Outbreak

by Davis Bunn

  “Tell him to call me next week.”

  “Unfortunately, that will not suffice. Your brother considers this of the utmost urgency—”

  Theo cut the connection, filled his go-cup, and walked around the moving boxes. It felt as though he had become locked away in some legal prison, isolated from everything he held dear. Of course his brother would call. Through a lawyer. Today of all days. Of course.

  Kenneth had called or written from time to time. Until four years ago. That particular conversation had been the week they laid their mother to rest. Theo had been aching from the loss. Kenny, however, had spoken as though the world had not shifted on its axis. Which was exactly how her passing felt to Theo. Instead, Kenny had started gloating over his latest acquisition. A yacht, a house, a business acquisition, something. At first, Theo could not actually believe what he was hearing. Kenny had bragged in his usual offhand manner. The winner displaying his latest prize. Only this time, Theo had hung up on him. And never accepted another of Kenny’s calls after that. He had marked his brother’s email as spam. It was easier that way. Theo had slept better as a result.

  Which was why Theo filed the attorney’s phone call away. Doing his best to forget an interruption he definitely did not need. Not then.

  Theo was not someone who normally gave in to regret. He was by nature a man who found contentment in the day. But as he locked his front door and headed for his car, he could not help but wish that he and Harper had never gone into business for themselves. Until he’d been bitten by the start-up bug, Theo had been content with his life as a college professor. He was good at his job. He managed to make economics interesting. The student body had granted him the Best Professor Award five years straight.

  But here it was, the second week of June, and he had only recently gotten around to grading the final exams. The academic dean had actually threatened Theo with loss of tenure. He had missed the last three required faculty meetings. He was late with two papers due for publication. He had not hiked in months. The entire spring had passed unnoticed. His life was a complete mess.

  All for this. So he could drive downtown. And enter the city’s main courthouse, and join his best friend, and wait their turn in front of the bankruptcy judge.

  Theo was seated in the courthouse’s third-floor corridor. The wooden bench was incredibly uncomfortable, but it was better than being inside the courtroom, where a couple wept their way through losing everything. Next to him sat Harper, his attorney and the ex-company’s ex-vice-president. Harper was ten years older than Theo’s thirty-seven.

  Harper’s mother was Hispanic, her father African American. Her skin was the shade of sourwood honey, and she balanced her strength with a gentle spirit. Harper’s late husband, Grant, had been Theo’s closest friend in the world. They had hiked, camped, trekked, climbed, and dreamed of taking on the trails of five continents. Then, four years ago, Grant had been felled by a heart attack.

  No one had any idea he carried a congenital defect, not even their doctor, until Grant was gone.

  “Know what I’ve been thinking?” Harper leaned her head against the painted concrete wall. The overhead fluorescents accentuated the tragic cast to her features. “Something a client once told me. Back when I was young and bulletproof. That bankruptcy feels like a small death.”

  Theo had no idea how to respond. Then he was saved from possibly saying the wrong thing by the ringing of his phone. He pulled it from his pocket, read the screen, and said, “Unbelievable.”

  “More bad news?”

  “In a way.” Theo rejected the call, sending it to voicemail. But Harper was watching him, so he said, “It’s a woman I fell in love with once. We haven’t spoken in years.”

  Harper clearly liked having something other than their troubles to focus on. “Why not?”

  “My brother married her.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “He actually flew her away in his Gulfstream.”

  Harper’s grin came slowly. Like she had to remember how to smile. “Why am I only hearing about this now?”

  “What, you don’t have any skeletons in your secret closet?”

  “Fine. Forget I asked.” When Theo’s phone rang again, Harper said, “Is it her?”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “Put it on speaker.”

  “No.” Theo rejected the call again and pocketed the phone. “This is low even for Kenny.”

  Harper asked, “Your brother the billionaire is reaching out to you through his wife?”

  “He tried using a lawyer this morning. That didn’t work either.” Theo liked giving Harper a reason to smile. So he added, “Officially, Kenny’s holdings haven’t crested the billion-dollar mark yet. Fortune magazine puts him at just over eight hundred and fifty million.”

  “From where I’m sitting, that’s close enough.”

  Theo nodded. “I’m really sorry for bringing you down like this.”

  “For the record, none of it is your fault.”

  Her words helped, and so did her genuine concern. “You’re a pal.”

  “And don’t you forget it.”

  Their idea had been a good one. Great, in fact. Although Asheville was the commercial hub for all the eastern Appalachians, it remained underserved by most wholesale distributors. The reasons were clear enough. Travel was restricted to a couple of major thoroughfares. Companies located off the interstates were hard to get to and, in the winter, often cut off by bad weather. Most of the local companies were small and family-owned. Theo’s idea had come from a conversation following a faculty meeting. A professor from the biology department had described how it was cheaper for his department to buy their equipment from Sam’s Club rather than order it through the local wholesaler. So Theo and Harper started a regional distribution company to supply doctors’ offices, labs, clinics, and small county hospitals. Their operation was to be partly owned by all the groups they supplied. If they profited, so did the locals. Simple.

