Chapter 5 - The Glass Trap
Dr. Malcolm Reeves arrived at the Coleman Estate at precisely 11:00 AM the following morning.
He walked through the grand front entrance carrying his leather doctor's bag, wearing a charcoal wool coat and an air of supreme, untouchable arrogance. He looked around the pristine foyer, noticing the lack of staff, before heading straight toward the grand staircase.
"Ah, Dr. Reeves," Nathan's voice echoed from the top of the stairs.
Nathan stood on the landing, wearing a dark suit, his expression completely unreadable. Beside him stood Captain Mark Vance—a broad-shouldered man in plain clothes who served as the chief of Nathan's private security team.
"Nathan," Reeves said, adjusting his silver-framed glasses as he climbed the stairs. "I came to check on the twins' pulmonary function. I brought a new batch of the silver supplement drops I mentioned."
"Of course," Nathan said smoothly, gesturing down the hallway toward his private office rather than the bedrooms. "Before you see the boys, Doctor, I’d like you to review some new lab results that came in this morning from a private clinic in Boston."
Reeves paused, a microscopic flicker of hesitation passing through his gray eyes before his professional mask snapped back into place. "Boston? Nathan, I told you that sending their blood samples to outside facilities only creates confusion. Their condition is extremely delicate—"
"It will only take five minutes, Malcolm," Nathan interrupted, his voice laced with an icy calm that made my hair stand on end as I watched from the shadows of the mezzanine.
Reeves swallowed hard, nodding slowly. "Very well."
They entered Nathan's massive office. I slipped quietly inside behind Captain Vance, closing the heavy mahogany doors behind us and sliding the brass deadbolt into place.
Reeves turned around at the sound of the lock, his eyes narrowing as he saw me standing beside the door. "What is she doing here? Nathan, I thought we agreed that this nanny—"
"Sit down, Malcolm," Nathan said, walking around his massive desk and sitting in his high-backed leather chair.
Reeves didn't sit. He set his leather bag on the edge of the desk, his posture stiffening. "I don't appreciate this ambush, Nathan. I am a respected physician—"
Nathan didn't say a word. He simply reached into his desk drawer, pulled out a thick white folder stamped with the seal of the State Forensic Toxicology Laboratory, and tossed it onto the desk between them.
Beside the folder, Nathan set the glass vial containing the oily blue liquid we had extracted from the basement vent system at 3:00 AM.
Reeves's eyes dropped to the vial. The color drained from his face so fast it looked as if he had been struck by lightning.
"Page three," Nathan said quietly, his voice dangerously low. "Read page three, Malcolm."
Reeves's hand trembled violently as he opened the folder. His eyes scanned the technical readouts, the chemical breakdown charts, and the final bolded conclusion at the bottom of the page:
SAMPLE CONTAINS 85% TETRAETHYL GLYCOL ETHERS AND CONCENTRATED LIQUID LEAD ACETATE. HIGHLY TOXIC NEUROTOXIN. CONTINUOUS INHALATION/INGESTION CAUSES FATAL ORGAN FAILURE WITHIN 18–24 MONTHS.
"This... this is absurd," Reeves stammered, stepping back from the desk, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. "I... I have no idea what this liquid is! If someone put this in your house, it was an outside contractor—"
"The contractor was paid eighty thousand dollars from a shell account registered in the Cayman Islands," Captain Vance interjected, stepping forward and tossing a second set of bank records onto the desk. "An account registered directly to your private medical corporation in Stamford, Doctor."
Reeves backed away until his spine hit the glass wall of the office. He looked at Nathan, then at me, then at the locked door behind us. The arrogant physician was gone; in his place stood a trapped, desperate criminal.
"It wasn't my idea!" Reeves suddenly screamed, his composure completely shattering into pathetic panic. "He promised me two million dollars! He said... he said the boys wouldn't suffer! He said they would just go to sleep one night!"
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Nathan stood up slowly. The air in the room seemed to vanish. He walked around the desk with the slow, deliberate grace of a predator that had finally backed its prey into a corner.
"Who paid you, Malcolm?" Nathan asked, his voice a whisper that chilled me to the bone. "Give me the name."
