The Mark Behind Her Ear
Chapter 04 - The Mark Behind Her Ear
The toxicology result identified propofol and a short-acting paralytic.
Elias stared at the numbers.
The combination was used during surgery under constant monitoring. Administered in a moving vehicle, it could stop breathing within minutes. Whoever injected Audrey understood dosage well enough to leave a narrow chance that the crash—not the drugs—would appear responsible.
The puncture behind her ear was hidden beneath her hair.
Elias photographed it before cleaning the wound.
Mason watched from the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“Documenting an unexplained injection.”
“She was treated by paramedics.”
“No injection was placed there.”
Mason demanded to speak privately. In the corridor, his voice became soft and reasonable. He said Audrey had struggled with depression after her father’s death. He suggested she might have taken something intentionally.
Elias asked where she obtained hospital-grade sedatives.
Mason said wealthy people found ways.
Then he offered a warning disguised as advice. Vale Biomedical funded three research programs at St. Catherine’s. A public accusation without proof could damage the hospital and Elias’s career.
Elias had heard such threats before.
He was sixty-three and close enough to retirement that fear no longer impressed him.
“Your fiancée has bruises shaped like fingers around her throat,” he said. “Her blood contains anesthetic drugs, and you arrived carrying a suspicious DNR. I am not concerned about my career.”
Mason’s pleasant expression disappeared.
When Elias returned to the room, Margaret handed him the brass key.
She explained the notes and the empty station locker.
Elias recognized the stamped number.
B-17 was not an archive room. It was a secure medication-storage locker in the abandoned research wing beneath the hospital. Daniel Vale had funded that wing twenty years earlier before newer laboratories replaced it.
Only four people still had access.
Elias was one.
The hospital pharmacy director was another.
The third was Vale Biomedical’s research liaison.
The fourth was Mason Reed, who had requested temporary access six months earlier for a financial inventory.
Elias called hospital security and asked them to seal the basement.
Before anyone could reach it, an alarm sounded.
May you like
Smoke was rising from the abandoned research wing.
Someone was trying to destroy whatever Audrey had hidden there.
