Chapter 7 - The Poison in the PillOn the morning of the fourth day, the rain stopped. A pale, watery sun broke through the pines, casting long, golden fingers of light across the cabin floor. Claire’s fever had broken. Her eyes were clear for the first time since Thomas had lifted her from the bed in Alexandria.
But the physical clarity brought a new, chilling realization.
Thomas was sitting at the small kitchen table, cleaning his old service sidearm—a disassembled Colt .45. The pieces lay on a clean white towel, smelling of oil and steel. Claire sat across from him, holding a mug of black tea with both hands to keep them from shaking.
"He didn't just give me the anxiety pills, Dad," she said quietly.
Thomas did not look up from the firing pin he was polishing, but his hands went entirely still. "Explain."
"The doctor in Arlington... Dr. Sterling’s associate. He was Evan's friend. Every time I had a panic attack, every time I asked if I could go back to work or see my friends, Evan would go to the pharmacy. He would bring back the bottles. He always took them out of the boxes first. He said it was to keep them organized in the cabinet."
She reached into the pocket of her cardigan and pulled out three small, blue pills she had slipped into her pocket before leaving the townhouse. She set them on the wood of the table.
"These aren't my regular dose," she said. "My prescription was for five milligrams. I looked these up on my phone before we left. These are fifteen milligrams. And they aren't anxiety medication. They’re a heavy sedative used for clinical sleep disorders."
Thomas picked up one of the blue tablets. It was tiny, harmless-looking, but it carried the weight of a slow, systematic poisoning.
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"He was keeping you drugged," Thomas said, the truth settling into his chest like cold lead. "He was keeping you too weak to leave, too confused to think, and too unstable to be believed if you ever spoke to the police."
"If I took them, I was a ghost," Claire whispered. "If I didn't take them, the withdrawal made me look insane. He had me in a box, Dad. Every corner was closed."
