Chapter 27 - The Mark of the Needle
My hands began to shake violently.
I leaned closer under the dim amber light of the bedside lamp. The patch was medical-grade, completely flesh-toned, and made of a micro-perforated silicone membrane that blended almost invisibly into his fair skin.
I hadn't put it there.
With trembling fingers, I took the edge of the patch and peeled it back. Leo didn't even flinch, but beneath the silicone was a faint, purple-rimmed puncture mark—a micro-injection site surrounded by four tiny metallic dots embedded into the epidermis.
A localized subcutaneous transponder. Combined with a timed micro-infusion reservoir.
*When?*
My mind spun backward through the terrifying haze of the past twenty-four hours. The cottage on the bluff. The hour I had left him napping in his bassinet on the enclosed porch while I sat on the deck reading the parchment and the photograph. The porch door had been unlatched. Someone hadn't just watched us—they had entered while my back was turned.
They hadn't arrived in the black sedan to kidnap him. They had arrived because the transponder had signaled that the infusion was complete.
A sudden, sharp chill swept through the room.
May you like
If the patch had a transponder, it wasn't just administering a drug. It was broadcasting our coordinates.
Outside the motel window, the gravel driveway crunched softly beneath the slow roll of heavy tires.
