by Cherry Adair
Her head itched beneath the wig, but she was afraid that the second she took it off, the police would drive by, recognize the hair she was so damned vain about, and arrest her on the spot. She settled for trying to scratch her scalp through the netting cap. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Try the beginning.”
“You have to promise to listen, without judging or jumping on the defensive. Can you do that?” She waited several hard, thumping heartbeats for him to nod, then drew in a steadying breath. It felt as though she’d been scared forever. “Odd things were happening in the lab several years ago—”
“When we were together?” His features hardened almost immediately. “And you didn’t happen to mention it at the time?”
He’d been working his ass off to get Maguire Security off the ground, traveling a lot. She hadn’t wanted to whine to her new lover about a situation at work that was an irritation more than anything else. “My work was classified, and what was happening wasn’t alarming,” she explained evenly, “just odd. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Notes went missing, then the file would suddenly show up in an unsecured location. It was as if we had poltergeists—”
He shook his head. “Come on.”
“I’m not saying there were ghosts, Rand. It’s a figure of speech.” She swallowed. “We’d finished all the trials and blind studies for DL6-94—keep going northeast. We’d all worked so hard on this drug. It was going to revolutionize antidepressants, which haven’t changed much in ten years. The greatest SSRI and SNRI combination on the market.”
Rand took the next turn. Traffic in this part of town was lighter. Dakota kept checking the rearview mirror. It was impossible to tell if anyone was following them or not. It was nerve-wracking.
Rand reached out and flipped her visor back into position. “We can both do that, or you can relax. I’ve got it,” he said. Strange comfort, but … Dakota took a deep breath, oddly comforted nonetheless. “Keep talking,” he added.
“The side effects were too severe.” That came out on a rush. Folding her arms over her chest, she sank back into the seat, trying to organize her spiraling thoughts. “We worked on ninety-four different formulas, and had six different trials. The very chemicals we were so excited about were the same chemicals that produced the most profound side effects—euphoria, total lack of inhibition. Not just the aphrodisiac properties, but off-the-charts highs and lows of emotion. Intense, homicidal anger, fear, or grief.”
“One fucking hardworking antidepressant.”
He was being facetious, but at least he was still listening. Dakota wiped one hand down the leg of her jeans. She felt as though she were precariously balanced on one foot on a high wire. This was the first time he’d heard her side of the story, and there was a relief in telling him the truth. Or as much as she could right now.
“It worked incredibly well as a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. The downside, obviously, was that it was extremely habit-forming, accumulated in the body, and therefore was lethal after only a few doses. We worked hard to refine it, to lessen its aggressive edge—”
“You didn’t think, ‘Hey, people could die’?”
She winced. “The amount of effort that goes into any new drug isn’t a new thing, Rand. These difficulties happen more than you think, and there are so many useful drugs that begin life as more dangerous versions of themselves. All they need is time to fix them.”
He said nothing. Disgusted, maybe. But then, he refused to even take an aspirin for a headache.
She couldn’t completely blame him. Dakota had let herself get carried away. Lulled by the promise of a new dawn for the depressed and the hopeless.
She sighed. “The FDA, of course, didn’t approve even the version that we thought might pass. It was a devastating blow to all of us who’d worked on various aspects of it for years.”
Dakota curled her legs under her. It was easier to talk to Rand when he wasn’t looking at her, but with the lights from the dash she could look her fill. The car was a quiet cocoon with just the sound of the tires on the pavement.
She saw Rand’s gaze flick to the rearview mirror, then the side mirror, and then relax a little more. “No pharmaceutical company is going to produce a drug that’s both highly addictive and a guaranteed death warrant. Particularly Rydell, which was already having financial problems because of a lawsuit dragging through the courts for ten years. Not to mention that the drug was unstable in high temperatures and extremely unstable at altitudes over one thousand feet. Impossible to transport by air. No distribution, even if it weren’t all of the above as well, equals no funding.”
“All that work for an unusable product?”
“Yes. Unusable for our application anyway.” She rubbed her forehead under the faux bangs and settled into the angle between the seat back and the door. “The aphrodisiac qualities were perfect for a street drug, though. It had everything a user could want, and they’d keep coming back for more. One of many reasons we couldn’t go any further with our trials. Rydell wasn’t in the business of making street drugs, no matter how lucrative they are.”
“The company invested a lot in it, and you’re saying that Rydell had money problems?”
Dakota hadn’t talked about any of the details with Rand, although at the time they’d been seeing each other. Rydell had all its chemists sign a nondisclosure agreement. What they worked on in the lab was strictly on a need-to-know basis, with small groups working on different aspects or different formulas for the same potential new drug. “They spent billions on all sorts of drugs, not just—”
Running out of patience, he snapped, “Cut to the chase.”
“The formula and everyone’s notes were gathered and destroyed. It was a major production. Everything that they wiped, shredded, or otherwise deleted was recorded and verified. Nothing was left of the original formula—it was too dangerous.”
He gave the station wagon more gas as the streets became less congested. “Yet here we are, two years later, with someone producing, according to your expert opinion, the exact same shit.”
