AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Cooper is on his way.” My gaze flits across the many faces in the crowded room, unease lingering in the air.
“Did he say what’s going on?” Cindy asks from the dining room.
I shake my head as I walk into the kitchen. I’m tempted to open a beer—Lord knows I need to take the edge off—but I grab a soda instead. I don’t want to be impaired in case Sara needs my help or is hurt. I need to be ready for anything.
True to his word, Cooper comes striding into the house a few minutes later, determination lining his features. It can’t be easy for him to stay professional when he’s looking for someone he loves.
Sara told me after the break-in that Quinn was kidnapped last year, and Cooper almost didn’t save her in time. How much harder would it be to have to methodically sift through evidence in order to find the love of your life? I can’t imagine. I’m barely holding myself together right now; thinking logically is not in my wheelhouse.
“Okay, I’m going to cut to the chase,” Cooper starts once we’re all crowded into the living room. “We’re still not sure who did this, but we do think she was drugged. We found a syringe in the alleyway that our in-house lab was able to analyze. We expected it to come back as heroin or meth, but it turns out it was a drug called…” He flips through his notebook. “Dexmedetomidine.”
“No fucking way,” I interject.
“What?” Adam frowns at me.
“Susan and I found out someone has been stealing that exact drug from the clinic.”
“It’s an animal drug?” Nolan asks.
“We use it during surgeries to keep the animals sedated,” I answer. “It’s not a drug people can just buy at the pharmacy, but it is safe for humans.
“Do you know who it was?” Cooper asks.
“Not yet. It was one more drama my brain wasn’t able to focus on today.”
“Any way we could figure it out?”
“We’ve got camera feeds in the clinic. But Susan only does inventory twice a month. That’s a lot of footage.”
Cooper rubs his jaw for a minute, the wheels of his mind turning almost visibly. “Is there any reason a tech would need to get into the drug cabinet besides for surgery?”
“More than likely. We store antibiotics and whatnot in there. But we keep everything pretty well organized now, so the only reason they’d need to get into the surgery drawer would obviously be for surgery.” I glance at my dad, whose shoulders hitch at my comment. “You also need a code to open the cabinet, which means the only people with access are employees at the clinic, since the drug cabinet wasn’t obviously broken.”
Cooper nods. “Okay, can we access your records to find any appointments that would have required access to your drug cabinet? It’ll give us a starting point so we’re not running through hours of footage with no direction.”
“Yeah, we can pull both the footage and records up in Dad’s office.” Walking from the living room, I lead Cooper down the hallway. Adam follows behind us while everyone else stays where they are.
I sit down at the desk, pulling up the records we need. “It looks like there are seven appointments that would have required the drug cabinet to be opened. Four of them were surgeries.”
“Let’s start with the nonsurgical appointments. Can we have multiple people logged in at the same time?”
I nod my head, pulling up the footage for the right days. “I can pull it up on my laptop for you while I watch on the desktop.”
“I’ve got my laptop, too,” Adam adds.
“Go grab it. We’ll get these set up first.” Cooper takes the laptop from my hands once I’ve cued up the feed.
For the next hour, the three of us stare at our screens, trying to find anything that could indicate who’s stealing.
Cooper’s voice breaks the long silence. “What drawer are the sedation drugs in?”
“Third.”
“Because I think I found our thief.”
Adam and I surround Cooper’s chair, leaning over to watch the screen. Sara is grabbing supplies from the closet while Michelle is standing by the drug cart. They’re chatting and smiling at each other before Sara walks down the hallway and into an exam room. Michelle opens the top drawer, pulling out antibiotics as would be appropriate. Then she opens the sedative drawer, grabs one of the glass bottles, and slips it into her pocket. It happened so fast, you’d never have noticed she did it if you weren’t looking for it.
“I don’t understand. Why would Michelle be stealing drugs from us?”
