Chapter 11 - The Nursery Secret
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Dr. Julian Vane backed up until his spine hit the bars of Caleb’s toddler crib, his wire-rimmed glasses sliding down his nose as he stared at the man he had known for fifteen years.
"E-Evan," Dr. Vane stammered, raising both hands in front of his tweed vest as sweat broke out across his forehead. "Thank God you’re alright! Arthur told me—he told me you had suffered a nervous collapse in London and that I needed to secure the children’s medical records—"
Evan didn't say a word.
He crossed the nursery floor in three strides, grabbed the sixty-year-old doctor by the throat of his silk tie, and slammed him backward against the wall directly beside the nightstand where the plastic baby monitor sat.
"For six months," Evan said, his voice a low, terrifying tremor an inch from Vane’s face, "you sat in my living room drinking my scotch and telling me that my three-year-old son wasn't sleeping well because he missed his mother. While you were drugging his milk with sedatives so Arthur could scan his eyes in the dark."
"Evan, please—they threatened to ruin my practice!" Vane whimpered, his hands clawing uselessly at Evan’s iron grip on his collar. "Arthur had leverage over my offshore accounts!"
With his free hand, Evan reached down, picked up the plastic baby monitor from the nightstand, and pressed the speaker grille hard against Dr. Vane’s cheek.
"And whose idea was the voice synthesizer, Julian?" Evan whispered, his dark eyes burning with a fury that made the doctor wet himself right where he stood. "Who programmed my voice to whisper to my seven-year-old daughter at three in the morning that I hated her and would throw her away if she cried?"
"That was Vanessa!" Vane sobbed frantically, nodding toward the laptop on Sophie’s desk. "I swear to God, Evan, that was Vanessa! She recorded your voice from your charity speeches and typed the prompts into the software from her phone every night! She said it was the only way to guarantee the children wouldn't run to you or the nanny if they woke up during the retinal scans!"
Grace stood by the nursery door with the captured submachine gun trained on the hallway, holding up her own backup recording device so its lens captured every word pouring out of the terrified pediatrician’s mouth.
"And what about Clara Whitaker’s car crash three years ago, Dr. Vane?" Grace asked coldly from across the room. "Why did you sign the preliminary death release at Greenwich Hospital before the state medical examiner could run a blood panel for paralytics?"
Dr. Vane’s eyes darted wildly from Grace’s camera to Evan’s murderous face.
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"Tell me what you did to my wife, Julian," Evan said softly, tightening his fist around the man’s collar until Vane’s feet barely touched the baseboard, "or I drop you out that second-story window onto the stone patio right now."
"I didn't touch her car!" Vane gasped, choking for air. "Clara found out that Arthur was falsifying the clinical trial budgets on the pediatric oncology patent to short-sell the stock! She was driving to Hartford that night to turn the files over to the U.S. Attorney! I just gave her a vitamin B12 booster shot at the house an hour before she left—Arthur told me it was a mild beta-blocker to calm her nerves, I didn't know it would make her pass out behind the wheel on the parkway!"