“Yeah. Also in my expert opinion, I’ve been spied on for at least five weeks now. Maybe more. They’ve been in my house, several times. My garbage has been gone through a dozen times. My computer at home hacked, and my iPad stolen… .”
He swore under his breath. “What did the Seattle PD have to say?”
“They looked into the break-ins. They took my statements. They told me it was probably kids. I hadn’t worked at Rydell for years and it didn’t even cross my mind that my break-ins were related.” She rubbed her face wearily. “Until Zak Stark told me what happened at your client’s wedding.”
He ran his hand over his jaw, and shot her a quick glance. “What am I missing? I don’t see the correlation.”
This was the tricky part. Zak’s call hadn’t come as a complete surprise. Weird stuff had been happening for weeks beforehand. “The police found my iPad a week after it was stolen. I didn’t tell them this, but all of the team’s notes from Rydell were on it.”
SEVEN
Rand took out his phone, holding it against the steering wheel. He shrugged at Dakota’s bold statement. “So you forgot to delete them.” He checked the fuel gauge as they hit Autopista 7 traveling north. It was possible their destination was Paris. He keyed in a quick text to Ham, telling him to rendezvous in Paris ASAP. If their final destination wasn’t the city itself, Ham would at least be able to backtrack and meet him somewhere in the middle.
“No,” she told him flatly and with utmost conviction, yanking off the wig and running her fingers through her hair to release the tantalizing fragrance of lemon and warm woman. “None of the data was ever on my personal computer or on my iPad. I had the latest model, Rand, that model came out only last year—how could I put any data on it?”
At the look he shot her, she lifted her chin, stiffening. “And I didn’t steal the data myself only to leave it, like an idiot, on my iPad two years l
ater. The penalties for stealing intellectual property are steep. Stealing Rydell’s formula falls under the Economic Espionage Act. Not only a hefty financial fine but years in prison. Someone put it there. Someone is setting me up.”
Clearly. His radar had been on alert since she started talking about the past.
A couple of weeks before the lab explosion, his father, on his second honeymoon in Italy, was arrested for the murder of Rand’s mother. Rand had flown to Rome as soon as he got word. He and his father always had a complicated relationship, and God only knew, given his father’s propensity for struggling against the—what he called—tyranny of his wife’s tight-fisted hold on the purse strings, Rand had arrived in Italy believing the worst. But after talking to his father at length and hearing from his attorneys, Rand knew his mother’s death, while tragic, had not been his father’s fault.
Her death devastated both his father and Rand. He’d had a close relationship with his mother. Paul Maguire was a lot of things, but he had loved his wife in his own co-dependent way. He’d stayed with her through her severe bouts of chronic depression, which hadn’t been easy. Rand gave the man props for sticking by the woman he loved through some very bad times.
They’d both put a lot of their hope into Rydell Pharmaceuticals’ new drug, and his father had worked night and day with the team, trying to perfect it through each necessary, painstakingly slow phase.
Dakota had been the one to give a month’s supply of the drug to his father for the duration of the trip. She’d told him it was the batch number that had the fewest side effects. The one, she assured him, that was moments away from FDA approval.
After the tragedy, when Rydell had been thrown to the wolves in the press, Dakota had vehemently denied sending the drug to Paul in Italy, and refused to testify on his father’s behalf. At first, Rand had been stunned by her refusal to own up to her mistake. Then he’d been furious. He’d called her from Italy and broken it off with her. He hadn’t given a flying fuck about a purchased wedding dress, or deposits to anybody. His mother was dead, his father in prison. He’d been in no mood to be fucking reasonable.
The explosion in the lab a few weeks later had been a mere footnote to his life at the time. He knew people had been killed, and he’d known Dakota wasn’t one of them. She’d been fired by the lab, which was throwing its support behind Paul Maguire, and wasn’t permitted back on the premises. Other than that, he didn’t give a damn what she’d done afterward, or since.
What would anyone gain by putting those lab notes on her iPad? Especially since no one but Dakota even knew they were on her device? “Do you suspect anyone?”
She shook her head. “I’ve racked my brain. Obviously it has to do with Rapture suddenly coming on the market.” Her pale eyes gleamed in the light from an oncoming car. “We have a timeline and we’re on the clock. When we find whoever is responsible for the wedding and the bank, he’ll lead us straight to whoever is manufacturing the product.”
“And you plan on doing what, Dakota? Confronting the people who anticipate making billions of dollars from the sale of this drug? You’re out of your mind. Entire countries can’t put a dent in the drug trade, and you want to tackle this on your own? With that little toy gun you brought?”
“I’m the only one who can get all the way to the top of this particular food chain,” she said stubbornly. “All I have to do is tell them I can stabilize the drug.”
His heart skipped even though he had no reason to care. “You’re insane.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. But they might know, or certainly will soon, that they have a problem if they want to sell it to anyone wanting to move it in bulk from here back to the States, or if they want to sell it to terrorists.”
“How so?”
“The formula is unstable at high altitudes. Unless they want to truck it, ship it, or use a low-flying hot air balloon, they aren’t going to be able to transport it great distances. Additionally, terrorists won’t be capable of using it from the air.”
