Chapter 10 - The Choice
My heart stopped.
"Sister?" I said the word out loud to the empty loading bay, the sound getting swallowed by the pine trees. "I don't have a sister."
I was an only child. I had grown up alone in that massive stone house on the hill, eating dinner by myself while my mother managed her pharmaceutical holdings and my father worked seventy-hour weeks in Chicago.
Inside the Subaru, Toby let out a choked, wet cough that sounded like drowning.
There was no time to figure out the riddle.
I snatched the green auto-injector, sprinted back to the passenger seat, tore open Toby’s soaked shirt, and slammed the heavy spring-loaded needle straight into the muscle of his right thigh.
The injector clicked loudly.
Toby’s entire body stiffened like an iron bar. His back arched off the seat, his teeth snapping shut with a violent click, and for five horrifying seconds, he stopped breathing altogether.
"Breathe, Toby! Breathe!" I pressed both hands over his sternum, ready to start compressions.
Suddenly, his small chest convulsed. He took a massive, rattling gasp of air, vomiting clear, odorless fluid onto the floorboard.
The black, pulsing veins on his neck didn't vanish, but the swelling subsided. The dark lines retreated down into his collarbone, turning a faint, faded gray. His temperature dropped immediately, cool sweat breaking out across his forehead.
He opened his eyes. They were unfocused, glassy, but blue again.
"Daddy?" he whimpered, his voice barely a breath.
"I'm right here, buddy. I got you. You're okay." I pulled him into my arms, burying my face in his damp hair, my hands shaking so violently I couldn't hold him steady.
A shadow fell across the driver’s side window.
I grabbed the heavy tire iron off the floor, wheeling around ready to swing.
Standing beside the open car door was Detective Cross.
He didn't have his weapon drawn. He held a thick, yellowed personnel file from the state department of health, his expression grim and exhausted.
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"He's stable," Cross said quietly, glancing at Toby. "Good. Because the real problem just arrived at your house, Mark."
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