Chapter 4 - The Storage Shed on Highway 9
The roadhouse was an old gravel-lot tavern with a neon beer sign flickering rhythmically against the rain-soaked darkness.
Behind the main building stood a rusted corrugated metal storage shed, surrounded by discarded tractor tires and wooden pallets.
Natalie pulled her patrol car into the lot, her tires spitting gravel as she brought the cruiser to a halt beside two county sheriff units. Flashlights swept across the scene as four officers stood with weapons drawn, covering the small wooden door of the shed.
"Natalie!" Sheriff Miller—no relation to Andrew—called out, stepping up to her cruiser. "He’s inside. He locked the deadbolt from the interior. He’s bleeding badly, but he’s holding a wooden beam against the door."
"Don't breach!" Natalie shouted, rushing forward. "He thinks you're the people who ran him off the road!"
She stepped in front of the officers, shining her flashlight directly at the small wooden window frame near the top of the shed door.
"Andrew!" Natalie called out, her voice loud, clear, and firm over the drumming rain. "My name is Officer Natalie Reed! I’m the officer who picked up Ashley from your house four hours ago!"
The rustling inside the shed suddenly stopped.
"Ashley?" a hoarse, broken voice gasped from behind the thin wooden door. "Is she... is she alive?"
"She’s at St. Jude’s," Natalie said, stepping closer to the door, keeping her hands visible in the light. "She’s in the ICU, Andrew. The doctors gave her the counter-agent. Her tummy is getting better. She’s safe."
A heavy thud sounded from inside as the wooden beam slid away from the frame.
The door creaked open two inches.
In the flickering beam of Natalie’s flashlight stood Andrew Miller.
He was barely recognizable. His face was caked with dried mud and blood from a deep laceration across his forehead. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, broken at the shoulder, and his oilskin jacket was soaked in creek water and crimson stains. He was shivering violently from severe hypothermia, but his dark eyes burned with a desperate, wild instinct.
"Did she... did she have Buddy?" Andrew rasped, clinging to the doorframe to keep from collapsing.
"She has Buddy," Natalie said softly. "And we know what’s hidden inside him, Andrew."
Andrew let out a long, shuddering breath. His knees buckled, and he collapsed forward onto the wet gravel.
Natalie caught him before he hit the ground, lowering him gently into the mud as two paramedics rushed forward with an emergency gurney and thermal blankets.
"They forced me off the bridge," Andrew whispered, clutching Natalie’s sleeve with his good hand, his knuckles turning white. "Dr. Vance... he paid the clinical trial coordinator to double the dosage on Ashley. He wasn't trying to cure her... he was using her to test a military-grade cellular suppressant for a multi-million dollar defense contract!"
"We know, Andrew," Natalie said, wrapping a thermal blanket around his shoulders. "We have the prescription bottle. And we're going to get the notebook."
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"The notebook..." Andrew gasped, his eyes rolling back as hypothermia and blood loss pulled him under. "It has the trial logs... page forty-two... it shows they knew the compound was toxic six months ago..."
"Rest now, Andrew," Natalie told him. "You brought her the medicine. You did your job."
