4: 4
The blast rocked the whole basement, and the walls seemed to hum with it.
Detectives surged in before anyone could react, slamming Ned, Bianca, and every doctor in the room flat against the floor.
"Police! Don't move! Hands behind your heads, faces to the wall!"
Amber ran to me, eyes rimmed red, and worked the restraints off my body.
I collapsed into her arms, every ounce of strength gone, my palms slick with cold sweat.
"Laurel! Thank God we kept a team tailing him the whole way!" Amber's voice shook. "The second his car turned onto that back road and the signal cut out, we knew he was going to make his move, so we brought the police in on a shortcut and cut them off!"
Ned was pinned hard to the ground, his cheek pressed to the cold concrete, panic flickering wild in his eyes.
The moment they hauled him toward the car, he suddenly started screaming himself hoarse:
"I've been framed! You've got the wrong man, this black-market clinic tricked me!"
"I only wanted to save my ex-girlfriend, and this dirty doctor told me they had a legal treatment brought in from overseas! I had no idea it was an illegal clinic! I'm a victim too!"
Bianca crumpled to the floor right behind him, sobbing like her heart was breaking. "That's right, we didn't know anything, we only came here for treatment..."
They dumped every last charge onto that trembling black-market doctor.
Once it reached the police, though, things started sliding off the track I'd expected.
Ned hadn't been in custody six hours before a well-known lawyer in an expensive suit showed up at the station with a bail application in hand.
Amber stormed into the reception room, her face like iron.
"Laurel, this isn't looking good for us."
She handed me a document. "Ned hired the top criminal defense lawyer in the business. Because the detectives broke in when they did, the doctor's needle never got into your vein, and your organs weren't physically damaged... so legally, they're pushing hard to frame him as a 'victim of an illegal medical operation, an unknowing third party.'"
"They're arguing Ned was just desperate to save someone and got fooled by an illegal clinic's false advertising. Even that forged organ donation agreement, Ned swears the doctor handed it to him, and he 'thought it was proper paperwork.'"
Amber ground the words out through her teeth.
"No serious injury, no death, and with his lawyer working every angle, the police can only bring him in for questioning as a 'suspected accomplice to illegal medical practice.' The bail application... will most likely go through."
Just as the cold sank into my chest, another line of blood-red text drifted slowly across my vision:
【Careful! Ned has someone powerful coaching him from behind. The clinic's major shareholder is officially just a puppet taking the fall, the ownership is walled off so cleanly you'll never trace it back to him!】
【He's using the gap while he's out on bail to forge a certificate saying you're mentally ill, and a transfer agreement to go with it!】
【The first thing he'll do the moment he's out tonight is spread lies to get back at you! Be careful!】
The words stung my eyes until they ached. I looked out the window at the leaden sky, and something in my gaze went to ice.
"He thinks he can walk out of here clean. Then I'll show him what it means to want to live and not be allowed, to want to die and not be able."
