● CHAPTER 4: St. Agnes Hospital
At St. Agnes Hospital, the waiting room smelled of coffee, antiseptic, and rain-soaked coats. Claire sat under a flickering light with the memory card hidden in her fist and her eyes fixed on the swinging doors to the emergency wing.
No one had told her whether Hannah would live.
A nurse had taken her name. A detective had asked her to repeat the cemetery story twice. A young deputy had photographed the cut on her palm and the mud on her dress. Everything felt unreal, but the ache in Claire’s chest stayed sharp enough to prove she was awake.
Daniel arrived twenty minutes later with a police escort.
He looked younger without control. His hair had fallen across his forehead. His expensive tie hung crooked. He tried to walk past the nurse’s station as if the rules still belonged to him.
“I need to see my wife.”
Detective Marcy Lane, who had just taken over the case from the local sheriff’s office, stepped in front of him.
“No.”
“She’s my wife.”
“She is also a potential victim.”
Daniel’s mouth opened, then closed.
Vivian arrived behind him in a black town car, still wearing pearls. She had cleaned the mud from her shoes. Claire noticed that immediately. A woman who could polish herself after what happened at the grave was a woman who had practiced leaving no trace.
“My daughter-in-law needs privacy,” Vivian said.
Detective Lane looked her up and down. “She also needs a toxicology report.”
For a moment, the hospital went silent around them.
Vivian smiled thinly. “Do you have a warrant for your suspicions?”
“No,” the detective said. “But I have a woman pulled alive from a coffin, a sister who received a warning call, and a husband who tried to stop the coffin from being opened. I’m comfortable being suspicious.”
Claire almost laughed, but the sound became a sob.
A doctor finally appeared. He was a tired man in blue scrubs with deep lines around his eyes.
“Family for Hannah Whitmore?”
Claire stood so fast the chair scraped backward.
Daniel stood too.
The doctor looked at the detective, then at Claire. “She’s alive. Critical, but stable. Her oxygen levels were dangerously low. She appears to have been given a sedative strong enough to slow her breathing and pulse. We’re running full labs.”
Daniel whispered, “Thank God.”
Claire looked at him with disgust.
The doctor continued. “She regained consciousness for a few seconds in the ambulance. She said two words repeatedly.”
Claire gripped the moon pendant through her pocket.
“What words?”
The doctor looked uncomfortable. “Blue tea.”
Vivian’s face did not change, but Daniel shut his eyes.
Claire remembered Hannah’s call.
Don’t trust the tea.
Every Sunday, Vivian hosted donors at her estate. She served a pale blue herbal blend in porcelain cups, laughing that it was an old family recipe from Europe. Hannah had joked once that the tea tasted like flowers and metal.
Blue tea.
Claire turned to Detective Lane. “I have something.”
She pulled the memory card from the pendant and placed it in the detective’s hand.
Vivian stepped forward. “That belongs to my family.”
Claire looked at her. “So did Hannah.”
For the first time, Daniel spoke directly to Claire, and there was no performance left in him.
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Claire leaned closer.
May you like
“No, Daniel. I think I finally do.”
Behind the emergency doors, machines beeped around a woman who had been lowered into the earth too soon. In the hallway, a secret that had survived inside a coffin was about to be opened.
