The van shuddered. The engine engaged the axle, axle engaged wheels, and the van sped out of the garage, leaving Ethan sprawled on the oil-stained ground.
Maggie stared at him in her rearview mirror. He had scrambled to his hands and knees. He stared after them, his eyes drilling across the widening distance, piercing into hers.
Maggie flopped against the van’s gray leatherette seat. The aftershocks of adrenaline rolled through her body, sparking tremors in every nerve.
Constantine’s head flicked her way. “Are you hurt?” No response. He reached over the gray peninsula of the van’s center console and squeezed her hand. “Maggie?”
Maggie shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said finally. She looked out the window. Hooded street lights marked their passage, tiny flying saucers suspended on tall metal stalks. “It’s just…everything. Zartar. The police. The reminders. Ethan.” She cast a sidelong glance to gauge his reaction. He looked straight ahead. “I guess part of me kept hoping I was wrong about him,” she said more to herself than him. “That everything would end up being a misunderstanding. I don’t know why I liked him. I guess I liked that someone like him would pay attention to someone like me.”
Constantine swung his head around and looked at her incredulously. “Someone like you?” He gave her hand another squeeze. “You mean someone amazing? Someone who’s beautiful and smart and funny and knows all the lines from Vacation? Don’t sell yourself short, Mags. You are the most incredible woman I’ve ever known.”
Maggie looked at him, surprised by the passion in his voice. She opened her mouth to reply, but he interrupted.
“I’m thinking this might be a good time to call the police,” Constantine said.
Maggie set her jaw. “Absolutely not.”
“But isn’t that why we gathered all of that evidence and risked our lives? Or was that just for funsies?”
“Yes. I mean no. I mean…” Maggie closed her eyes. “Yes, we need evidence, but I don’t think we should go to the police. I’m a suspect in Zartar’s murder—and possibly Mia Rennick’s.”
“You’re not a suspect. More like a person of interest.” He said it as if this were an inconsequential annoyance.
Maggie shook her head vehemently. “They’ll arrest me or detain me, giving Miles and God knows who else time to bury the evidence. Then they’ll start all over again, testing and killing, while I rot in some cell.”
Constantine sat quietly for a moment. “Okay. What about this: we go back to my place, comb through the van, figure out what kind of evidence we have, then go to the press.”
Maggie shook her head again. “No good. Ethan saw you. He must have. He’ll find out where you live and come looking for us before we can match up Conspiracy A with Evidence B. A guy like that has resources, and he won’t stop until he gets what he wants.”
“You know, I’m really getting tired of that guy spoiling our fun.” He drove in silence, his mouth set in a hard line. “If we can’t go to your place or mine, let’s go to your dad’s. Ethan doesn’t know your dad.” He paused. “Or did you take him home to meet the family?”
“No,” she shot back, knowing she sounded defensive. “I didn’t take Ethan home. But it’s not like Pop’s hard to find.” She pictured Pop changing out the parmesan shakers, bad guys lying in wait outside the restaurant.
Maggie watched the city bump along outside her window, the gray and brown lumps of buildings nestling the dawn sky as the sun’s first rays tentatively reached across the land. A new day. Another chance. “I have an idea,” she said at last.
Chapter 43
“You’re sure?” Constantine looked at Maggie, the skin between his eyes creasing with worry.
Maggie put her hand on his, nearly overcome with the desire to trace the length of it with her finger. To feel the bramble of his hair against her hand. “Absolutely,” she said. “Drop me off at the corner.”
She stuffed a small black backpack with notebooks and vials from the back of the van. “I have some of Rx’s data and a sample of whatever the hell they’re pumping into people. Not to mention a damn good backstory of what’s been going on. If anyone knows what to do, it’s Dan.”
Constantine nodded and eased the van into the right lane. “Seems like a smart choice. Actually, it seems like the only choice. I’ll let you out, then go play decoy.”
She turned her phone on. “I’ll call you after I talk with Dan. What are you going to do while I’m in there?”
