“Federal Agents! Open the door!” a booming voice echoed from the porch.
Mariana turned the doorknob from the inside, opening it just wide enough to slip through, stepping out into the cool morning air just as the lead agent lifted a heavy steel battering ram. She didn’t look at the agents, and they didn’t stop her—she had clearly given them exactly what they wanted, and she was no longer their target.
But just before she stepped off the porch and out of my life forever, she stopped. She turned her head slightly, looking at me through the gap in the doorway, a look of profound, chilling pity on her face.
“Oh, and Alejandro?” she whispered over the din of the shouting agents. “The photos and the fraud are just what I gave the government. There’s one more document in that folder. The one at the very bottom. The one I didn’t send to the police… yet.”
My breath hitched. “What document?”
The lead agent shoved the door open, throwing me backward onto the marble floor. As a heavy boot pressed firmly into the small of my back and the cold steel of handcuffs ratcheted tightly around my wrists, my eyes locked onto the black folder on the dining room table.
The wind from the open door blew the top pages away, revealing a single, brightly colored document at the very bottom. It bore the logo of a prominent medical research lab, and across the top, in bold, red letters, were the words: TOXICOLOGY SCREENING REPORT: ALEJANDRO VANCE.
As the agent read me my Miranda rights, Mariana’s final words echoed in my mind, turning my blood to absolute ice:
“Let’s see if you can survive what you’ve been putting in my tea for the last six months.”
