"District Four," I said, my voice hoarse. "Pallet six was his clinic allotment. Three cartons of thirty-day supply. Without the county subsidy, the private specialty retail price is eight hundred and forty dollars a vial. We couldn't afford a single week."
Kane nodded once, slowly. He didn't offer sympathy or platitudes about how close things had come to falling apart. He had worked regulatory enforcement long enough to know that systemic theft did not happen because one person turned evil overnight; it happened because an administrative system was vast enough, quiet enough, and bureaucratic enough that someone with a corner office could treat human life like a spreadsheet rounding error.
"The Highland Ridge clinic was raided forty minutes ago," Kane said, closing his yellow case and snapping the heavy black latches shut. "The state police logistics division served an emergency search warrant on their private surgical bay in Hopewell. They found forty-two crates of diverted pediatric biologics in their secondary freezers, all of them bearing Mercer County disposal lot numbers dated over the last five months. Vance wasn't just supplementing her brother-in-law's private practice. She was running a two-hundred-thousand-dollar parallel supply line using state write-offs."
He picked up his case by the handle, gave my shoulder a brief, firm pat, and stepped toward the personnel exit where a second state vehicle had just pulled onto the apron to begin inventory impound.
"Go home, Ellen," Kane said over his shoulder. "Take your brother his medication. The interim director will call you before your Friday shift."
I didn't leave immediately.
After Kane walked out and the two uniformed logistics officers began tagging the crates in the back of Vance’s sedan, I walked into the small locker room behind the break area. In the mirror above the chipped porcelain sink, the left side of my jaw was dark purple, swelling slightly where the steel edge had caught me. I turned on the cold tap, cupped the freezing water in my hands, and washed the dried sweat, dust, and grease from my face until my skin felt numb.
Then I reached into my locker, took out the insulated canvas cooler I carried my lunch in, and packed it with three fresh ice packs from the employee freezer. I walked back out onto the loading dock, stepped past the yellow police tape surrounding the sedan, and picked up the two vials of lot BIO-904 from the counter. I tucked them carefully into the padded interior sleeves, zipped the heavy nylon shut, and clipped my identification badge to the strap.
Outside, the rain had stopped. A thin, gray light was beginning to break over the industrial park across the canal, turning the puddles on the broken asphalt from black to silver.
The drive across the county line took twenty-five minutes. My old hatchback rattled over the rusted expansion joints of the river bridge, the heater blowing lukewarm air against my knees while the windshield wipers cleared the remaining mist. The city was just waking up. Delivery vans were pulling up behind diners, the first streetlights were clicking off along the commercial strip, and the early commuter buses were idling at the intersections with their diesel exhausts curling into the cold dawn.
I parked in our usual gravel spot behind the two-story brick fourplex on Elm Street.
Inside the apartment, the hallway smelled of fried toast and the cinnamon tea Leo always made when he woke up before sunrise. The floorboards creaked beneath my boots as I pushed the front door shut and turned the deadbolt.
Leo was sitting at the small laminate kitchen table, wearing his faded blue fleece jacket with the cuffs pulled down over his knuckles. A half-eaten bowl of oatmeal sat in front of him, along with his digital blood glucose monitor. The little plastic meter was blinking an amber warning light, accompanied by the low, insistent chime that meant his morning reading had spiked past three hundred while he slept.
Beside his elbow lay his empty supply box—the clear plastic container that had held his last biologic insulin pen, completely dry since yesterday afternoon.
He looked up when the lock clicked, his shoulders tensing the way they always did when I came home late from an inventory night. He saw the purple bruise along my jaw before he saw my face.
"Ellen?" he asked, pushing his chair back with a scrape. He stood up too fast, his balance wobbling slightly from the high sugar in his blood, and caught the edge of the table with both hands. "What happened to your face? Did someone hit you at the gate?"
I didn't answer with a speech about Laura Vance, Wayne Dolan, or the emergency audit lockout. I didn't tell him about being pinned against the counter, or the crowbar tearing the gate hinges off the mezzanine wall, or the sirens that had wailed across the dark warehouse. None of that belonged in our kitchen.
I set the canvas cooler down on the table between his meter and his teacup.
I unzipped the lid, pulled out the first glass vial of lot BIO-904, and set it gently on the wooden napkin holder. The glass was cold, beads of condensation forming instantly along the clear label in the warm room.