Maggie stood and yanked the pages from beneath the cushion. She had torn the cover, but the rest of the document appeared to be intact. Maybe she should put it back. Maybe he wouldn’t notice the torn cover. On the other hand, she wanted to see what was in the report—and why Ethan might have taken it from her desk.
Maggie considered the options and consequences for one terrifying and seemingly interminable moment. Then she rolled up the document and grabbed the purse she’d tossed onto the base of the hallway coat rack. She tucked the report beneath old wrappers, dried-out pens, her wallet and phone. Then she zipped Ethan’s messenger bag and her purse shut.
Chapter 23
The rest of dinner was excruciating, even more excruciating than the gut bombs Rx tried to pass off as nachos every other Friday. Maggie was sure she’d been in her aerobic zone throughout the meal. Perspiration sprouted like a fine mustache onto her upper lip, and she dabbed daintily with a napkin that twisted in her trembling hands beneath the table.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the report. Or rather, she couldn’t stop thinking about why it had been in Ethan’s bag. He must have taken it from her desk. But why?
After pushing the food around her plate for an hour, Maggie claimed a migraine, put on a brave face when Ethan asked if it was a bad one and asked for a rain check to make up for the truncated date.
As Ethan walked her to the door, his cell phone had begun ringing.
“Who could it be now?”
Maggie flinched. Ethan glanced in the direction of his messenger bag, craning his neck to see the display. Maggie’s pulse hammered at her throat. She felt like the narrator in Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart.” Would Ethan be able to hear the blood tearing through her veins? Hear guilt thundering wild and unchecked through each heartbeat and see the crime of her theft and, worse, her treachery?
The phone continued to ring. “Probably a solicitation,” he said, taking her into his arms. “I’ll let it go to voicemail.”
She let him kiss her, but kept part of herself back. She could feel herself hiding behind the old layers that had kept her from getting too close, too involved. She felt off-balance, not sure what to think or believe.
Fifteen minutes later Maggie stumbled up the steps to her apartment, breathless and shaking from adrenaline. The key to the front door was like a live thing, dancing and bumping around the lock, and she had to use two hands to guide it into the keyhole. Once inside the apartment, she threw the bolt and leaned against the door.
Maggie unsnapped her purse and retrieved the report. She flicked on the overhead light, which illuminated grudgingly from the heart of its eco-friendly bulb, and headed for the kitchen.
She had eaten little at Ethan’s and, despite the mounting nausea, was ravenous. She opened the refrigerator and surveyed the plastic cityscape of bottles, cartons and cans before deciding on frozen burritos with sour cream, guacamole and ketchup.
She opened the report slowly, careful to keep the sloppy mess that was her dinner away from the pages. She intended to see what the hell was in this report and why Ethan had it.
As she was turning to page forty-six, the doorbell rang.
Maggie glanced at her watch. 10:20 pm. Pretty late for an unannounced visitor.
The bell rang again, this time longer. Someone was leaning on the buzzer. She imagined Miles with his fat finger pressed against the doorbell. Maggie swallowed hard and plucked her purse off the counter. She fished out her phone, finger poised to dial people who were paid to care if she were being murdered, and walked cautiously toward the door.
Three sharp raps ricocheted from the other side. Maggie heard herself yelp.
“Maggie?” Constantine called through the door. “It’s me. Hurry up, will ya? Your porch is one mosquito bite shy of a bloodbath.”
Maggie belched out a lungful of air and threw open the door. “What are you doing here?”
Constantine darted inside and slammed the door shut. “My God, it’s like a horror movie out there. Attack of the Killer Mosquitos. I think one of them had a recipe book.”
“Do you know what time it is?” Maggie demanded. “You scared the daylights out of me.”
“Is that more or less than the bejesus? I think it’s one and a half daylights for every bejesus, but I’ve forgotten the conversion.”
He gave her a kiss on the cheek and strode into the kitchen, where he examined the plate on the table. He sniffed deeply at the moist, steaming heap. “Mmm…Burrito Surprise. You shouldn’t have.” He sat and shoveled a forkful into his mouth. “You know, I’m going to tell your dad about your ketchup fetish. It’s an unseemly condiment, especially with your, your…” He gestured with his fork. “Epicurean background. But I’m here on official business.”
“What kind of ‘official business’? And why so late?”
He patted his throat. “Do you have anything to wash this down with? Something in the beerish neighborhood?” He turned in his chair, opened the fridge and plucked out a dark bottle. “Perfect. As I was saying, I’m here to let you know…” He stopped, looking at the stack of paper he was about to use as a coaster. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
Maggie sighed. “Well, sort of.”
Constantine raised his eyebrows and jerked his head toward her bedroom. “Right. Your date. I forgot. Did you bring Aaron here?” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Is that why you cooked this marvelous meal?”
“Ethan, and no,’” Maggie said indignantly. “I was reviewing something.”
“Something…?” He fingered the pages on the table before him.
“Something…I sort of took from Ethan’s bag.”
