Elena did not look away from the side of the mahogany cabinet.
Her left hand stayed deep inside her cardigan pocket, her fingers resting against the cold surgical steel of her trauma shears.
In her right hand, she held her compact aluminum penlight.
“At St. Jude’s Hospital, the high-voltage switchgear was kept behind double padlocked wire gates in the sub-basement,” Elena whispered, her eyes fixed on the dark seams of the wood.
“Every maintenance worker had to wear rubber-soled boots and keep one hand behind their back,” Elena remembered quietly. “That way, if current jumped across a spark gap, it couldn’t travel across both arms through the heart.”
“That is standard high-voltage protocol,” Julian said from the front of the desk.
He did not turn his head, keeping his eyes locked on the front jacks.
“At Starlight Mart, we had a similar security hazard with register drawer solenoids,” Julian said quietly. “Dishonest clerks would try to jimmy the back of the cash drawer with copper jumper wires. They tried to bypass the register audit log from behind the counter.”
