She hurried to the bed. Eleanor’s eyes were already glassy, staring up at the ceiling. The drug was acting incredibly fast.
"Mrs. Sterling," Maya whispered, taking the old woman’s frail hand. "Eleanor. It's Maya."
Eleanor’s eyes drifted toward Maya's face. A weak, confused smile touched her lips. "Maya... you stopped her. You're a brave girl."
"I have the key," Maya whispered, pulling the sealed envelope and the amber vial from her pocket. "I opened the box. What is this?"
Eleanor’s brow furrowed as she struggled to form words through the chemical fog. "The medicine... it’s not for my heart. It's poison. She's melting my brain... so they think I'm crazy."
Maya stared at the vial in her hand, her blood running cold. She had suspected Veronica was cruel, but this was calculated, chemical abuse.
"And the letter?" Maya asked urgently.
"The real Will," Eleanor slurred, her eyelids drooping heavily. "I changed it... cut her out. I leave it to the foundation... but I need Marcus to file it. She can't... take control tomorrow. If she gets conservatorship... she destroys the Will. She'll put me in a home..."
Eleanor's voice trailed off. She was asleep.
Maya stood in the dark, the weight of the evidence heavy in her hands. If Veronica succeeded at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, Eleanor would be locked away in a private psychiatric facility, the estate would be raided, and the real Will would be burned.
Maya had to get the Will to Marcus Vance. But why hadn't Eleanor just given it to the lawyer herself?
Because Veronica monitors every phone call and visitor, Maya realized. Marcus is the company attorney. He works for the estate, but Veronica signs the checks right now.
Maya looked at the heavy door. She was locked inside the suite. She moved quietly to the en-suite bathroom and cracked the frosted window that led out onto the copper roof over the veranda. It was raining now, a cold, miserable New York drizzle.
She squeezed her shoulders through the narrow window frame, dragging her duffel bag behind her. She slid down the wet copper incline, scraping her palms, before dropping the last six feet onto the soft mud of the rose garden.
Cold, wet, and technically trespassing, Maya jogged through the shadows toward the rear service gate. She didn't have money for a cab. She had twenty dollars in her wallet and a dead-end minimum-wage job she had just been fired from.
But as she clutched the envelope against her chest to keep it dry, Maya thought of her own mother. Her mother had died in a crowded, underfunded county hospital because they couldn't afford the right specialist. She had died confused and in pain. Maya had been too young to protect her.
She wasn't too young now. She was not going to let a spoiled billionaire drug her mother into an early grave just to steal her money.
Maya ran ten blocks to a 24-hour pharmacy on the corner of 72nd Street. Dripping wet, her uniform stained with mud, she walked up to the bright, fluorescent-lit counter. The pharmacist looked up, startled by her appearance.
"I need help," Maya said, her voice shaking from the cold. She placed the unmarked amber vial on the counter. "I found this in a family member's room. Can you tell me what it is?"
The pharmacist frowned, picking it up. He uncapped it and sniffed cautiously, then touched a tiny drop to a piece of testing paper behind the counter. He looked up, his expression serious.
"This is unprescribed," he said firmly. "It's a concentrated form of Scopolamine. It’s a heavy anticholinergic. It causes severe hallucinations, memory loss, and a state of extreme suggestibility. If you give this to an elderly person, it mimics advanced dementia perfectly. Where did you get this?"
"Thank you," Maya said, snatching the vial back and stuffing it into her pocket. She turned away before he could ask another question.
It was 3:00 A.M. She had exactly five hours.