“Ah, examining ill-gotten gains. How romantic.” He took a long pull on the beer. “So tell me about your detour from romantic date into life of crime. You know the risks, don’t you? Jail time. Paper cuts.”
“I didn’t steal it,” Maggie said hotly. “It was mine to begin with. Well, sort of. It was delivered to my desk, I’m not sure who did it or why, but then it went missing when I chased Mia Rennick into the ladies’ room.”
“What’s so special about it? Looks pretty unspecial to me.” Constantine scratched his forearm. “Dammit. Do you see this? I must have twenty bites here.” He pushed up a sleeve and rotated skin dotted with a constellation of bumps. “I’m like human bubble wrap. Here, feel this.”
Maggie sighed in exasperation. “Just tell me why you’re here.”
“Right after you tell me why this document is so damn important. I mean, it’s gotta be for you to jeopardize…whatever it is you have with international film buff and man about town, Ian.”
“It’s Ethan,” Maggie said sitting at the table. “And I do think it’s important. I’m just not 100 percent sure why.”
“Take a guess. I’m good at bouncing things off of. Minored in it, actually.”
She picked up the small stack of papers and leafed through the document. “Okay, here’s the deal. At first glance, I thought this was a typical ‘proof of concept’ report. Basically, a document that says the drug being developed is affecting the intended target—or disease mechanism—in the intended way. But something’s strange.”
She rummaged through an aptly named junk drawer and grabbed a pen dented with tooth marks. She made a wide circle in the center of the page and tapped at it. “See this? This says the biologic—that’s the compound that they hope will become the approved drug—bonded to and modulated the target in a way that altered the disease.”
“That’s good, right? I mean, that’s the whole idea. Get Compound A to affect Disease B.”
“Right. But get this.” Maggie flipped toward the front of the document and sat next to Constantine. “The target here, on page thirty-two, isn’t the initial target indicated for proof of concept.”
“You lost me,” Constantine said.
“This is wha
t I saw when the report was first delivered to my desk, although I didn’t know that’s what I saw.”
“Still lost. Lost-er, really.”
Maggie scooted closer to Constantine and creased the report open. “In a nutshell, the compound is showing a positive impact on a target. But that target isn’t the one the drug is supposed to alter.”
“Which means the drug-to-be can cure a disease—just not the disease it’s supposed to?”
“Exactly.”
Constantine ripped a paper towel from the roll at the center of the table and wiped his mouth. “Well, that’s not bad, is it? I mean, don’t you get extra credit if you cure a disease you didn’t even set out to eradicate?”
“You’d think so. But someone tried to bury this report—or this section of it.” Maggie turned to the last page. “The recommendation in the conclusion states that the company should pursue the development of the biologic on the intended target but ‘forgo any additional assays into the efficacy—or lack thereof—of the secondary reaction identified during discovery.’”
“Translation?”
“They’re saying to ignore whatever it is the drug is curing because it’s a side effect, not the intended purpose, of the biologic.”
“But why would they do that? And what’s the disease?”
“Good questions.” Maggie got to her feet and began scrolling through her phone. “I’m going to see if I can find out.”
Matt picked up on the first ring. “Maggie, how are ya?”
“I’m great, thanks to your inside tip about the job at Rx, Matt.”
Matt was Maggie’s former lab partner. Tall with white-blond hair, icy eyes and pale skin, he looked like he hadn’t seen daylight in years. Between his commitment to science and video games, Maggie had often wondered if that were true.
“It’s one of the perks of being head dude at Rx’s favorite contract lab. So to what do I owe the pleasure? Sending some stuff my way?”
“Actually, I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
“Anything for the girl who helped me get through clinical pharmacokinetics. Wait. Anything that doesn’t involve spiders or me dressing up like Cher. I had a really bad Halloween in ’09.”
“I’d like you to do some research.” She paused. “Sort of on the sly.”
There was a pause. “Okay. What do you have in mind?”
“I’m going to scan something and email it to you. I want you to tell me if you’ve ever done any work with the biologic indicated, if your records detail what disease it’s associated with and who ordered the workup.”
“You got it.”
“And Matt?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“Don’t worry. And I’ll get right back to you. I don’t have anything else to do. Well, besides work.”
Maggie ended the call. She felt a gnawing in her chest, anxiety trying to eat its way out. Surely she could trust Matt to be discreet. Couldn’t she? Her chest cramped harder.
Maggie got up and scanned three pages from the report with the multifunction printer on her desk and emailed a zipped file to Matt. Then she grabbed Constantine’s arm and dragged him toward her pimp-print couch.
“While we’re waiting to hear from Matt, why don’t you tell me about your official business? You know, the reason you interrupted my very busy evening?”
“Prepare to be impressed,” he said.
“I always am.”
“First of all, I finally connected with Travis at Reincarnated Phones. We can come by basically anytime this week.”
“Good. And?”
“And I’ve been thinking that if Travis can’t tell us who owned the phone before you, he could at least help us recover phone numbers called and received, texts, emails, et cetera. If not in their entirety, maybe partially.”
“That sounds promising.”
