THE LOCKET IN THE WHEELCHAIR

The concrete corridor suddenly felt like a tomb.

Luca stared at me. The barrel of the heavy black handgun in his grip didn’t rise, but it didn’t lower either.

“What is she talking about?” Luca asked. His voice was perfectly level, which terrified me more than if he had shouted.

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice shaking. I took a slow step backward. “Luca, look at me. I met you three days ago. I was hired by an agency. I’ve never seen this woman in my life.”

Sofia stood up from the narrow bed.

She walked to the reinforced glass window.

“Not you, you fool,” Sofia rasped, her white hair catching the beam of my penlight. “I’m not talking about the nurse.”

I exhaled a breath I didn't realize I was holding.

Luca frowned. “Then who?”

“The woman behind her,” Sofia said.

My blood ran cold.

I spun around.

Standing at the far end of the dark corridor, silhouetted in the doorway we had just forced open, was a woman.

She wasn’t moving.

She wore a long, elegant camel coat.

Anna.

“Anna?” Luca called out, confusion replacing his anger. “I told you to stay upstairs and lock the door.”

Anna didn't answer.

She walked slowly down the corridor toward us. The click of her expensive heels echoed sharply against the concrete.

As she stepped into the ambient light of my pen, I noticed something wrong.

Her posture was different.

The terrified, exhausted daughter was gone.

Her face was completely calm. Almost bored.

And in her right hand, she wasn't holding the medical files anymore.

She was holding a silver heart-spray bottle.

“Anna, what are you doing?” Luca asked, stepping in front of me.

Anna stopped ten feet away.

She looked at the bottle in her hand.

“Charles told me you were getting too close to the truth, Dad,” Anna said. Her voice was chillingly steady. “He told me Elizabeth found the Annex twelve years ago. But he didn't tell me Sofia was still alive.”

She looked through the glass at her biological mother.

There was no emotion in Anna’s eyes. No tears. No recognition.

“You’re my mother,” Anna stated flatly.

Sofia pressed her hands against the glass, tears streaming down her aged face. “My baby. He took you from me.”

“He raised me,” Anna corrected coldly. “Charles Bennett raised me. He gave me the Ferraro empire. He made me the sole heir to Luca’s fortune.”

Luca looked like he had been physically struck.

“Anna,” he breathed. “What are you saying?”

Anna finally looked at the man who had raised her.

“I’m saying I’m tired of waiting, Dad.”

She held up the silver bottle.

“Charles didn't kill Mom. Elizabeth found out I wasn't her real daughter. She found out Charles was manipulating the family trust. She was going to cut me out. She was going to give everything to Uncle Nicholas.”

A reversal.

The sweet, devoted daughter wasn't the victim.

She was the architect.

“You killed your mother?” Luca asked, his voice breaking.

“I protected my inheritance,” Anna said. “I put the extra dosage in her spray bottle. Just like I’ve been putting it in yours for the last year.”

I stepped forward, my anger overriding my fear.

“You’re the one causing his hypotensive episodes,” I said. “Not Dr. Bennett. Charles was just writing the prescriptions. You were poisoning the bottles inside the house.”

Anna smiled at me.

“And it was working perfectly until you showed up, Rebecca. You just had to check the label. You just had to be a good nurse.”

She reached into her coat pocket.

She pulled out a small, remote control.

“This facility has a specialized ventilation system for the basement,” Anna said. “Designed to pump in heavy sedatives in case the patients rioted. Charles gave me the access code years ago.”

“Anna, don't do this,” Luca pleaded. Not for his life. For her soul. “You’re my daughter.”

“I’m a Bennett,” Anna said coldly.

She pressed a red button on the remote.

A loud hiss echoed from the ceiling vents above us.

White, sweet-smelling gas began pouring into the corridor.

“Goodbye, Dad,” Anna said.

She turned and walked back toward the steel door. She stepped through it, and with a heavy clack, the magnetic lock sealed us inside.

The gas was filling the air fast.

Luca coughed, dropping to his knees instantly. His heart was already weak. This was going to kill him in minutes.

“Luca!” I dropped beside him, pulling my sweater over my nose and mouth.

I looked at Sofia through the glass. Her cell was sealed. The gas wasn't entering her room.

“The key!” I yelled to her through the glass. “How do we open this door?!”

Sofia shook her head frantically. “It’s biometric! It requires Charles’s thumbprint! Or...”

She stopped.

“Or what?!” I screamed, coughing as my lungs burned.

Sofia looked at the silver bracelet on her wrist.

“Or it requires a pulse override,” she yelled back. “The lock is tied to the facility's medical emergency system. If a patient’s heart stops, the doors automatically unlock so the doctors can resuscitate!”

I stared at the heavy iron door.

If a heart stops, the door opens.

I looked down at Luca.

His eyes were rolling back. The poison Anna had been giving him for a year, combined with this gas, was shutting his body down.

He gripped my arm. “Rebecca...” he gasped. “Leave me. Break the glass. Get in her cell.”

“The glass is reinforced,” I choked out. “It won't break.”

I looked at my medical bag on the floor.

I looked at Luca’s gray, sweating face.

I had to stop a heart to open the door.

I opened my bag and pulled out a syringe of Adenosine.

It was a drug used to reset a racing heart. Pushed fast, it causes a temporary, complete stop of electrical activity in the heart. Flatline.

For about six seconds.