by Robin Huber
INTO THE BLUE
Copyright © 2020 by Robin Huber
Cover Design by ebooklaunch.com.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also by Robin Huber
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Robin Huber
A Love Like Yours (Book 1 in Love Story Duet)
A Story Like Ours (Book 2 in Love Story Duet)
True North
For Shannon
Chapter 1
Makayla
I don’t have to look at the calendar to know that it’s Thursday. My best friend, Callie, comes by my office every Thursday on her way to meet her husband, Derek, for lunch.
“Hey, hun,” she says, popping her head inside my doorway.
I smile and spin around in my chair to face her. “Hey, Cal.”
She’s a portrait of perfection. Her shiny black bob frames her heart-shaped face and matches the black eyeliner that’s drawn perfectly around her blue eyes. Her creamy skin is flawless and her full lips are painted with a high-shine gloss.
I reach for my vanilla-flavored lip balm and flip my wavy blonde ponytail over my shoulder. “You look like you’re ready to go shopping on Fifth Avenue,” I say, admiring her fuchsia pencil skirt and black patent leather heels, which match the ridiculously expensive purse in her hands.
“I’m married to a Syntec VIP. I have to look the part.” She winks.
Derek Bishop heads up the research and development division of Marc Spencer’s pharmaceutical empire, Syntec. He’s one of Marc’s most trusted advisors. And, while I like to think I landed my job all on my own, Derek helped get me an interview right out of college. Now, I’m a senior financial analyst for Syntec’s New York office.
“Derek’s meeting ran over. Can I hang out with you for a few minutes?”
“Sure, I could use a break. And some company.”
“All the numbers starting to run together?”
“Yes.” I widen my eyes and stretch my arms over my head. “I’ve been working on one of the offshore accounts and for the life of me, I can’t get it to balance.”
“Which account?”
“That’s just it. The account name is classified and the trace numbers on the deposits are all encrypted, so I can’t tie them back to the ODFI.”
“The what?”
“Originating Depositary Financial Institution. Where the money is coming from.”
“Oh.”
“It’s definitely a Mexican account, but that’s about all I’ve got so far.”
“How can you tell?”
“There’s a currency conversion on all foreign deposits and it’s showing Mexican pesos.”
“I didn’t think we were doing business in Central America anymore. Something about the pharmaceutical black market getting really bad. Derek was just talking about it the other day. Dark Pharma, he called it. Said it’s a four hundred billion dollar market—same as narcotic drug trade. Crazy, huh?”
I shake my head. “We’re global. We have accounts all over the world, including Mexico. I’ve just never seen any that were classified, and I can’t think of a reason why any of them would be. We’re publicly traded. We’re supposed to maintain transparency to our shareholders... It’s really odd. Then again, the only reason I’m seeing it at all is because it’s out of balance. My boss always gives me the hard ones. Sometimes it feels like punishment for being good at my job.” I laugh. “I’m supposed to figure it out before the general ledger closes on Friday. But it’s kind of hard to analyze something I can’t see.”
Callie gives me a strained look that reminds me she was an English major. She always hated math and statistics. “Well, lucky for Syntec, you’re not just a pretty face, you’re also smart”—she smiles—“so you’ll figure it out.”
“Thanks.” I laugh. “I’m grateful for your vote of confidence, albeit biased.”
Derek knocks on my open door and walks into my office, looking debonair in his three-piece suit. He’s clean shaven and his dark hair is gelled perfectly into place. Callie gets up from the seat she’s taken on the arm of one of my office chairs and stands beside Derek.
“Ready?” he asks, smiling down at her.
“Yep.”
“Hey, Makayla. You want to join us for lunch?” he asks.
“Oh, I can’t. I’m supposed to have lunch with Jessica Chandler. But thanks for the invite.”
“Marc Spencer’s administrative assistant, Jessica Chandler?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, that’s good. She’s nice,” he says, approving of my lunch date. He and Callie like to take it upon themselves to look out for me, though I’m unsure if it’s because I’m single or because I don’t have any family here.
Or anywhere for that matter.
“Nice to see you making friends, Kay.” Callie winks at me.
“I have lots of friends,” I say, defending my social status.
“I mean girlfriends. You know, the kind who don’t want to take your clothes off,” she whispers, and follows Derek out of my office.
I roll my eyes, but as soon as she and Derek disappear, Jacob Preston walks into my office and closes the door behind him. He leans against it and crosses his arms over his skinny blue tie. He stares at me and the corners of his mouth turn up.
“What is it, Jacob?”
“Come here,” he instructs.
“No.”
He uncrosses his arms and walks across my office until he’s standing in front of my chair. He grabs my hands and pulls me up out of it. “Why are you playing hard to get? Aren’t we past that?”
