Damned If You Don't

by Linda J. Parisi

  She turned and watched Jack take a deep breath, then let the air out slowly, gesturing for her to sit in front of the computer while he stood behind her.

  “You might want to explain a little before you continue.”

  “All right,” she replied, returning her focus to the computer. “I’ll try to remember you’re not a colleague.”

  Jack started to chuckle, but the sound faded. “We’re in this together now, Morgan. Got that?”

  She sat down, and his hands gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “I’m trying.”

  Morgan booted up on the stick and began clicking on file folders. The entire screen was filled with them. But she knew exactly which one she was looking for—the presentation she’d given at the project meeting. Goodness, was it only a few weeks ago?

  “I guess I’d better give you a little background. BioClin isn’t quite biotech, not quite pharmaceutical, sort of in between with a little clinical thrown in for good measure. We have several branches—Biochemistry, Clinical Chemistry, Molecular Biology, and my specialty, Cellular Kinetics.”

  He squeezed her shoulders to get her to stop and gave her a bit of a sheepish grin as she looked up at him. “Remember, I barely finished high school. I still don’t speak geek, okay?”

  Morgan smiled back at him but then reality started closing in and she forced herself to lock her shoulders in place.

  “You’re not alone, kitten. I promised to help you.”

  Morgan nodded. She took a deep breath and continued. “A few years ago, the new paradigm in the scientific community was genetics and gene mapping. Aside from not wanting to follow the crowd, the development of a new scientific process can cost millions of dollars. And there has to be enough return on the investment in a reasonable enough amount of time to substantiate that cost. BioClin simply wasn’t big enough to play with the big boys, and so they had to find something new, something no one had thought of yet. Their marketing department decided to target the weight-loss industry. I’ll bet you didn’t know Americans alone spend upward of forty billion dollars a year on weight-loss products.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No joke, Jack.”

  “Wow. I had no idea.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But I don’t understand. Where do you come in?”

  “The idea was presented to me as a challenge. Find the pathway that triggers the glycolytic rate inside a cell. Find a way to stimulate that rate, keep it going, and then the metabolism inside the cell would use more calories than could be taken in. Even you know that if you burn more calories than you take in, you’ll lose weight.

  “The problem was that the pathways were unknown. Trust me, if someone had figured them out already, they would have come up with the ultimate diet drug way before now.”

  “I see.” She turned to watch him stare at the computer screen, his face serious and his gaze filled with concern. “Something tells me you found a pathway.”

  Morgan smiled. “By accident, of course. Then it took a while to recreate the experiment, but I was able to do it.”

  “And?”

  “Then I made the biggest mistake of my life. I presented my findings during a project meeting, and BioClin leaked my findings to a bunch of bankers.”

  “I don’t understand. You recreated one experiment, right? That’s not a whole lot to bank on.”

  She winced at the pun. “True. But think of it for a moment. Think of the investment capital that could be offered. Just to continue. All of which would make the company stock price soar. They’re a small company. Everyone has stock options. It’s part of the gamble. If the project you’re working on succeeds, you win. Up until recently, BioClin’s stock wasn’t worth that much.”

  “I see.”

  Morgan sighed. “I guess I could have lived with their greed. After all, companies are in business to make money. And the officers of small biotech companies don’t always get a chance to make a boatload of money on their stock options.”

  “You don’t have to be nice, you know.”

  She nodded. “I know. Funny thing is, from the company dynamic, I also thought they were looking for the prestige and the glory—the ability to thumb their nose at the huge pharmaceutical companies and their enormous research-and-development departments. It’s a small community out there. Everyone knows everyone else. Being able to beat the big boys is a huge feather in a company’s cap.”

  He smiled. “Follow the dollar. Works every time. However, by the way you’re talking, I’m figuring there’s a huge ‘but’ in there.”

  Tears filled her eyes, and then anger filled her belly. “They jumped the gun, Jack. I couldn’t get it to work.”

  He looked down at her thoroughly confused. “But I thought you just said you did get it to work.”

  Morgan shook her head. “You can’t understand the excitement, Jack. But you also have to understand that years of careful research go into getting a drug on the market. I was able to recreate one experiment.”

  “Okay, kitten. I get the point. But you said you were able to do it successfully. I’m going to assume that means more than once.”

