Chapter 6 - The Last Delivery
Newport General had three security entrances and two loading bays.
I knew every one of them.
For seven years, I had walked those halls wearing an ID badge and complaining about vending-machine coffee.
That morning, I returned beside Damon Reyes with four federal vehicles behind us.
Life has a strange sense of humor.
The first agent introduced herself as Special Agent Claire Donnelly.
Forties.
Dark suit.
No wasted movement.
She did not shake Damon’s hand.
“You understand this meeting does not create immunity.”
Damon nodded.
“My attorney explained.”
“You understand anything you provide may implicate you or your companies.”
“Yes.”
“You understand that if you lie—”
“Agent Donnelly.”
He looked toward the hospital.
“There are twelve units of counterfeit oncology medication somewhere in that building.”
Donnelly stared at him.
Then she said, “Show us.”
We moved.
Hospital administration had already quarantined pharmacy stock.
Eleven of the twelve units were recovered before administration.
The twelfth was on a medication cart outside room 614.
A nurse had scanned it.
She had not injected it yet.
When Donnelly’s team took the vial, I had to lean against the wall.
The patient inside room 614 was nine years old.
Her mother sat beside the bed reading a book.
Neither of them knew how close they had come.
Damon stood beside me.
“You saved her.”
“Noah did.”
We sent the vial for emergency laboratory analysis.
Preliminary testing later showed it contained mostly saline, trace protein, and bacterial contamination.
Had it been administered, the child might have developed sepsis.
I thought that discovery would be the worst moment of the day.
It was not.
At 10:41 a.m., federal agents arrested Dr. Warren Bellamy in his office.
At 11:06, warrants began moving through Blue Heron Freight.
At 11:22, two coastal warehouses were sealed.
At 11:48, Damon turned over access credentials to Reyes Maritime servers.
At noon, Roy Castellin disappeared.
Again.
But this time he did not call Damon.
He called me.
My phone rang while I sat in an interview room.
Unknown number.
Donnelly saw the screen.
“Answer.”
She activated recording equipment.
I pressed the phone to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Mara.”
Roy’s voice.
Calm as ever.
My fingernails dug into my palm.
“Where are you?”
“Disappointed.”
“You murdered my husband.”
Silence.
Donnelly lifted a finger, signaling me to continue.
“You had Noah killed because he wouldn’t falsify your records.”
Roy sighed.
“Noah was an unfortunate complication.”
I almost lost control.
Damon was standing behind the glass observation window.
Even through the reflection, I saw his face change.
“An unfortunate complication?”
“Your husband had a weakness.”
“What weakness?”
“He believed evidence mattered more than power.”
I looked directly at Damon through the glass.
“He was right.”
Roy laughed softly.
“No, Mara. You are alive because Damon Reyes is currently pretending he wants to become something his family never was.”
“What?”
“Respectable.”
“Is that why you used his company?”
“I built his company.”
“You built a counterfeit-drug operation.”
“I built an organization that survived.”
“You poisoned cancer patients.”
“I sold products to people who were dying anyway.”
Donnelly’s expression hardened.
I wanted to crawl through the phone.
Instead, I said, “What do you want?”
“At last.”
“What?”
“You’re asking the useful question.”
He sent me a location.
An abandoned marina south of Newport.
Donnelly shook her head immediately.
Roy continued.
“I have something Noah recorded that was not on his little flash drive.”
“What?”
“His last conversation.”
Every sound in the room disappeared.
“You’re lying.”
“Come alone and decide.”
Donnelly wrote NO on a legal pad.
I nodded as though agreeing with her.
“What stops you from killing me?”
“Nothing.”
Roy paused.
“But if you bring Damon or the government, the recording disappears.”
The call ended.
Donnelly took my phone.
“You are not going.”
“I know.”
“You say that like you’re going.”
“I’m not stupid.”
Damon entered.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to.”
Donnelly looked between us.
“We can trace the call.”
“Do it,” Damon said.
My phone vibrated.
A message.
A photograph.
Noah.
Alive.
Standing beside his truck.
Timestamped the night he died.
Behind him was the abandoned marina.
Then another message.
COME BEFORE 2:00 OR HIS LAST WORDS DIE WITH ME.
I should have ignored it.
I know that.
Every person reading this would make the intelligent decision from the safety of a room where their dead husband’s voice was not being held hostage.
At 1:16, Donnelly received confirmation that Roy’s phone had gone dark.
At 1:23, Damon was pulled into a separate meeting with prosecutors regarding his company records.
At 1:31, an officer escorted me toward the family waiting area.
At 1:34, I walked into a restroom.
At 1:36, I left through a service stairwell I had known for years.
At 1:41, I was in a rideshare heading south.
It was the stupidest thing I had ever done.
I knew that every mile.
But grief is not intelligent.
The marina looked abandoned.
Three docks.
One warehouse.
Gray water.
Roy stood beside a black sedan.
No visible weapon.
I stopped twenty feet away.
“Play it.”
He smiled.
“You have Noah’s impatience.”
“Play it.”
Roy held up a small digital recorder.
Then I heard my husband.
“Mara doesn’t know anything.”
My legs almost failed.
Noah’s voice.
Alive.
Angry.
Roy answered on the recording.
“She will if you keep talking.”
“I didn’t tell her.”
“Then sign.”
“No.”
The recording crackled.
Noah said, “Those drugs are going to hospitals.”
“Sign.”
“No.”
Then came a sound like someone hitting metal.
Noah groaned.
I covered my mouth.
His next words were barely audible.
“If you hurt me, she’ll figure it out.”
Roy stopped the recording.
I stared at him.
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
“You said—”
“I said you could hear it.”
A vehicle engine sounded behind me.
I turned.
Two men stepped from the warehouse.
I understood.
Roy had never expected to negotiate.
He wanted to remove the last witness.
Me.
“You could have disappeared,” Roy said.
“Instead you followed your husband into a war you don’t understand.”
“Noah wasn’t at war.”
“Everyone is.”
One of the men grabbed my arm.
I fought.
A gunshot exploded.
The man dropped.
I spun.
Damon stood near the entrance road.
Adrian beside him.
Federal vehicles appeared behind them.
Roy’s face twisted.
“You tracked her.”
Damon never looked away from him.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“She took one of my security phones from the hospital.”
I blinked.
I had.
Accidentally, I thought.
Damon’s mouth almost moved.
“You’re a terrible thief.”
Then Roy pulled a pistol.
Everything happened at once.
Donnelly shouted.
Adrian moved.
I heard two shots.
Damon jerked backward.
Blood appeared across his shirt.
“DAMON!”
Roy seized me around the neck and dragged me toward the dock.
His gun pressed under my jaw.
“Back!”
Donnelly froze.
Damon fell to one knee.
Adrian caught him.
Roy forced me onto a waiting boat.
I fought hard enough to lose one shoe.
He slammed me against the rail.
The engine roared.
Federal agents ran onto the dock.
Too late.
The boat pulled away.
I looked back.
Damon was on the boards with blood spreading beneath his hand.
His eyes found mine across the widening water.
Then the boat turned toward open ocean.
Roy leaned close to my ear.
May you like
“You should have stayed a maid.”
And the shoreline disappeared behind the rain.
