Chapter 7 - The Dog Who Broke the Door
Ranger reacted first.
He barked violently at the vent.
Emily shouted, “Cover your faces!”
David fired at the office window.
Bullet-resistant glass.
Ryan searched for emergency controls.
Nothing.
Laura’s vision blurred.
Then Ranger ran toward a wood-paneled wall and began clawing.
Again.
Again.
David realized why.
“Service door.”
He kicked the panel.
Nothing.
Ranger bit the edge and pulled.
A hidden maintenance door opened.
They crawled into a narrow mechanical corridor seconds before the gas overwhelmed them.
Laura collapsed outside.
Ranger licked her face until she opened her eyes.
“You saved me again.”
Police surrounded Whitmore Tower.
But Charles Whitmore was gone.
His private jet had departed forty minutes earlier.
Destination unknown.
Cole remained missing.
The story finally leaked.
News stations descended on St. Matthew’s.
Patients’ families demanded investigations.
The board suspended Eleanor despite her cooperation.
Laura appeared on television holding Michael’s files.
She didn’t reveal everything.
Just enough.
“My husband tried to tell the truth. My sister never had that chance. I intend to finish what they started.”
The clip went viral.
That night, a woman called Laura.
“My name is Dr. Rebecca Shaw.”
Laura recognized it from Michael’s ledger.
Rebecca had been a research physician at St. Matthew’s six years earlier.
“I know where Whitmore went.”
“Where?”
“His estate near Lake Arden.”
“Why would he stay in the country?”
“Because there’s something there he needs to destroy.”
“What?”
“The original trial records.”
Rebecca agreed to meet.
Before she arrived, she was struck by a car.
Laura rushed to the hospital.
Rebecca survived long enough to whisper one sentence.
“The records aren’t paper.”
Then she slipped into a coma.
Emily pondered the statement.
“If they aren’t paper…”
David understood.
“Biological samples.”
Blood.
Tissue.
Stored specimens.
Proof that patients received unauthorized drugs.
Whitmore wasn’t protecting documents.
He was destroying physical evidence.
The group drove to Lake Arden.
They found the estate abandoned.
In the basement, refrigerated storage units were being emptied into industrial furnaces.
Ryan recognized the equipment.
“Trial samples.”
They began photographing everything.
Then applause echoed behind them.
Nathan Cole stood on the stairs.
Gun in hand.
“You really are impossible to kill.”
Laura stared.
“You murdered Michael.”
Cole smiled.
“He should have stopped digging.”
Ranger growled.
Cole pointed the gun at him.
“Not this time.”
Laura stepped in front of Ranger.
Cole laughed.
“You’d die for a dog?”
“He’d die for me.”
She looked at Cole.
“The difference is he deserves the loyalty.”
Cole’s expression darkened.
Then another voice came from behind him.
“Drop the gun, Nathan.”
Charles Whitmore stepped from the darkness.
Cole slowly turned.
Whitmore was holding his own weapon.
Laura realized something terrifying.
These men weren’t allies anymore.
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They were about to destroy each other.
And she was standing between them.
