On the 10:15 PM night ferry across Casco Bay, a biomedical courier dies inside a locked sedan wearing a Mercer Cove Clinic triage wristband stamped with nurse Clara Vance's personal override code.
Two weeks after clearing her family in the Thorne boathouse investigation, pediatric triage nurse Clara Vance is pulled onto the sleet-swept ferry deck by Detective Mara Sato. Inside the dead courier's car is a crushed potassium chloride ampoule labeled PROTOCOL ZERO—and an encrypted audio file of Mara's sister gasping inside Triage Bay 4 three minutes before her death was ruled a natural cardiac arrest.
When regional Chief Medical Officer Dr. Callum Reid suspends Mara, targets Clara's nursing license, and detains Clara's teenage son under a fabricated hospital hold, Clara and Mara uncover a ghost-waveform telemetry device broadcasting fake heartbeats while witnesses flatline. With a November gale closing Casco Bay, Clara has until midnight to breach Beacon Health's offshore island clinic on Cushing Ledge before the last surviving witness is silenced forever.
Packed with authentic hospital forensics, family-in-danger tension, and relentless coastal atmosphere, Protocol Zero is a standalone-friendly medical mystery and Book 2 in The Mercer Cove Thrillers series.