“Bullshit. If it has a stability problem, they can manufacture it wherever they need it.” Something about Dakota’s explanation, something about her demeanor and tone of voice, made every receptor in Rand’s brain flash a warning.
“True. And maybe they will. But that’s all I have to offer them at the moment.”
“Can you stabilize it?”
“No. It can’t be done. But they wouldn’t know that, because I was one of the few people working on that wrinkle,” Dakota said flatly. “Someone from that team must be here in Europe, maybe putting out feelers to buyers. What if the people we’re tracking are two sales reps? We’re …” She checked the GPS in her hand. “We’re making good time. We’re only three hours behind this one. If you have someone you trust to follow the other lead, call him. If not, I’ll follow the leads one at a time.”
“I thought we weren’t trusting anyone?”
“We?”
He gritted his teeth, feeling as if he were making a deal with the devil, and gave a single nod.
“You know your men,” Dakota said, her voice tired. “Pick whomever you’d trust with your life.”
Rand pulled out his phone and speed-dialed a number with his thumb, keeping both hands on the wheel. He called Ligg, because Ham would already be on his way to Paris. Dakota gave him her secret GPS coordinates and the speed at which the target was moving. Ligg and a small team would fly to a likely destination, and Dakota would provide updated coordinates while en route. If they got lucky, the guy would stop and she’d be able to give Ligg the exact location. If not, Ligg would continue to tail him, with Dakota’s aid.
Rand disconnected. “We might as well use this time to text the drug information to the doctors in Monte Carlo so they can complete testing,” he mused. “The guests are scheduled to go home tomorrow, and the family insisted on sending the newlyweds on to their honeymoon a few hours ago.”
“What about Brett Sing?” Her tone was carefully neutral. Was it a trick of the light, or was her gaze eerily haunted?
“They’ll need to keep his body for testing,” Rand said grimly. “The least the newlyweds can do is take a few days away. Come to terms.”
She nodded. “Give me the phone. I’ll write the text.”
Rand waited the ten minutes it took Dakota to input the necessary information, then had her send the info to his team at the hotel to pass on to the doctors.
“You’re delusional, you know,” he told her flatly, his gaze going from the fuel gauge to the next exit. “These people murdered seventeen people in the bank today. The drug rep would take away your little popgun as easily as I did.” He cocked his finger and held it to her temple. “Bang. Lady, you’re dead.”
“I won’t be distracted.”
“You won’t have to be distracted. They’ll kill you anyway.”
“Believe me, once our guy contacts the head honcho and tells him I can fix the transportation issue, they won’t kill me.” She seemed very sure.
Then again, so was he.
“They will when you can’t deliver. This is an insanely risky idea, Dakota.”
She shrugged, as if losing her life meant nothing in the scheme of things. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe she was so far gone this time she had nothing left to lose. And a hell of a lot to gain if she fell in with the manufacturers of this drug, he reminded himself unnecessarily.
“But it’ll work. We keep working our way up the food chain until we reach the top.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said abruptly. “We’ll find him and keep a safe distance until I see exactly who and what we’re dealing with. But when we do”—he sent her a serious glare—“you let me do the talking, and let me take him to the authorities. If he’s willing to kill seventeen people to see how the drug works, and one more just to cover his tracks, he’s willing to kill anyone who gets in his way. Deal?”
She bit the corner of her lip. “Maybe it’s a she.”
Yeah, he thought darkly. Maybe it is a she.
PARIS.
They’d switched cars a hundred miles south of Paris, then again near dawn as they neared the outskirts of the city. They traveled all night at breakneck speeds, only stopping when absolutely necessary.
“I don’t know about you,” Dakota told him, barely glancing around as they passed under the illuminated Arc de Triomphe and drove along the Champs-Élysées, the black sky lightening to navy over the rooftops, “but I’m seven steps beyond exhausted. I don’t know how you can function on no sleep.”
“I took a power nap at the last rest stop.” And let her sleep for a full hour when he saw how pale and sleepy-eyed she was. He’d driven almost a hundred miles blind to give her that necessary rest.
He couldn’t give her much longer, since she was the only one who knew where the hell they were going. At first she’d tried talking to stay awake, but he’d told her several hundred miles back that he preferred not to chat while driving. Having to listen to her soft breathing was distraction enough.
“I need at least a couple more hours of sleep before I go on. If you even suggest another energy drink, I might throw up.” She grimaced. “In fact, I can guarantee it.”
“Look, we made good time,” he told her. “Closed the gap. But if we take more than a pit stop now, we risk being a step behind again.” Rand was reluctantly impressed with Dakota’s tracking ability. He didn’t understand how it worked, but it did. She might be full of crap about a lot of things, but he was beginning to trust her on the one thing that was important right now.
He didn’t want to stop, although exhaustion weighed down his eyelids, and his muscles felt shaky. He’d been awake for almost seventy-two hours. Not just awake but on high alert. The two long road trips, back to back, didn’t help. He was an active guy, and sitting in a car for hours on end was exhausting in itself.