I didn't step back; I twisted the sleeve around so the depot's overhead fluorescent bulb shone directly onto the barcode. "These aren't water-damaged vials. These are active municipal pediatric supplies. The flood didn't touch Vault Four; the floor is three feet above the water line."
"Ellen," Vance said, her voice dropping into a hard, threatening cadence. "Put the manifest down."
"My brother's name is on pallet six," I said, pointing toward the wooden skid sitting under the blue heat lamps near the wall. "His clinic allotment is tied to lot BIO-904. You didn't just write off surplus stock—you flagged the active community shipments as spoiled so you could divert the live vials to a private client for cash."
Wayne lunged forward, his heavy fingers clamping around my forearm to rip the paper out of my grasp. But I didn't pull away in the direction he expected; I dropped my weight downward, driving my heel hard into the brake pedal of the heavy loading cart. The iron lever snapped down, locking both front wheels instantly.
The sudden resistance caught Wayne off balance. His shoulder struck the high metal frame of the cart, knocking the top crate sideways. The plastic lid tore loose, and two dozen clear glass vials rolled across the rubber matting, their intact gold caps and crystalline liquid glinting under the lights—sterile, unclouded, and completely undamaged by water.
Vance’s composure cracked for the first time. Her hand shot out from her coat pocket, pointing directly at the door. "Cuff her to the conduit, Wayne. Now. We're loading the rest and locking the bay from the outside."
Wayne recovered his footing, his face dark with fury, and pulled the pair of heavy steel handcuffs from his leather duty holster. The metallic rattle cut through the hum of the vault fans like a gunshot.
If those cuffs went around my wrist, the story ended the way their paperwork said it ended. The blue carbon copy in my vest, the live vials on the floor, and the destination tags on Highland Ridge would vanish into the trunk of Vance’s car before the dawn shift arrived. By eight in the morning, I would be sitting in a county holding cell, my license revoked, while Leo waited at an empty dispensary counter for medication that had already been sold across the county border.
I didn't reach for the pen, and I didn't beg. Instead, my hand closed around the heavy iron wheel chock Wayne had used to prop open the interior fire door.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
I didn't pause to watch him stumble. I dropped to my knees on the damp rubber matting, grabbed two unbroken glass vials of lot BIO-904 that had rolled near my knee, and shoved them deep into the zippered interior pocket of my thermal vest alongside the blue carbon copy. My fingers closed around the cold glass, feeling the embossed lot numbers raised against the labels. Those two vials were thirty days of breath and blood for Leo, but thirty-four other crates were still staged on the pallet behind Vance’s car. If I ran through the pedestrian gate right now, I could keep my brother alive for four weeks, but Vance’s forged report would already be stamped by sunrise. I would be an unlicensed fugitive living out of a motel room, and the remaining municipal stock would be in private surgical freezers across the state line.
"Wayne, grab her!" Vance’s voice cut through the cavernous bay, stripped of all its polished administrative patience. "Shut the roll-up door!"
Wayne pushed off the cart with an oath, his heavy boots squealing against the wet epoxy floor as he scrambled to round the metal shelving. But he had positioned the sedan directly across the main lane, blocking his own direct line of pursuit.
I scrambled up, rounded the corner of the cold-storage wall, and bolted up the open metal stairs leading to the supervisor’s mezzanine. The perforated steel treads clanged under my boots, vibrating through the steel superstructure. Behind me, the electric motor of the bay door began to groan as Wayne hit the wall switch, the heavy slatted aluminum barrier descending toward the floor to seal off the rain-slicked driveway.
They were locking the perimeter from the inside. They believed my only play was flight, and by cutting off the ground exit, they thought they had me cornered against the high rafters.
At the top of the metal stairs, I threw my weight against the heavy wire-mesh gate of the mezzanine inspection landing and dropped the mechanical slide bolt into its slot. The steel rod fell into place with a dry, solid thud just as Wayne’s weight hit the bottom stringer of the staircase.
"Ellen, open the gate!" he shouted from the landing below, his face red and slick with sweat under the emergency lights. "You can't get out through the roof! The roof hatch has been padlocked since the October inspections!"
I didn't answer. I backed through the doorway into Vance’s administrative cubicle, where the glass windows looked down directly over the entire loading bay floor.
On the desk sat Vance’s docking cradle. Her primary laptop had been unplugged and carried down to the dispatch desk, but the secondary hardware stayed hardwired into the depot’s dedicated communications trunk. Beside the cradle sat a blue plastic binder marked with the depot’s required state audit protocols, and resting on top of it was a leather-bound folio with the gold lettering of Highland Ridge Surgical Partners.
My breath came in ragged, burning gasps as I flipped the folio open under the green glow of the terminal backup power unit.