Constantine shrugged. “I don’t know. The usual. Grab a cup of coffee. Try not to get killed.”
Maggie looked at his profile, felt something stir in her stomach. “Be careful, okay? Don’t die or anything stupid like that.”
“No, no, never,” he replied in one of their favorite Fletch quotes.
At the intersection, the stoplight climbed from green to amber to red. Maggie grabbed her bag and leaned over, her lips brushing against Constantine’s perpetual five o’clock shadow.
He turned to look at her. He leaned in. Maggie felt her pulse accelerate, her heart beating not in response to the anxiety that had become her constant companion, but to the rhythm of a song she didn’t realize she’d always known. A shared life. A oneness that was more than emotional twinhood. Maggie closed her eyes. Constantine placed his hand on the side of her face and drew her lips to his, setting off a spark that blazed through her.
The angry honk of a horn jolted them apart. Maggie looked at Constantine, her eyes seeing him and new possibilities for the first time. “See you on the flip side,” she said.
Then she was gone.
Maggie tried to look as normal as possible as she approached the reception desk. She realized that was pretty unlikely given it was before six in the morning, her mascara had liquefied into two cesspools beneath her eyes and her now sweat-stained black ensemble made her look like a backpack-wearing ninja with a glandular problem. She wondered if her hat-and-sunglasses disguise would have been better. It was a close call.
She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and push the strangeness—the wonderfulness—of Constantine’s kiss from her mind. What was that all about? A heightened emotional response to danger? A side effect of adrenaline? Or something that had been there all along, simmering below the surface, at the corner of her consciousness?
She’d deal with those questions later. Now, she was on a mission. She placed her arms on the counter of the reception desk.
The security guard, a young woman who was all angles and frowns and keys, glared at her. “Yes?”
Maggie smoothed the wisps of hair that had escaped from her ponytail and cleared her throat. “I’m here to see Dr. Wilson.” She had used her most confident, imperious voice, the one in which she imagined herself in a smoking jacket and ascot à la The Thin Man’s Nick Charles.
“It’s 5:50 a.m.,” the woman snapped. “Business hours are eight a.m. to five p.m.”
Maggie gave a toothy pageant smile. “I know it’s early,” she said. “But I just spoke with Dan on the phone. He’s here, and he said he’d meet with me. I just need to be buzzed in.”
Maggie had indeed spoken with Dan minutes before on his cell phone. She could tell he was surprised to hear from her so early and was taken aback when she pushed to meet with him in person. But ever the gentleman, he’d agreed to meet. He was on his way into the office to prepare for an early meeting anyway, he had told her, and always had time for her, especially when she so urgently needed to see him.
Maggie upped the amperage on her smile, going for full Miss America. The woman made a show of sighing, then consulted her directory. She dialed, arching a brow at Maggie. “Dr. Wilson?” the woman bleated into the phone. “There’s someone here to see you. She says you’re expecting her?”
This last sentence delivered with absolute certainty of the opposite. She says she’s the queen’s secret half-sister? She says th
ere’s no such thing as gravity? She says Piers Morgan would make a pleasant dinner companion?
A pause. The woman listened. Her angles seemed to sharpen. “Okay.” She sighed with an air of suffering. “I’ll send her up.” She let the receiver fall into its cradle and thrust a pen at Maggie. “You’ll need to sign in. And take one of these guest passes.”
Maggie dutifully complied. The guard returned the ballpoint to its holder and watched Maggie lick her fingers, then smooth her eyebrows. “Do I know you?” the guard asked as Maggie continued her feline-inspired grooming routine. “You look familiar.”
Maggie’s pulse jumped. Of course she looked familiar. Her face was all over the news. Disguised or not, she couldn’t believe she wasn’t spotted earlier at The Post or the homeless shelter or on the street. Maggie shouldered her bag and smiled again, hoping her face wasn’t as red as it felt. “I get that a lot,” she said.
Maggie walked past the desk and into the lobby. The building seemed deserted except for the cleaning crew, who were busy spraying, wiping and polishing the floors and tabletops of the waiting area.
