Chapter 6 - The Red Stain
The metallic wail of the arriving ambulance tore through the quiet bank parking lot like a warning siren from hell.
I held Gwen tight against my chest, feeling her heartbeat flutter like a trapped sparrow against my ribs. A dark crimson stain was rapidly blooming through the front of her thick woolen coat, warm and sticky against my palms.
"Stay with me, Gwen. Don't you dare close your eyes," I choked out, ignoring the stares of the bank tellers and bystanders crowded around the glass doors. "The ambulance is here. You're going to get the doctors you need. I'm right here."
Paramedics in high-vis jackets swarmed us, cutting through the chaos with practiced efficiency. They lowered a stretcher, and as they lifted Gwen onto it, her fingers weakly caught my sleeve.
"Ethan..." she whispered, her voice barely a breath caught in a throat choked with blood. "The storage room... under the floorboards..."
"Don't talk. Save your strength," I begged, leaning down to press my forehead against hers.
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"There's... a ledger..." she managed to gasp out before the medic gently pulled my hands away, slamming the back doors of the ambulance shut.
The vehicle peeled out of the lot, its lights flashing red and white against the overcast afternoon sky. I scrambled into my own truck, tires screaming as I tailgated the ambulance through the downtown traffic, my mind racing. A ledger? Under the floorboards of the damp storage room where my family had imprisoned my dying wife? What else had Margaret and Paige hidden beneath our feet while I was thousands of miles away fighting a war for a country that felt suddenly hollow?
