My Parents Skipped the Funeral of My Husband and Two Children for My Sister’s Birthday, but Six Months Later, One Headline Made Them Panic When They Discovered What I Had Done. / Chapter 20 / 121

Chapter 20 - The Road to Blackwood Ward

I didn't shoot him in the chest.

I lowered the barrel four inches and put a single 9mm hollow-point round straight through Arthur’s right knee.

The crack of the gunshot was followed by the wet, crunching explosion of bone and tendon. Arthur’s arrogant smirk vanished in a shriek of unimaginable agony as his leg folded sideways and he collapsed onto the blood-spattered marble.

Eleanor began to scream hysterically, collapsing to her knees on the upper landing, tearing at her own hair. Melissa dropped to the floor, vomiting onto the Persian carpet.

I stepped over Arthur’s thrashing body, reached into the interior pocket of his smoking jacket, and pulled out a heavy leather wallet. Inside was an embossed magnetic keycard stamped with a blue insignia: *Palmetto Care Systems — Executive Clearance.*

Beside it was a folded index card with a four-digit PIN written in Arthur’s distinctive, neat calligraphy: *0-9-1-4.*

The birthday of my son, Leo.

Arthur had used my dead son's birthday as the security PIN for the prison ward where he was slowly murdering my husband.

I leaned down over Arthur, my boot pinning his bleeding leg to the floor until he choked on his own screams.

"If he is dead when I reach that room," I whispered into his ear, "I won't call the federal marshals. I will come back here with five gallons of gasoline and a flare, and I will lock the doors from the outside."

I turned and walked out through the shattered frame of his front door.

The rain had turned into a torrential downpour, blinding and violent, as the edge of the hurricane swept across the Georgia coast. I climbed back into the black Suburban, threw it into reverse, spun around across the ruined lawn, and rocketed out into the storm.

Route 17 was a river of black water and fallen pine branches. The wipers swept furiously back and forth, barely clearing a slit through the sheets of water hammering the windshield.

The dashboard clock was an executioner’s countdown:

*4:28 a.m.*

*4:45 a.m.*

*5:12 a.m.*

Every mile felt like a lifetime. The headlights illuminated ghostly stands of cypress trees draped in Spanish moss, water rising to the edge of the asphalt. Twice the heavy SUV hydroplaned, the tires screaming against the slick blacktop, but I wrenched the wheel back, driving with the cold, mechanical precision of someone who had already died nine months ago.

At 5:35 a.m., I saw the rusted green sign half-hidden behind an overgrown pine thicket:

*STATE ROUTE 84 — GOVERNMENT USE ONLY — NO PUBLIC ACCESS.*

I cut the wheel hard to the right. The Suburban bounded down a narrow, cracked asphalt road that cut through the deep pine forest. Ahead, behind a double row of ten-foot razor-wire fencing, loomed the squat, windowless concrete bulk of the Blackwood Medical Facility.