Chapter 9 - Cold Hands
Daniel set the coffee cup and the water bottle down on the rolling meal tray with methodical calmness.
He didn't panic. He didn't rush. He simply stepped back toward the heavy wooden door, turned the brass lock until it clicked into place, and pulled the privacy curtain across the small rectangular window.
“You shouldn't have snooped, Rachel,” Daniel said softly, his voice dropping into that chilling, clinical register she had just heard on the recording. “You were supposed to just rest. The doctors said you needed quiet.”
Rachel pulled the thin hospital blanket up to her chin, her heart hammering against her sternum with such violence it shook her entire torso. “You set Evan up. You put the staples in the cake.”
Daniel pulled a pair of thin latex gloves from his jacket pocket and slid them onto his fingers, smoothing out the rubber over his knuckles with a quiet *snap*.
“Evan made it so easy,” Daniel mused, walking slowly toward the foot of the bed. “He was so deep in debt he would have agreed to anything. I told him we were just going to put a harmless industrial tracer dye into the frosting—something that would make you sick enough to go to the clinic so he could look like the hero who took care of you. The idiot actually believed me. He went to the bakery, bought the base, and left the door wide open for Marcus to drop off the prepared filling.”
“And you were the one who piped it,” Rachel whispered, tears of terror and fury burning her cheeks. “You brought the cake into the dining room.”
“I’m an artist, Rach,” Daniel said with a faint, bitter smirk. “I whipped the buttercream myself in his workshop while he was buying ice. I made sure that the biggest, sharpest staple was placed right in the first slice. The slice he always gives you because it has the sugar rose on top.”
“Why?” Rachel choked out. “I loved you, Daniel. I gave you everything!”
“You gave me a bedroom in your apartment and let me drive your spare car,” he sneered, his eyes flashing with raw contempt. “You sat on four million dollars of prime commercial real estate while we split grocery bills at the supermarket! You could have sold that plaza a year ago and set us up for life in the Cayman Islands. But you wanted to play the humble, hardworking girl honoring her dead daddy’s memory.”
Daniel reached over to the IV pole beside the bed. His gloved fingers found the clear plastic line feeding saline into the vein on the back of Rachel’s left hand.
From his pocket, he produced a sterile ten-milliliter plastic syringe, its plunger pulled all the way back, filling the barrel with empty room air.
“The staples were supposed to sever your jugular,” Daniel whispered, unscrewing the protective cap from the IV injection port with his thumb. “It would have looked like a horrific, tragic product tampering case, or Evan’s botched murder plot. But an air embolism while you're recovering? The hospital will take the blame. Malpractice settlement on top of the life insurance. It’s almost poetic.”
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Rachel looked at the syringe. She looked at Daniel’s dead eyes.
And then, with every ounce of strength remaining in her wounded body, she grabbed the heavy porcelain water pitcher from the bedside table and smashed it directly across Daniel’s face.