  It worked great for all of eighteen months. Then the largest regional distributors realized they were losing customers. Both came after Theo’s group with paring knives—slashing prices, offering free transport, and doing everything they could to crush this new competition. They had deep pockets, while Theo’s group did not. The big guys won.

  When Theo’s phone chimed with an incoming message, Harper’s smile resurfaced. “Don’t tell me.”

  Harper’s grin reminded Theo of better days. “None other,” he replied, and held the phone where she could read the text message.

  She read the one-word message out loud, “‘Please’? That’s it?”

  Theo pocketed the phone again. “Apparently so.”

  “Please what?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  Harper leaned back against the gray concrete. “What’s her name?”

  “Amelia.”

  “So. You and Amelia. She broke your heart. And it takes a visit to the commercial morgue for me to hear about it.”

  Having an almost-normal conversation with his best friend, here in this place, after all they’d been through over the past season, made it easy to say, “There was never a me-and-her. We met, she wowed me, she married the other guy, end of story.”

  “You never got over Ms. Amelia?”

  “It’s not like that at all.”

  “So why haven’t you spoken with her before now?”

  “Because of Kenny.”

  “Your brother the almost-billionaire.”

  “Right. Kenny and I haven’t spoken for four years.”

  “Until his attorney called you this morning.”

  “Right.”

  Harper was fully engaged now. “What happened the last time you two spoke?”

  “Long story. It was at our mother’s funeral.”

  “So why now?”

  “You’d have to ask Kenny. I won’t.”

  Harper crossed her arms, a mischievous glint in her eyes, and music in her
words now. “Am I finally learning why it is you’re still single?”

  “Of course not. Don’t be silly. I almost got married to . . .”

  Harper loved how he couldn’t remember the woman’s name. Just loved it. “Gloria.”

  “Right. Her.”

  “I never liked the woman.”

  “You mentioned that. Several times.”

  “Grant wanted to celebrate when she broke off your engagement and took that job in California. Fire up the grill, open a few bottles of champagne, invite the neighbors, the whole deal.”

  Theo recalled his best friend trying to be sympathetic over a woman he had detested. He was still trying to find a suitable reply when Harper said, “You’re a good man, Theo Bishop. And you deserve better.” Then her own phone chimed. Harper pulled it out, said, “The judge wants to see me. No, you stay where you are. I’ll let you know when it’s our turn before the firing squad.”

  Twenty awful, endless minutes passed before the courtroom door creaked open and Harper emerged. Her features were angled sharp as a living dagger. The last time Theo had seen her so riven by emotions had been at Grant’s funeral. All the dread and resignation their conversation had managed to push away now came rushing back. Theo forced himself to his feet.

  Harper said, “There have been developments. I don’t know how to put this in a way that makes any sense.” She took a long breath. “The case against our firm has been dismissed.”

  Theo was glad the bench was there to catch him. “What?”

  “The judge and I just spoke with the attorneys representing the banks. As of nine-thirty this morning, all outstanding debts against us and our company have been repaid in full.”

  “How?”

  “No idea. The bank’s attorneys showed up with their scalpels sharpened.” Harper turned as the courtroom door creaked open again. “Heads-up, here they come.”

  The four lawyers exiting the room populated Theo’s worst nightmares. They passed the bench in a tight cluster, refusing to meet their gazes.

  “Counselors,” Harper said. When they ignored her, she watched them proceed down the hall and told Theo, “They’ve spent weeks preparing to carve our lives apart. Now look at them. Ain’t it a crying shame?”

  Crying was exactly what Theo felt like doing. “I don’t understand.”

  “That makes two of us.” Her voice had gone as shaky as Theo’s hands. “Take a few days. We need to think carefully about how we should move forward. Those big boys out East aren’t just going to tuck tail and walk away. Which means we need to work out a new set of tactics.”

  Theo leaned back against the wall. Breathed in and out. “This has to be Kenny’s doing.”

  Harper stared at him. “From the way you described him, I figured Kenny would only cross the street if there were a dollar drifting down the sidewalk.”

  “That pretty much sums him up. The money to clear our debts, what were the terms?”

  “I’m telling you, there were no strings attached.”

  “So maybe we just haven’t heard what the real cost will be,” Theo said. “You’ll get back to your office and meet a new set of scalpels.”

  Harper’s head was shaking before Theo finished speaking. “It doesn’t work that way. It can’t. The money came free and clear. Our financial records are completely clear. Our company is our company. There was nothing to sign.”

  Theo had no idea what to say.

  Harper went on, “Whoever cleared our debts can’t turn around and say, ‘No, wait, actually I want two pints of your blood.’ The money was simply paid into our corporate accounts. Then the bankers informed their lawyers and the judge that our company is solvent again.”

  He looked at Harper and tried to form words, but they would not come. What he thought was, this couldn’t have been his brother’s work. It was simply impossible.

  Then his phone chimed with another incoming message.

  Theo’s hands were so unsteady, he almost dropped the phone while pulling it from his pocket. The message was the same as before. One word.