Jacob is a mistake I made last year in an attempt to fill the void caused by my parents’ untimely death when I was eighteen. Or so says my therapist. I’m twenty-five now and the void is still there.
“I’m seeing someone,” I lie.
“Who?”
“No one you know. He doesn’t work here.”
“I think you’re lying.”
“And if I was, just to get out of sleeping with you again, would you still want me?”
“Baby, I’ll always want you.” He puts his hand on the small of my back and pulls me against him. “You are the Bugatti in my garage.”
I pull my eyebrows together. “The what?”
“Bugatti. It’s a car.”
My face screws up.
“A really nice car. My favorite car.”
“Okay”—I pat
his chest and wriggle out of his arms—“I have to go now. I have a lunch date.”
“With who?”
“None of your business.”
“With who?” he presses.
“Jessica Chandler.” I open my office door and gesture for him to exit.
“I can’t believe you’re going to do this to me,” he groans before he leaves.
“You’ll be okay. I promise.”
Jessica walks into my office with wide eyes as she passes him.
“It’s not what you think.”
She laughs and plops down in a chair. “I don’t know if I can do lunch today. Mr. Spencer has me organizing some files in his office and it’s a mess.”
“Oh, well, that’s okay. It still got me out of lunch with Jacob.”
“Lunch. Is that what you call it?”
“A mistake is what I call it.”
“No judgement here,” she says, holding her hands up. “He’s hot. A little dumb, but hot.”
I laugh and sit down in my chair, swiveling it from side to side. “I just want a real connection with someone. Is that too much to ask for?”
“The love of your life is out there somewhere. He’s just waiting for you to find him.”
I shrug. “I just don’t know where to look.”
“There’s eight million people in this city. Close your eyes, spin around, and point.”
“Do you ever get tired of it?” I ask, wrapping the end of my ponytail around my hand.
“Of what? New York?”
“Yes. The people. The lights. The noise.”
“No. But I grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma. I spent my whole life dreaming of people and lights and noise. I love it.”
“I used to. But I guess the excitement wore off after a while. I never really thought I’d be here this long. I was supposed to go back home after college.”
“Home is...Houston, right?”
“It was. But after my parents died, there really wasn’t any reason to go back. And Callie wanted to stay here with Derek after we graduated, so I stayed too.”
She tucks her straight brown hair behind her ear and asks softly, “How did they die?”
“A car accident. The other driver ran a red light.”
“I’m really sorry.”
I force a small smile over the sadness I pretend not to feel. “It was a long time ago.”
She presses her lips together and bobs her head. “Well, I’m glad you stayed, because I got to meet you. You’re sort of the only other normal person I know in this place.”
I laugh. “You could be right about that.”
“What if we have lunch in Mr. Spencer’s office?” she says, getting to her feet.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say warily.
“He’s not here. It’s fine. I’ll just order something up to his office. You can keep me company while I work.” She grabs my hands and pulls me to my feet. “It’s fine. Come on.”
“All right. But if we get in trouble, it’s your ass.”
She waves me off and leads me out of my office to the bank of elevators, where we’re whisked up to the thirty-seventh floor. The shiny stainless steel doors ping open and Jessica sings, “Penthouse.”
I follow her as she bounces along the white marble hallway, paying no mind to the suits seated around a long mahogany conference table behind a wall of glass. She stops at her desk outside Mr. Spencer’s office and presses a button on her phone. “Hi, Mary. Can you please have lunch for two sent up to Mr. Spencer’s office?” She gives our order and then I follow her into his office.
“Is that what you have to organize?” I ask, pointing to a pile of papers and file folders in the middle of the floor.
“Yes. Mr. Spencer got mad because he couldn’t find a document he was looking for, so he emptied all his file drawers into a lovely pile for me to sort through. Wasn’t that nice of him?” She smiles and bats her lashes.
I step around the pile. “Why does he still have paper files anyway? I thought we went green last year. Shouldn’t everything be stored electronically?”
“You would think so. But I’m just the assistant, I do as I’m told.”
“Where is he anyway?”
“Playing golf. He had a nine-thirty tee time, so he won’t be back until later this afternoon.”
“Why doesn’t he just play there?” I ask, pointing to the putting green in the far corner of his lavish office.
Jessica laughs and bends down to pick up a file off the floor. “Honestly, I don’t know how he expects me to organize this stuff. I barely understand half of it.” She opens the manila folder in her hands and pulls out a document. “Like this. What the heck is Dextrocophene?” She reads from the page, “A semi-synthetic anti-mitotic anti-cancer drug... Failed clinical trials due to adverse effects in humans... Blah, blah, blah.” She rolls her eyes and hands me the paper.