Maggie rode the elevator to the fourth floor and walked the squat hallway to Dan’s office. She knocked softly on the door.
A muffled “Come in,” sounded from the other side.
Maggie opened the door and walked into a small, windowless office. There, standing in pink and blue plaid pants and a violet shirt was her mentor, an oasis of calm in Maggie’s wasteland of turmoil.
“Dan.” Maggie ran to him and hugged him in an uncle-niece embrace.
He hugged her back, then put her at arm’s length, taking in her ruined makeup and sweaty clothes. “Hey, hey,” he said softly, awkwardly patting her shoulder. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve been through the wringer.”
Maggie squeezed his hand and sank into a chair, mid-tone veneer on mid-tone particleboard. She smiled weakly, trying to be brave, affecting calm. “I’ve had better days,” she said.
“I was glad you called. I mean, it was early, and my wife hates to have her beauty sleep disturbed.” He smiled weakly and sat heavily in his own chair. “But I’ve been worried sick. I just saw the news. They make you out like you’re some kind of…”
“Murderer? Drug addict?” Maggie looked at her hands, wincing at the tiny crescent moons her fingernails had tattooed on her palms, the cuticles she’d ripped to shreds. “None of it’s true. The lies, the accusations, the crazy news stories, it’s all part of what’s going on at Rx.”
Dan’s eyebrows jumped like they were on tiny pneumatic lifts. “Rxcellance? Is this about your phone call? Your question about—what was it—Pharma-something?”
“MediPrixe.” She was annoyed he’d already forgotten her request to look into the company. Seeing your friend murdered and trying to escape your own seemingly inevitable death could make anyone peevish. “Yes. I mean, that’s part of it. Did you find anything out?”
Dan leaned against the desk and stroked his chin pensively, channeling the professor he used to be. “Not really, no. I looked back at some Rxcellance filings, but I didn’t see anything about MediPrixe and certainly nothing out of the ordinary. I did discover an early application for a flu vaccine, which was abandoned a few months later. That’s not exactly unusual, you know. Pharmaceuticals start trials, find problems, move on.”
Dan shook his head. “I guess I don’t understand what any of this has to do with any of what’s going on at Rxcellance. Other than the fact that you seem to be having problems over there.” He leaned back in this chair and steepled his fingers. “It’s all highly…unusual. These cloak-and-dagger phone calls you keep making to me, missing money from the foundation you were supposed to be administering…”
Maggie could practically see the ellipses hanging in the air. Pride and indignation clawed against her lacquer of calm. “You mean the money Rx claims I embezzled? It’s not true, Dan. They’re lying to cover up what they’ve done. What they’re doing. Because they know I’m on to them. They know I know their secrets.”
Maggie knew she sounded crazy, padded-room crazy, but she had to make him understand. She had to get him on her side, to get his help, before it was too late.
“That’s why I called you,” she said. She leaned forward in her chair, hands reaching across the desk in supplication. “I need your help. Everyone I’ve put my trust in has betrayed me. I don’t know where else to turn.”
Dan stretched out a hand and placed it over Maggie’s and squeezed. “I’m glad you came to me,” he said.
Maggie’s phone chirped. A text message. The sound sliced the companionable silence between them. She felt her cheeks flame in embarrassment. She smiled an I’ll-get-that-later smile. The phone chirped again. Her cheeks grew impossibly hot.
“Just a sec,” she said sheepishly. She looked at the screen. A text from Constantine. It had to be important for him to interrupt. She swiped to read.
Mags, don’t go in there. Dan’s in on it. The email address, the phone—they’re registered to Dan. GET OUT NOW.
Maggie stared at the words, trying to understand.
The emails they were trying to trace had come from Dan.
He had owned the phone before her.
None of it made sense. She looked at Dan. She felt her mouth grow lax, fall open in surprise.
Dan read her face and snatched the phone out of her hand. He read the text silently, his mouth twisting into something hollow.
