Wearing her sterile navy surgical scrubs beneath an un-ironed white lab coat, holding a ruggedized Panasonic Toughbook terminal…
Was Dr. Priyanka Oay.
And sitting between my boots on the terrazzo floor, his fangs bared, his amber eyes locked onto Thaddius Bromel’s throat with silent, synchronized fury…
Was Barnaby—the eighty-pound Belgian Malinois whose instincts had never wavered in the dark.
Thad’s tumbler of Pappy Van Winkle did not fall from his hand; the glass simply shattered between his spasming fingers:
*CRACK-SHATTER.*
Amber bourbon and twenty-three-year-old oak-barrel alcohol exploded across the front of his bespoke charcoal trousers, splashing over his polished calfskin oxfords:
“Coraly…?” Thad whispered.
The modulated, gentle pastoral voice he had used to comfort weeping widows for fifteen years was gone.
The word was paper-thin. It was the dry, whistling rasp of an ancient embalming pump sucking air in an empty cistern:
*k-k-k.*
“You’re… you’re in the transplant recovery ward! You had your kidney removed eighteen hours ago! The surgeon signed the operative certification!”
