Chapter 4 - The Mexican Hospital
The private hospital in Cancun smelled of industrial bleach and sea salt. Outside the tropical window, palm trees swayed in the humid Caribbean breeze, but inside the third-floor intensive care unit, the atmosphere was thick with death.
Two armed Mexican federal agents guarded the door to Room 308. After Eleanor presented our official clearance documents from the U.S. Embassy, the guards stepped aside and allowed me to enter alone.
Chloe lay in the hospital bed, hooked up to a tangle of transparent tubes, cardiac monitors, and IV drips. The vibrant, polished woman who used to attend my dinner parties and laugh over glasses of Pinot Noir looked like a hollow shadow. Her skin was pale yellow, her lips cracked, and her eyes wide with frantic, paranoid fear.
When she saw me walk through the door, wearing a tailored black linen suit and dark sunglasses, she flinched against her pillows.
"Evelyn..." she rasped, her voice torn to shreds by the intubation tube that had just been removed hours earlier. "You... you actually came."
I pulled a vinyl visitor's chair to the side of her bed and sat down, leaning forward with my hands rested on my knees. I didn't reach out to comfort her. I didn't show warmth.
"You texted me from his phone, didn't you, Chloe?" I asked softly. "'I ran away with your best friend. We're never coming back.' That wasn't Mark writing. That was you."
Chloe squeezed her eyes shut, a tear carving a path through the dried sweat on her cheek. "Mark... Mark panicked. When you locked the accounts from your end, the local contact in Cancun realized the money wasn't clearing into the secondary escrow account."
"Who was the local contact?"
"Arthur Sterling’s offshore operative," Chloe whispered, clutching the bedsheets with trembling hands. "Mark thought he was playing Arthur. He thought he could steal your firm's money, run to Mexico with me, and pay Arthur a twenty-percent laundering fee. But Arthur didn't want twenty percent, Evelyn. He wanted all eight million."
"So Arthur had Mark poisoned," I stated coldly. "And he tried to eliminate you too."
"Mark drank the champagne first," Chloe sobbed, her chest heaving. "He collapsed on the floor in front of me... foaming at the mouth. I only took one sip before I saw him fall. I ran into the bathroom, threw up, and locked the door before I lost consciousness."
She reached out, trying to grab my hand with her weak fingers. "Evelyn, please... Arthur has people inside your firm. He has the encryption keys to your main server. He’s going to frame you for the entire embezzlement scheme and take control of Vance Forensic Analytics by the end of the week!"
I stood up, stepping out of her reach, and pulled a fresh silk handkerchief from my pocket to wipe a speck of dust off my lapel.
"You betrayed me for a coward and a thief, Chloe," I said, looking down at her with calm detachment. "You thought you were stealing my life. Instead, you bought yourself a front-row seat to Mark's execution."
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"Evelyn, help me!" she wept.
"I won't let Arthur kill you, Chloe," I said, turning toward the door. "Not because I forgive you. But because you are going to be my star witness when I strip Arthur Sterling of every breath of freedom he has left."
