“Elevated heart rate. Slowed reflexes. We’re running a full tox panel, but Colonel Carter — I’ll be straight with you. This isn’t exhaustion.”
Michael stood at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, watching the monitor instead of me. I knew that posture. It was the one he used at work right before he delivered something worse.
“How fast does prelim come back?”
“An hour. Maybe less.”
I nodded and made myself go still. Not calm. Still. There’s a difference, and only one of them is useful. Panic doesn’t gather intelligence. Stillness does.
So I gathered.
Fact: Vanessa filled that cup somewhere I couldn’t watch her do it.
Fact: in thirty minutes, she never once asked if Lucy would be all right.
Fact: for eighteen months, she and Colin had sat on every financial document that moved through Whitaker Foodservice Supply, and every time I pulled a thread, someone in my own family cut it.