I skim over it until I see an account number at the bottom right corner of the page. “Wait. I know this account. This is the offshore account that I’ve been trying to balance for the last three days.” I quickly scan the document, looking for anything that might help me with my endeavors. “Is there anything else in the folder?”
She pulls out another printed document and hands it to me. “Just this.”
I trace the words on the page with my finger, mouthing them as I read. Xapriomine...risk of liver failure. Promaxiphol...risk of heart attack and stroke. Trimiocine...risk of severe depression and suicide. The list goes on and on. I flip the paper over, finding the account number again, and I drag my finger to the name printed next to it. “Santiago Quintero.”
“What is it?”
“A list of withdrawn drugs...transactions...all tied to this account.”
“And?”
“The account was classified—no name or trace numbers on the transactions—making it impossible to balance. And now I think I know why.” I try to sort through the shock and disbelief as I put the pieces together, while simultaneously trying to validate some other reasonable explanation in my head.
“Why?” Jessica asks impatiently.
“Dark Pharma. I don’t know a lot about it, but apparently the pharmaceutical black market is just as lucrative as cocaine trafficking in Central America.”
Jessica gives me a curious look.
“Basically, bad guys get ahold of expensive pharmaceutical drugs and sell them to people for cheap, or in some cases, like this—I think—get pharmaceutical drugs that can’t be sold here because they were pulled from the shelf.” I look at the paper again and shake my head with disbelief, then disappointment, and ultimately...fear. Syntec—we—sold these drugs illegally. My heart races.
We’re the leading pharmaceutical company in the industry. We’re publicly traded. We’re one of Fortune’s best places to work. And I’m pretty sure I’ve just discovered we’re selling illegal pharmaceuticals to someone in Central America, which happens to be a hub of the pharmaceutical black market. This is not good.
“Jessica, we should go. We shouldn’t be here.”
I have to find Derek.
“I can’t leave,” she says, not grasping the gravity of the situation.
“Jessica, do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?” I ask, holding the paper up in front of her. “This is proof that we’re selling withdrawn drugs. That’s illegal.”
“Why would we sell drugs that were pulled from the shelf?”
“Because not everyone is as scrupulous as the good old FDA,” Marc Spencer says from the doorway of his office.
I stand stock still, frozen by the ice shooting through my veins.
“Those drugs sell for a premium on the black market,” he adds in a calm, deep voice.
“Mr. Spencer, you’re back,” Jessica says, trying to hide the tremble in her voice.
Ignoring her, he turns to me and asks, “And you are?”
I swallow hard and try to keep my voice even. “Makayla Evans. I’m a senior financial analyst. I work on the twe
ntieth floor.” Despite my best efforts, my voice fades to a whisper.
He drops his head from side to side, eying me up and down. “You look familiar.”
“I’ve worked here for four years,” I say, praying he doesn’t remember meeting me at Derek and Callie’s Christmas party last year.
He rubs his wide chin and drops his head. “That’s going to make this more difficult,” he says, running his fingers through his inky black hair.
“Make what difficult?” I ask over the tight feeling in my chest.
I can go without a job...for a while. I still have my inheritance. But what will Jessica do? And what will happen to Derek when Mr. Spencer finds out that we know each other? A thousand thoughts race through my mind at once. “Mr. Spencer, if you could just let us explain. This was an accident. We weren’t trying to cause any trouble. We won’t say anything.”
“Really, Mr. Spencer, this is my fault,” Jessica adds, stepping beside me. “Makayla was just here to keep me company during her lunch break while I worked on getting your files back in order.”
He pulls out his phone and holds it to his ear. “Send up Jones and Murphy. Make it quick. And quiet.” He drops his phone back into his pocket. “Security will see you out.”
“Mr. Spencer, please, I need this job,” Jessica pleads.
“Security?” I say, shocked. “That really isn’t necessary. We’ll leave right now, and we won’t say anything.”
“No, you won’t say anything. I’ll make sure of that.” He chuckles low and deep and I see a sinister side of him that puts a hard lump in my throat. “Really, what would people say if they knew that I, Marc Spencer, Founder and CEO of Syntec Industries, was supplying the Salgado Cartel?”
The word cartel cements my worries in place. “Why? Why would you do that?” I choke out, blinking back tears of shock and fear.
“Revenue streams, of course. It costs millions to make billions, sweetheart. How do you think Syntec became the empire that it is? Through innovation!” he says, throwing his hands in the air. He drops his head and looks at me. “You don’t think I’m a bad guy, do you?” He shakes his head and smiles. “I’m not a bad guy. I work with a few of them. But I’m not a bad guy.”
“How so?” I ask bitterly, looking into his dark eyes.