Dr. Michael Callaghan's private office wasn’t what she was expecting. It was large and well-lit, more suited to a college professor than an MD. Every wall was filled with bookshelves, his massive desk buried under multiple display monitors, journals, and printed research. In front of the desk, a pair of visitors’ chairs. A couch along the side. Mini kitchenette with a coffee maker, microwave, and a small fridge. A private bathroom with a shower. Clearly, he was important to have this kind of building real estate and probably spent a lot of time here.
The man who turned at their arrival looked a lot like Ian—i.e., an older version of Patrick. His manner was unhurried and soft-spoken, with an aura of intelligence that operated at a slightly different frequency than everyone around him.
The woman leaning against his desk was something else entirely, and Morgan pegged her immediately as someone not to mess with. Long raven hair. Nearly colorless eyes that assessed you within seconds and decided if you were in the friend or foe category. Morgan could guess which one held more people.
Morgan met the woman’s gaze and held it.
Something shifted in the woman’s expression. Fractional. Approving.
“Morgan Sullivan, this is my uncle Michael and my aunt Nicki.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the older man said with an easy, friendly smile that appeared genuine. Nicki just offered a slight head nod, which Morgan would take.
“You too,” Morgan said, addressing both of them. “Thank you for doing this.”
“My pleasure,” answered Michael. “It’s not often we come across something like this.”
“What isthis, exactly?”
Michael waved toward the visitors’ chairs. “Please, sit.”
Morgan didn’t want to sit. She wanted answers. But Patrick’s gentle touch at the small of her back helped her remember her manners.
Once she was seated, Patrick folded into the chair beside her. Michael leaned against his desk, much the way Nicki was doing,picked up a sheet of paper from a pile on his desk, and handed it to them.
Morgan accepted it. Patrick leaned closer.
She read it.
She read it again.
“Saxitoxin?” Morgan said, surprise lacing her tone. The potent neurotoxin was familiar because she’d just read about it in a book on Frank’s shelf, along with several others. Refined, stabilized, and developed by the CIA in the 1950s as an assassination tool because it worked cleanly, resulted in rapid cardiac arrest, wouldn’t appear in a standard trace, and had no window for intervention.
“Delivery mechanism?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“Typically by frozen dart,” Nicki said. “Melts on contact. No physical evidence by the time anyone is examining the body, except for a tiny pinprick at the insertion site.”
Like the one she’d found beneath Anthony Varro’s neck.
“All but invisible during a standard autopsy,” Michael said. “Unless you know what to look for.”
“Even if it was discovered—which is highly unlikely in a small town by an overworked county ME—it would likely be written off as a sting or a bug bite,” Nicki added.
Morgan set the sheet down, keeping her expression schooled and professional under their curious stares.
More pieces of the puzzle, coming together to form a picture she didn’t want to see. The injection site. The stripped identity. The constructed cover built for a single operation. The hands withthe grip callus and the care taken with placement behind the left ear. Anthony Varro at one of her crime scenes. Talking to her boss in her parking garage.
“You’re sure,” she asked, regretting the words the moment they passed her lips. These were not people who said things they weren’t one hundred percent sure of.
“Yes. No question.”
She nodded. Looked at Nicki, who was watching her with those unsettling silver eyes, silently asking questions Morgan wasn’t ready to answer. Not yet.
Michael leaned back against the desk, slipped his hands into his pockets, and looked from Morgan to Patrick. “Anything you want to tell us?”
It was Patrick who answered. “Dad didn’t fill you in?”
“He did.” Michael’s gaze went back to Morgan. Nicki’s had never left. “But I have a feeling there’s more to this than boredom and a random professional interest.”