  Morgan sighed. “Yes, you’re right. I did what I set out to do all right.”

  She closed the presentation file and found the file that would haunt her for a long, long time. She clicked on it and a picture filled the screen. Pinky and Louie. Her test mice. God, every time she looked at this picture she felt evil inside, for their poor little bodies were simply lying on the bottom of a cage, emaciated, grotesquely twisted, and totally lifeless.

  “I found the trigger, all right. I found out how to turn the metabolic process on, Jack. There was only one small problem. I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.”

  Chapter Ten

  Jack didn’t say anything, and the silence stretched out for several long, cold minutes. Her heart sank. Morgan knew what she was; the picture on the computer screen only brought that home with startling clarity.

  Dr. Morgan Mackenzie. Murderer.

  She hated that she’d killed those mice. If they’d gone in the name of science, she could have lived with that. But somewhere, somehow, she’d let her ego get in the way. Science and ego never mixed well. Hadn’t Dr. Lee told her that?

  “Morgan?”

  She turned from him as shame flooded her body. “This is all my fault, Jack.”

  He wouldn’t let her run away, swiveling around the chair until she faced him once again. “Hey,” he said, his voice soft with understanding. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you made a mistake.”

  “Mistake?” she asked with a bitter laugh. “Sorry to disappoint. They died because of my pride. I got cocky. I started believing the hype. Look at me, I’m the great Dr. Morgan Mackenzie. I did something no one’s ever been able to do. Oh, and by the way, forget that I figured it out—by accident.”

  “Gee,” he snorted right back at her. “You were human. Fancy that.”

  Morgan pushed at his arms, wanting to get up so he would leave her alone. “I’m not allowed to be human. I can’t be human. Not when lives are at stake.”

  He stared at her until her words sunk in. “And I’m different how?”

  He had a point. “I’ve never doubted myself until now,” she continued. “Science has always been straightforward, clean, razor-sharp. No gray areas. Experiments work or they don’t. And failure teaches better than success. I could have accepted that. Except—”

  He reached out to lift her chin. His smile filled with pride. “Except what, kitten?”

  “My world turned dirty on me. Okay, I admit it. I’m a geek. My work was my world. And when you’re a scientist, you live by a code of honesty and integrity.”

  She turned and stared at Pinky and Louie for a long time, then closed the picture. “They deserved better. But damn it, so did I.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Twenty-four-seven. For two
years. Each step building on the next, with each failure knocking me back down and making me even more determined to succeed.”

  “And you did.”

  “Sort of.” Morgan remembered the hurt well. “They didn’t even have decency to tell me what they planned to do.”

  “Okay, so they screwed you. So what?”

  She threw him a look. “Jack—”

  He cocked his head at her. “Look. Drama’s not your style.”

  “Don’t be too sure about that,” she answered with a laugh. “You should have seen me. I went ballistic on them after I found out about the bankers.”

  He kind of smiled at her then, part-disbelief, part-pride.

  Morgan wondered about that smile, and then she dismissed it. She couldn’t believe he’d be proud of what she’d done. After all, she’d failed. Miserably. “Forget the sweat. Forget the tears. No one was going to take this project away from me until I could make things right.”

  Anger still burned in her gut that they didn’t want her to. “I owed that to Pinky and Louie.”

  She watched the lightbulb finally go on in his brain. “That’s why you didn’t destroy the data.”

  She nodded. “Well, there’s also theft of company property, destruction of said property, broken confidentiality agreements, and a slew of other legal things, I’m sure.”

  He grinned. “You thinking what I’m thinking?

  “Probably. Busted confidentiality agreements are the least of my problems right now.”

  “Our problems.”

  She closed her eyes realizing how much that meant. Opening them she said, “Thank you.”

  The look he gave her said she was welcome—anytime.

  “Jack, I swear to you. I never thought things would get to this point. Honest. I’m not a thief.”

  “Technically you are,” he teased.

  Morgan wanted to smile but didn’t have the heart. “I’m not a criminal. I want to finish the project. I want to make things right. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  She reached out, and he covered her hand with both of his. Amazed, she realized he cared. “Sure, my pride’s involved. And I’m arrogant. I have to be. But BioClin jumped the gun. They want their property back so they can finish the project and make a ton of money without making sure that the process can be fixed. You’ve seen what happened to my test mice. They know about this. I reported it at my last project meeting. I couldn’t let anyone get hurt,” she repeated.

