I didn't think about my job. I didn't think about Donald Ruiz’s threat to pull my certification. I didn't think about the sixty-dollar-an-hour union wage or the pension I had paid into for eleven years.
I grabbed Arthur by the lapels of his cashmere coat, slammed him against the steel frame of the supervisor’s doorway with enough force to rattle the exit sign above his head, and buried my forearm directly across his collarbone.
"Touch her again," I said, my voice rattling deep in my chest, "and you'll leave this terminal on a gurney."
"Calvin, stand down!" Rivera barked, his hand going to his holster, though his boots didn't move toward me. "Stand down right now!"
"Officer, this man is assaulting my client!" Harold Vance yelled, reaching for his phone.
"He isn't dead," Dr. Hollis said suddenly, her voice cutting through the shouting like a razor blade. She wasn't looking at her phone. She was staring at the second page of the transfer manifest that Rivera had tipped out of Corinne’s flight bag.
Everyone froze. I kept my arm locked against Arthur’s neck, pinning him to the steel jamb. His face had gone purple, his breath coming in wheezing gasps.
"What did you say?" Rivera asked, keeping his eyes on Harold Vance.
"Nora Vance isn't dead," Dr. Hollis said, her hands shaking with cold rage as she held up a thermal dispatch slip that had been tucked inside the envelope behind the cashier's checks. "This isn't a transfer manifest for a living patient. This is an organ donor harvest clearance. Julian Mercer didn't order Nora transferred. He ordered her chilled."
The words hit the room like a physical shockwave.
"Look at the serial code," Dr. Hollis continued, stepping directly into Harold Vance’s face and shoving the thermal paper under his nose. "Code zero-eight-four-two. In the St. Jude pediatric network, that code is an air-ambulance identifier. But in the private medical registry for Mercer Logistics, code zero-eight-four-two is an automated cryogenic perfusion hold. They didn't declare Nora brain dead because she failed to breathe. They injected three hundred milligrams of rocuronium bromide into her IV drip to paralyze her diaphragm, placed her on cold perfusion, and forged the brain-death certificate so they could harvest her parental consent rights before the county coroner could arrive!"
"That's slander," Harold Vance stammered, his face turning gray, the litigation binder slipping two inches across the desk. "That is an unverified clinical assumption—"
"I am the lead pediatric neurologist on the state licensing board, Mr. Vance," Dr. Hollis snapped, her voice ringing off the concrete walls. "Rocuronium bromide mimics cortical death on a standard electroencephalogram for seventy-two hours unless a reversal agent is administered! And look at who signed the supply order for the paralytic!"
She slammed the paper down on the desk.
The technician signature on the chemical release line was Donald Ruiz—my operations manager at BioCold Systems. The delivery truck that carried the chemical to Aurora General at four o'clock this afternoon was the exact company van assigned to my bay in Commerce City.
Julian Mercer hadn't just tried to kidnap Elena. He had used my own company, my own warehouse inventory, and my own scheduled flight to Chicago to create an alibi that would leave my sister cold in a donor vault and frame my workshop for the theft of the paralytic that put her there.
Sergeant Rivera didn't hesitate. He pulled his heavy Glock from its holster, stepped directly in front of Harold Vance, and pulled a set of steel handcuffs from his belt.
"Step away from the counter, counselor," Rivera said, his voice deadly quiet. "Hands behind your back."
"You cannot arrest an attorney executing a valid court order!" Harold yelled, backing away toward the glass partition.
"I’m not arresting you for the court order," Rivera said, grabbing the lawyer’s shoulder and spinning him hard against the wall. "I'm arresting you as an active accessory to attempted first-degree murder and interstate human trafficking. Detective Miller, lock down the Aurora General surgical ICU right now. Get the Denver SWAT team into that trauma unit before they shut off Nora Vance’s ventilator."