Sylous was right about the boy. She only prayed she had the strength to do what was necessary. There was no other way.

She knew that by this hour Dr. Charles and his family would be upstairs attending to dinner in the attached apartment where they lived. But she wouldn’t have long before they returned to check on their patient.

Sylous hadn’t offered any instruction on how to kill them, which meant he didn’t care. After much deliberation through the night, she’d settled on poisoning them. She didn’t think she had the stomach for violence. Poisoning seemed safer, more disconnected. There would be no autopsy, naturally. No one would be the wiser.

She’d prepared earlier under the guise of researching rare causes of rashes like the one Evelyn had. It hadn’t taken long to do a quick inventory of the medications the clinic had on hand and the lethal doses of those medications.

Supply was limited, but potassium chloride was available. Used to treat low blood pressure, enough injected through an IV would stop the heart. The boy’s would have to be administered through his food with a side of thiopental, which would cause him to relax into an unconscious state while the potassium chloride killed him in his sleep.

Rose reached the doctor’s personal office, opened the door and walked into the dark room. She went to the desk, slid open the top right drawer and reached into one of the back compartments for the keys to the medicine cabinet.

Making her way back to the door, she carefully peered around the corner to make sure the clinic was still empty. The front door wouldn’t be locked until midnight, but most of the lights had been turned off, and with darkness fast approaching, few if any would be out at this time of day.

Taking a deep breath, she hurried to the supply room and entered. Using a small flashlight she approached the medicine cabinet, quickly unlocked it and scanned the labels. She withdrew a syringe and both medications, then locked the cabinet.

So far so good.

Thirty seconds later, Rose was standing outside the patient’s room. The door stood wide open. She hesitated for a moment. Once she crossed the threshold there was no going back. A slight shiver worked through her fingers. Chasing away her doubts with a final breath, she quietly stepped up to Ben’s bedside.

The room was cast in shadows, but there was enough light from the small window to guide her. Beeping from the monitoring device punctuated the patient’s steady breathing. Ben lay still, tucked under white sheets and a blue blanket that were pulled up to his shoulders.