  Please.

  three

  While they were still seated there in the courthouse corridor, Theo called the Washington attorney and agreed to meet his brother at their family’s former vacation home. Harper sat to Theo’s right, talking with somebody in Washington, trying to get the lowdown on Kenny’s smooth-talking attorney.

  Theo’s thoughts continued their jumbled meandering until Harper thanked someone, slipped her phone into her pocket, and said, “Preston Borders is a genuine mover and shaker. Senior partner at Borders and Blowfeld. Boutique firm, only eleven partners. K Street address, which is where Washington’s power brokers plant their flags.”

  “That sounds like someone Kenny would hire.” Theo studied his attorney and friend. Harper’s eyes brimmed with tears and something more. Fear and hope in equal measure. Theo asked, “It’s really over?”

  “As far as the court is concerned, our new future starts now.” Harper settled her shoulder against the wall. “Can you give me a handle on your brother? I’ve read the news articles. Some of them, anyway. When you and Grant used to talk about him, I would shiver, thinking how you could be related to somebody that, well . . .”

  “Awful,” Theo said. “A bloodless carnivore whose only interests were in beating everybody else to the next pot of gold.”

  “Strange way to describe our white knight.”

  Theo nodded slowly. “Something’s going on. Either that or . . .”

  “Tell me.”

  “What do you call that thing when a person’s body is taken over by something else?”

  “Spooky, is what.”

  Theo stared at the opposite wall. Kenny’s image was so clear, his brother might as well have been standing there in the hall with them. “Kenny lives to win. He got his start buying defunct companies, picking them apart, selling what he could for a profit, and then moving on. At age twenty-five, Kenny was worth nine million dollars. His big break came two years later.”

  “The pharmaceutical company,” Harper said. “I read about that.”

  “Kenny sank every penny he had into the acquisition. When he came home and bragged about his latest purchase, our parents urged him to walk away. ‘Making money from other people’s misery,’ was how they put it. Kenny grew furious over how they refused to be taken in by his intensity and his drive and his sales pitch. The opioid epidemic wasn’t even a thing then. But Kenny was there at the very start, and it made him rich.”

  Harper nodded. “I recall the press accusing him of being behind one of the companies feeding the drug mills.”

  “I saw that too. Kenny sold the group not long after that article came out. He made a fortune.”

  “Then he bought another company, right?”

  “Yes. Vaccines and immunology. Cutting-edge research.”

  Harper stood. “Let’s get out of here. I need to go breathe some free, clean air. Theo, you’re coming to dinner tonight. And all you get to bring is an appetite.”

  four

  Theo left Asheville and headed west by south. He spent most of the journey experimenting with the idea of freedom. Stretching his wings. Imagining a summer that might include something adventurous. Theo decided he would like that. Taking the sort of calculated high-octane risk he and Grant used to spend months planning.

  Theo had not been on a major hike since the death of his best friend. He had joined other buddies on treks through familiar territory. But new and challenging journeys were easy to put off. There was work, and the city council, and invitations to speak at conferences, and a book, and so forth. Then he and Harper had started the business, and after that there just was not time. When disaster had started looking like a very real prospect, this was what Theo had regretted most. Letting life get in the way of his next adventure.

  Theo left the interstate at the Fairview exit, something he had not done in several years. Fairview had once been a tiny farming hamlet. But that was before devel
opers had reshaped two valleys, a lake, and the surrounding hills into the region’s most exclusive development. Fairview Estates held three golf courses, two hundred homes, and a tennis stadium that hosted an annual pro tournament. The estates’ wealth had transformed the neighboring town into a glitzy open-air market with cobblestone streets and shops from all over the globe. None of this had existed when Theo’s parents had purchased their property, of course. His father had been a high school principal, while his mother had taught math at Charlotte Community College. They loved to hike and had come upon this land their first year of marriage. The nation had been recovering from a real-estate recession, and no one was interested in buying property this far off the beaten trail. Theo’s parents had paid four and a half thousand dollars for thirty acres, most of which were too steep to build on.

  Theo still cherished his memories of the cabin his parents had renovated and expanded. The original structure with its clay-chinked logs had served as his parents’ bedroom. They loved to tell stories of those first years, spending summers without electricity or indoor plumbing. Theo’s happiest memories had been shaped by his time here. But after his parents died, he had not visited the place in over a year. Then Kenny had offered far above the market value for Theo’s share, and paid cash. Soon after, Theo heard his brother had torn down the cabin and was building a place that suited his monumental ego. Theo had not been back since.

  Theo had never understood his older brother. Growing up, Kenneth had been coldly indifferent toward him. They were seven years and an entire universe apart. Kenny’s defining trait had been his competitiveness. Theo had never been frightened by his brother, but competition had always meant something entirely different to Kenny. Sports, scholastics, games—they were all fun to Theo. But even as a child, Theo sensed his brother had no idea what that word meant. Fun. Kenny’s only pleasure came from winning. Nothing else seemed to matter.

  The Washington lawyer had given him the access code to the main gates, which also shut off the home’s security system. Theo decided to park his car on the road. His battered Jeep Cherokee did not belong on this property. He was the interloper here, the visitor on a temporary pass.