Chapter 5 - The Loyal Ally
Dr. Paul Mercer’s clinic was located in a leafy medical park four miles from our house.
I didn't take an Uber—an electronic record linked to my credit card would notify Evan instantly via his phone alerts. Instead, I walked to the corner gas station, hailed a local city cab with cash I had stolen from Evan’s emergency stash in the office, and kept my sunglasses firmly over my eyes.
When the cab pulled up outside Mercer’s ophthalmology center, my heart was racing at a dangerous clip.
I walked through the automatic sliding doors, navigating the sterile corridor. The receptionist looked up with a polite smile that turned into shock when she recognized me.
“Mrs. Bennett? You don't have an appointment scheduled for today. Did Dr. Mercer call you in?”
“I need to see him immediately,” I said, lowering my voice. “Tell him it’s an absolute medical emergency regarding my neural exam yesterday.”
Two minutes later, Dr. Mercer hurried into the waiting room, still wearing his white lab coat, looking flustered.
“Claire? What happened? Are you experiencing optical hemorrhage? Detachment?”
“Take me to your private office, Dr. Mercer,” I said quietly. “Now.”
He led me down the hallway. The moment he closed the heavy oak door behind us, I reached up and pulled the sunglasses off my face.
I looked directly into his startled blue eyes.
“Claire... you’re focusing,” he breathed, stepping forward, his hands twitching toward his ophthalmoscope. “Your pupil constriction is reacting to the room lights! You didn't lose the connection!”
“My sight is completely restored, Dr. Mercer,” I said, my voice steady, cutting through his clinical excitement. “And if you tell my husband, I will be dead before Sunday morning.”
Dr. Mercer froze. The color drained from his face. “What are you talking about?”
I pulled the burner phone from my coat pocket and placed it on his desk. I opened the photo album and slid the phone toward him.
“Look at these.”
Dr. Mercer picked up the phone. As he scrolled through the photos of the unmarked pill bottles, the toxicology sheets, the forged medical affidavits from Dr. Aris, and the death schedule handwritten by Evan, his hands began to tremble violently.
“This... this is digoxin,” Mercer whispered, his eyes wide behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. “At this dosage, combined with hydrochlorothiazide... it’s designed to induce fatal ventricular arrhythmia. Claire, who gave you this?”
“My husband. And my sister.”
“Good God,” Mercer muttered, dropping onto his leather chair as if his legs had given out. “Evan called my office this morning. At eight-thirty. He asked me to send over your complete clinical discharge summary, certifying that the neural regenerative therapy had permanently failed. He said he needed it to process disability insurance.”
“He needs it to convince a judge to grant him full conservatorship before they murder me for an eighteen-million-dollar estate,” I said, leaning over his desk, my knuckles white against the dark wood. “Did you send it?”
“No,” Mercer said immediately, his voice rising in panic. “I told him the administrative board requires forty-eight hours to finalize diagnostic discharge paperwork. Claire, we have to call the FBI. We have to call the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation right now—”
“No!” I cut him off, my voice sharp and commanding. “Evan is connected to the city government. If the local police get a tip, Evan will destroy the records and claim I’m having a paranoid schizophrenic breakdown caused by brain hypoxia from the crash. He has Dr. Aris in his pocket! Aris will testify that I’m hallucinating!”
Mercer stared at me, paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the conspiracy. “Then what do you want to do? You can’t go back to that house! They are actively poisoning you!”
“I’m not taking their poison anymore,” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the crushed blue capsule I had hidden in my pajama cuff that morning. “I need you to test this. Run a rapid chromatographic panel in your lab right now. I need official, certified medical proof that this exact capsule came from the bottles prescribed to me.”
“I can do that,” Mercer nodded, his jaw setting with grim determination. “It’ll take twenty minutes.”
“While you do that, I need to make one phone call,” I said.
“Who?”
“My father’s attorney. Marcus Vance.”
Mercer looked at me with sorrowful eyes. “Claire... Marcus Vance didn't retire to Florida. Didn't Evan tell you?”
A cold spike of dread shot through my spine. “Tell me what?”
“Marcus Vance died eighteen months ago,” Mercer said softly. “He had a single-car accident on Highway 100. His brakes failed on a steep embankment.”
The room seemed to tilt.
*Brake failure.*
My mind flashed back to the handwritten note in Evan’s desk drawer: *“Oct 12: Brake line pressure calibrated on Claire’s Volvo.”*
Evan didn't just plan to kill me.
May you like
He had already killed Marcus Vance.
***
