Page 220 of Craving Venom

“Mid-groan,” Terry corrects.

I ignore him and continue.

“That sedative takes a minimum of four hours to eat through the body. Four hours to lower your blood pressure, slow your heart, dim your reflexes just enough to make you a convincing corpse.”

Mark huffs out a sound that’s half disbelief, half grudging respect. “So I wasn’t passed out. I was dying slow.”

“Not dying,” I correct, locking eyes with him. “Just giving up enough life to sell it.”

“We had eyes on your room the whole time. I scrubbed the footage once you went under. Cut a loop of you asleep, synced to the hall traffic. No one noticed the change,” Terry joins the conversation.

“When I walked back into your cell,” I continue, “you were out cold. Just like I wanted you to be.”

My fingers curl around the edge of the table as I remember Mark’s body.

“Your body was loose. Your eyes were rolled back. You were perfectly dead weight. We had twenty-three minutes before the next guard on shift passed by your hall. That was all I needed. I lifted you off the bed, tied your arms up above the vent with torn bedsheets. Then looped a transparent monofilament line from your ankle to the leg of the chair.”

Mark squints. “What for?”

“So your neck wouldn’t actually snap,” I snap. “If the guards saw a twist in your vertebrae, the whole thing would’ve fallen apart. I needed you breathing but limp.”

I drag a hand down my face, trying to scrub the memory out of my skin before looking back at him.

“Luke was already waiting in the medical corridor. He showed up five minutes after you were ‘discovered.’ We’d already burned your chart into the system. Everything said asphyxiation.”

“They didn’t check?” Mark still looks stunned.

“They did,” Terry interjects. “But not too hard. No one wants the paperwork on a dead inmate. They zipped you up and moved on.”

“Okay, fine, but what about the coroner? The actual coroner on file. You don’t just fake a death and not have them poke around. How the fuck did you convince him?”

I smirk.

Because that’s where the real beauty of the plan lies.

“We didn’t have to convince him,” I say. “We replaced him.”

Mark freezes. “You what?”

“Luke swapped his clearance with a new ID badge and a new signature. All backed by hospital credentials Luke slid into the system. His name never touched the screen. But the one that did?” I pause. “It matched a doctor in the coroners’ list with actual clearance and a record of being a lazy fuck.”

“But how did you get the access?” Mark presses. “You can’t just forge a coroner’s login. The software flags anything outside verified medical networks.”

“It didn’t flag shit because Luke didn’t have to forge it,” I explain. “The coroner on file was the college roommate of Sean Callahan’s best friend.”

Mark stares blankly for a second. Then he blinks.

“Sean Callahan…? The Sean Callahan?”

“President of the Veridian Medical Board. The guy who signs the health budgets for half the fucking prison system.”

“Holy shit. You had him in on this?”

“No.” I let the silence hang for a beat too long before replying. “Luke hates his father. Just like I hate mine. The difference is… Luke plays smarter. Luke’s family’s tight with the coroner’s wife. She owed a favor. And Luke doesn’t forget debts. He called it in last year. Kept it in his pocket until now.”

“So the guy who pronounced me dead…”

“Never showed up,” I finish. “His wife, who was also his assistant, signed in for him. Gave us a time window. Luke slipped in with gloves, mask, credentials, and walked out with your body zipped, tagged, and filed under ‘external mortuary processing.’ He even logged a heat malfunction in the drawer freezer to justify pulling you out early. Filed the maintenance ticket, backdated the work order. By the time anyone checks, it’ll look like an overworked tech forgot to update the logs.”

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