“I…” It was all she could say. Her mind stopped working, stopped reasoning, tumbled and turned as it fell down a rabbit’s hole from what is to what should never be. The artifact of a Led Zeppelin song thundered through her mind, Robert Plant’s plaintive wails fighting to be heard above the jackhammer of her heart.
Then it came to her. The company gala. His appearance in the Rx breakroom. The voice behind a closed-door meeting with Mia Rennick. The voice promising to snuff out her life.
The office seemed to grow hotter. Maggie’s stomach dropped. The glands near her ears fired a warning shot. Oh, God, please don’t let me puke.
“I…um…” Maggie stammered stupidly. It was like her voice belonged to someone else. “This used to be your phone?”
Dan caressed the face of his old phone with his thumb, his fingers swiping the text away. “Yes, yes it was. I was told this phone was unrepairable. And yet here it is.” He dropped the phone on the desk, watching it bounce on the rubber blotter. “This is a very interesting development, indeed.”
He walked to the door, his paunchy, poofy, professorial veneer dissolving into something hard and cold. He gently turned the lock. Maggie flinched.
“But it does explain why you started looking into the deaths of all those inconvenient meddlers. Evidently, my orders to kill were being delivered to my old phone as well as my new one?”
Maggie nodded stupidly. “It wasn’t completely wiped,” she said hollowly. “Your old phone was still receiving information from the cloud. Meeting reminders. And later, a video.”
Surprise registered in Dan’s eyes. “Technology. To direct my actions. To prove my mettle. And now to bite me in the ass. Ironic, isn’t it?”
He crossed the room and perched a buttock on the edge of his desk. “You know, I do feel bad about all of this.” Dan looked pained, regretful, a parent about to dole out punishment to an incorrigible child. This will hurt me a lot more than it hurts you. “I should have put a stop to you working at Rxcellance when I ran into you at the party before all this—” He waved his hands around. “All of this got so out of hand. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. You were the brightest student I ever had. You could have done amazing things at Rx, things that could have bettered the human condition and changed the world. All that shit.” He laughed an explosive little “Ha!”
He rose and circled around to the back of Maggie’s chair. He put his hands on the chair back. His hot breath fell
on her neck, every puff molesting her hair follicles. “I thought you’d be a reflection on me, my tutelage and my example,” he continued softly. “A feather in my cap. I had no idea you’d be the fly in my ointment. You were always so nice, so compliant. I thought you’d be a good girl and mind your own business.”
Maggie sat paralyzed as her mind struggled to process this new information and her changing situation. She knew she had to stay calm. Keep him talking. Wasn’t that what they always did in the movies? Didn’t the murderers always soliloquy themselves right into jail, their explanations and assertions creating a nifty little gap into which the hero could insert a daring rescue? All she needed were some great one-liners and an exit strategy, and she’d be Bruce Willis in Die Hard.
Maggie’s eyes scanned the desk for something to use as a weapon. She spied a basket of paperclips and a deck of plastic label flags. Right. I’ll organize him to death.
“You’re in on Rx’s conspiracy?” she asked, her voice steadier than she felt.
“I invented the conspiracy,” he spat. “It was my brainchild, my fast track to the big payout. That greedy, sophomoric Montgomery bastard saw dollar signs and hopped on board. Then promptly took over.” He smiled. It was not a pleasant look. “He had the money, the power and the leverage, especially after I set everything in motion. Once I sullied my hands, I was under his thumb. So I did his bidding. It wasn’t so bad. I was used to playing the dutiful public servant. I didn’t even mind the wet work when things went south.” The smile broadened. “It allowed me to explore my darker side.”
Maggie felt a fresh rush of acid flood her stomach. “Don’t pretend this was your first walk down the unethical aisle. You took your thirty pieces of silver and betrayed the trust of your office long before this. How did it start? Rx incentivizing you to give their subpar drugs the rubber stamp treatment?”
Dan sniffed and flicked an imaginary speck of dust from his shirt. “I’d hardly be the only one. Used to be that drug makers would bury bad news in a five-hundred-page report, and we’d look the other way. Then we started getting paid to grease the approval skids.”
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