hand off that gun, Sterling,” Everett Kane rasped from the pillows.
Sterling froze, his face draining of every drop of blood until he looked like a corpse.
Slowly, terrifyingly, the man in the bed opened his eyes.
May you like
They were dark, cold, and burning with a fury that made the room feel suddenly devoid of air. Everett Kane turned his head toward his cousin, and the faint, jagged scar along his brow pulled tight as his mouth curled into a predatory grin.
“You always were a sloppy bastard,” Everett whispered.
