The Missing Insulin

Chapter 3 The Sky Falls

I could still hear Noah after my eyes closed. *This is television gold.* The sentence repeated while everything else dropped away.

A steady thump cut through the buzzing in my ears. It grew louder until the ground shook under my cheek.

I forced my eyes open. The director shouted into his headset while camera operators lowered their equipment and stared upward.

Something large passed over the camp.

Three matte-black helicopters came down through the grey cloud. Each carried the Sterling Group’s silver S emblem.

They hovered above the clearing instead of looking for a safe place to land. The downdraft flattened the tents and scattered the campfire into the mud. Ropes dropped, followed by a dozen figures in tactical gear and dark visors. Half secured the perimeter while the others cleared a path to me. One walked to the main broadcast camera and crushed it under his boot.

The red live-feed light went dark.

A medical team in white reached me next. One medic checked my airway while another swabbed my arm and started an IV. My lungs loosened by degrees. The pounding in my chest began to slow.

The last person out of the lead helicopter wore a charcoal-grey suit instead of tactical gear or a medical uniform. He had left in whatever he was wearing when the beacon reached him. Mud struck his trousers as he crossed the clearing, and he made no attempt to avoid it.

My brother had come for me. Elias crossed behind the medics and checked the IV line before he looked at anyone else.

My brother looked at me once, then went straight to Noah. Noah had already scrambled upright and was brushing mud off his shirt.

“Who the hell are you?” Noah drew himself up for the remaining cameras. “This is a closed set. You’re trespassing. My fiancée needs a real doctor.”

Elias answered with his fist. It caught Noah square in the jaw.

Noah dropped into the mud, one hand clamped over his mouth.

Lily screamed and backed away. Elias watched Noah try to push himself up.

“Stop! You can’t do this.” Lily pulled the thermal blanket around her shoulders. “Do you have any idea who I am? I am Lily Vance. My family will hear about this!”

Elias turned to her. “Vance?” He tapped his watch, and a holographic display opened above his wrist.

“The Vances whose patriarch owes five-point-three million dollars to a casino in Macau?” He swiped to photographs of Lily in designer dresses. Dates and rental tags showed inside the seams, followed by the agency invoices. “Or the family that rented last week’s luxury car for i********: and returned it before the payment cleared?”

Lily stared at the display. The blanket slipped from one shoulder.

The medics lifted me onto a stretcher and carried me toward the helicopter. Noah spat blood into the mud and looked from the Sterling emblem to Elias, then to me.

Elias stopped beside him.

“You left my sister to die for a live feed.”

Noah froze at the word *sister*.

Elias crouched beside him. “Now you’re going to hear who paid for that career you’re so proud of.”