“But wait, there’s more. I’ve been thinking that if we figure out the email address of the person who had the phone, we could email a fake spam message to that address. When he opens it, we’ll know which IP he uses. And once I know that, I can call in a couple of favors and get someone to tell me who the account is registered to. You like?”
“I love. What kind of spam do you have in mind?”
Before he could answer, her phone rang. “Matt. What’s the good word?”
“Well, not a lot in the good word department,” Matt said. “I accessed some files through the company extranet, and I have bad news, more bad news and a side of okay news. What do you want first?”
Maggie groaned. “Guess I’ll go with the okay news.”
“I do have a name for the person who ordered the diagnostics. A Zartar…um…Nazarian?”
Maggie got to her feet. She felt something catch in her chest. “Zartar Nazarian? Are you sure?”
“Yep. But the work was later canceled by Miles Montgomery. Much easier to pronounce.”
Maggie chewed her lip and started walking a small circuit around the cramped living room. “Miles Montgomery. Got it.” Her mind began knitting and purling connections. “What’s the bad news and the other bad news?”
“The bad news is that all of the accompanying data, things we typically keep on file, is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yep. Which is not only strange, but also means I don’t know what the target or the biologic are. That’s the other bad news.”
Maggie was silent, thinking.
“Maggie? You there?”
“Yeah, Matt. I’m here. Thanks for all of your help.”
“No problem.”
Maggie stopped pacing and ended the call. She looked at Constantine.
“Get all that?”
“Sounds like a bunch of dead ends.”
She nodded and flopped onto the couch. “Actually, it sounds like Rx is hiding something, and Zartar and Miles are involved. Explains the blowup at work, I guess.”
“Blowup?”
Maggie recounted the fight she overheard.
“Someone’s tired of keeping secrets,” Constantine said. “Question is, what are they?”
Maggie was quiet for a moment. “One way to find out. I’ll ask her.”
He gave her an oh-come-on look. “You seriously think she’ll spill the beans, just like that? Doesn’t seem like they’re eager to send out a press release on whatever it is they’re doing.”
“No,” Maggie agreed, “but it sure sounded like Zartar was ready to move on. I mean, that was the whole tone of the conversation. Maybe she needs another reason—or some help—to get out of whatever she’s in.”
Constantine scratched his five o’clock shadow. “Hope springs eternal.”
“I’ll talk to Zartar in the morning, see what she’s willing to tell me. In the meantime, what do you think about concocting our fake email?”
“Ready when you are.”
They spent thirty minutes crafting an email featuring a fake deal for a Hawaiian vacation. Maggie looked at their handiwork, complete with color photos, a “buy now” button and a link to unsubscribe. “Looks totally legit.”
“Yep. Now all we need is that email address, and we’re in business.”
“We make a good team, Gus. Partners forever?” She extended her pinkie. He wrapped his around it and squeezed.
Constantine rubbed his eyes. The skin below his eyes was tinged with blue thumbprints. “It’s late,” she said, “and you look exhausted. Why don’t you pull up some couch and stay the night?”
Constantine crossed his arms and legs. “Don’t you think your boyfriend might have a problem with me bunking here?”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “He’s not my boyfriend. Even if he were, he knows you’re just a friend.”
Constantine scratched his head and looked at the ceiling. “That’s me
. The just-a-friend.”
Maggie walked to a small closet that functioned as both linen closet and pantry. Behind the peanut butter and cans of chili, she found a pillow, pillowcase and lightweight blanket. “Here.” She threw the linens to Constantine. “Sweet dreams.”
“What, no mint?”
“I think I’m sweet enough.”
“That you are, Mags.”
Chapter 24
Constantine was gone when Maggie woke at five thirty, the house quiet and still. On the kitchen table, he’d left a smiley face made out of Cheerios and a note to call if “something interesting” happened.
Maggie made a cup of instant coffee, swallowed it in three gulps and dressed quickly, choosing a Kelly-green silk halter and slim-fitting gray pants. When she arrived at Rx just after six thirty, the place was a ghost town. The cubicles, a facsimile of shuttered mercantiles and abandoned saloons, made her feel like the planet’s last survivor.
She walked to Zartar’s cubicle, sure her friend wouldn’t be there so early, and was surprised to find her organizing papers, drinking a Diet Mountain Dew and talking on her cell phone. Maggie stared at her, hands on hips.
Zartar swiveled around to face Maggie. She covered the phone with her hand. “What’s up, buttercup?” she asked.
Maggie tossed the file she had taken from Ethan’s bag onto Zartar’s desk. “Tell me about the cure.”
Zartar set down her Diet Dew, opened the folder with a blue-tipped nail and scanned the documents. Her eyebrows drew together in a perfectly groomed line. “I’ll call you back,” she muttered into the phone.
Zartar placed her phone on the table and took a deep pull on her Mountain Dew. “Where did you get this?”
“Someone delivered it to my desk.”
Zartar arched a brow impossibly higher.
“And then took it from my desk,” Maggie continued. “Last night, I found it in Ethan’s bag.”
Zartar’s expression hardened. “Well, isn’t that cozy?”
Protocol Page 16