Chapter 4 - The Unboxing
"Yes, that's mine," Dana sighed, rolling her eyes as she stepped through the metal detector. "I have a laptop in there, I already took it out."
"Step over to the secondary screening table, please," the supervisor instructed.
Mark was frozen on the other side of the checkpoint. He couldn't move. The color drained from his face until he looked like a wax figure. He knew exactly what was happening, and he knew he had absolutely no control over it.
The supervisor unzipped Dana's tote. He bypassed her makeup bag. He bypassed the cashmere scarf. He reached the bottom and pulled out the tape-sealed brown box.
"What is this?" the supervisor asked.
Dana frowned, her perfectly manicured nails tapping against her coffee cup. "I have no idea. I've never seen that before. It must be Mark's, he was watching my bags."
The supervisor took a box cutter from his belt and sliced through the brown packing tape. He folded the cardboard flaps back.
Inside were hundreds of small, pristine glass vials and tightly wrapped foil patches.
I recognized the Hollis-Med logo on the foil. They were pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl patches and liquid morphine vials—highly restricted medical inventory. Mark wasn't just a regional sales manager. He was diverting narcotics from his hospital accounts and using his company trips to Chicago to fence them. And he had planned to use his "boring, library-bubble" wife as the blind mule to transport a felony across state lines.
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"Sir, we need a police officer at Lane 4," the supervisor barked into his radio.
Dana dropped her coffee. It splattered across the gray linoleum. "Wait! I swear to God that isn't mine! Mark put it there! Mark packed it!"
