Chapter 9 - Under the Floor of the Greenhouse
Hannah punched the six-digit sequence into the glowing rubber keypad: 0-4-1-8.
The pneumatic seal hissed open with a heavy metallic clunk. She shoved the heavy reinforced door outward, raising the iron poker across her chest, ready to swing at whatever leaned against the threshold.
Gabriel Marlowe collapsed across the entry line.
His custom white dress shirt was shredded along his left ribcage, dark crimson soaking through the linen and dripping onto the concrete. His night-vision goggles hung broken around his neck by a severed strap. In his right hand, his pistol remained locked open on an empty chamber, the slide pulled fully back.
"Dad!" Eli screamed from his chair.
Hannah dropped the poker, dropped to her knees, and caught Gabriel under the shoulders before his skull struck the floor. "Where are you hit?"
"Shrapnel... side grazed... through the conservatory glass," Gabriel coughed, coughing up a small spatter of bright red foam that spotted his collar. "Marcus has the grounds secured. Two shooters down. Dominic Vane’s men."
"You're losing too much blood," Hannah said, tearing the lower half of his ruined shirt to expose the wound. A jagged strip of plate glass had carved a four-inch trench along his floating ribs, slicing through intercostal muscle. It was bleeding heavily, but the rib had prevented it from puncturing the lung cavity. "You aren't dying, but you need stitches and a pressure bandage right now."
"Cabinet," Gabriel muttered, trying to push himself up on one elbow, his dark eyes searching the room until they found Eli. "Get... get the trauma kit from the cabinet. And give Eli his sedative... he can't be in shock..."
"No," Hannah said, her voice dropping into an icy snap.
Gabriel blinked through sweat-stung eyes. "What?"
Hannah reached out, grabbed the amber bottle of Diazepam from the steel table, and threw it onto the concrete floor between Gabriel’s boots. The glass shattered. A puddle of clear, thin liquid pooled around the shards, emitting that strange, sharp chemical odor of bitter almonds.
"Smell that, Mr. Marlowe," she demanded.
Gabriel frowned, breathing in through his nose. His jaw went slack. The exhaustion in his eyes vanished, replaced instantly by the lethal alertness of a hunted predator.
"Cyanide derivative," he whispered. "That's... that's synthetic prussic acid."
"Someone put that in your private archive," Hannah said, ripping open a clean roll of medical gauze from the trauma kit and pressing it hard against his bleeding side. Gabriel let out a sharp hiss of agony, his fingers digging into her forearm. "Who has the code to this room?"
"Only three people," Gabriel breathed, his knuckles whitening as he fought the pain. "Me. Claire. And Marcus."
The air inside the concrete vault seemed to freeze solid.
Eli covered his mouth with both hands, his eyes wide with horror. "Uncle Marcus? No... Marcus was with Mom at the hospital!"
"Marcus didn't touch the medicine," Gabriel said through gritted teeth, shaking his head. "Marcus has had forty chances to put a bullet in the back of my head for eight months. If he wanted us dead, he wouldn't use rat poison in a basement safe."
"Then who?" Hannah pressed, binding the pressure dressing tightly with elastic adhesive. "Who maintained the supplies?"
Gabriel’s eyes locked onto the floor, his mind tearing through months of maintenance records, supply deliveries, and staffing logs. "The medical supplies were restocked two days before the explosion. By the private doctor Claire hired through her foundation."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, blood-smeared smartphone. His fingers flew across the screen, pulling up an old bank wire transfer from the summer of the attack.
"Dr. Aris Thorne," Gabriel read aloud. "Claire brought him in because she thought Eli was showing early signs of sensory neuropathy. He had complete access to the manor’s pharmacy vaults for three weeks."
"Where is he now?" Hannah asked.
"He died in a single-car accident on Route 93," Gabriel whispered, the realization hitting him like a physical blow to the chest. "Three days after Claire’s car was blown apart."
Hannah stood up, wiping Gabriel’s blood from her hands onto a clean towel. "The bomb wasn't an outside hit, Gabriel. The bomb was the second attempt. They tried to poison Eli first, and when Claire got suspicious and took him away that morning, they had to detonate the car before Thorne’s work was discovered."
Gabriel looked up at her, the pain in his ribs forgotten. "Dominic Vane didn't have the brains to organize a pharmaceutical assassination. He’s a waterfront thug with offshore speedboats."
"Then look where you buried your wife," Hannah said, her eyes burning with an eerie, cold certainty. "Look at what she was investigating before she died."
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Gabriel swallowed hard. "Claire wasn't investigating anything. She was running her botanical charities. She spent all her time at the old Victorian greenhouse on the north point of the estate."
"Then that's where we look," Hannah said, grabbing his good arm and pulling him firmly to his feet. "Before the police arrive to investigate the bodies on your lawn."