  Anyone else.

  Did she dare tell him that? No, not yet. Not until she was totally sure he was on her side.

  “They were going to fire me to keep me quiet. They were going to make it known that I was a sore loser because I couldn’t fulfill my contract. They were going to use my professional pride to make sure everyone in the business knew so I’d never get more than an entry-level scientist job again.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty low.”

  Morgan sighed. He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers, giving her a hard squeeze before letting go. Aside from the thrill his touch garnered, she couldn’t get over how much his acceptance of her story meant.

  “Part of me didn’t want to believe it, but I’ve been running under the supposition that they’ll do whatever is necessary to get this data back. Hell, they hired you and Sam, didn’t they?”

  His mouth quirked in acknowledgment. “And if they’re willing to go these lengths, what happens next?” he asked out loud.

  “That’s the question, now isn’t it?” He nodded. “Supposing the next person to work on this project gets pressured to cut a corner or decides that the one little tweak that fudges some data won’t be found? If these experiments aren’t completed correctly, someone might die like those mice.”

  Oh, and by the way, should I mention already did?

  “I couldn’t live with that. I’d rather be the target than put anyone else at risk. That included you until you convinced me you can take care of yourself.”

  He gave her a “duh” smile. “I can.”

  Morgan watched him turn away and pace as he processed. Funny, she was like that too. She thought better when she was moving.

  “Does this happen very often in your business?”

  “No, of course not. The FDA won’t allow it. Start to finish, getting a drug to market takes upward of five to seven years, sometimes longer. The pressure is to make sure the process works and make sure it keeps working. That’s the hedge against the bet. Make sure the drug works. Then the investment isn’t in vain.”

  He stopped pacing for a moment and rubbed his chin deep in thought. “What if it doesn’t? I mean, what happens if the whole project is a flop?”

  “Companies cut their losses; people like me lose their jobs. Nice try, but it just can’t be done. At least no one dies.”

  “BioClin is different?”

  “I don’t think so. They probably thought I was all glory and no guts—that I wanted my name on the scientific papers and in the newspapers, and that I’d roll over and let them take the project away from me. Don’t forget what I’m working on is huge. So big I’ve been trying to wrap my head around all of the implications since I started running. Just think Jack. A new diet pill. One that triggers the body’s own metabolism to function. I mean hell, got a hot date on Friday? Take a pill from Monday through Thursday and lose five pounds.”

  “Wasn’t that the idea?”

  “No!” she exploded. “The idea was to save lives!” She lowered her voice and added, “When I started this project, my personal stake was Rebecca. I wanted to find a way to help the morbidly obese, the people who just can’t lose weight by themselves.”

  When Jack didn’t answer, Morgan sighed once more. “Sorry. I’ll get off the soapbox now.”

  “Hey, I’m with you all the way,” he told her, his tone full of commiseration.

  She turned, rose, and he opened his arms. Morgan ran into them. Her head fell against his chest, listening to the strong thump-thump of his heart beneath her ear. His arms banded around her, and he kissed the top of her head.

  How long they stayed together, Morgan didn’t know. She didn’t care. Being in his arms at that moment was so right, so necessary, she didn’t want to move. Funny, he seemed to sense that, because he didn’t answer. He just held her. And waited.

  Eventually, Morgan lifted her head. “So what happens now? I don’t think I’m going to be able to pass my fugitive final exam without some tutoring.”

  He laughed. “Sam has manpower and resources on his side. You have me.”

  “I’ll take that deal any day of the week,” she replied with a smile. “The limo was a good idea.”

  His arms tightened around her for a moment. “We’ve been lucky so far.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” she told him, laughing softly at the irony that she was defending him. “You’ve got skills.”

  A wry lift of his lips told her he understood her laughter. “Which will only get us so far.”

  “You think Sam will find us.”

  “Eventually, yes. I think he’s counting on you to run to a safe haven, or a person in your background who’ll help you.”

  “He’ll set a trap?”

  “Sure. So would I.” Morgan released her hold on him. He gave her one of his patented grins. “But, of course, now that I’m with you, he’ll have to cover all his bases. Because I know better. He’ll never really be sure what I’m going to do next.”

  “You’re not thinking of asking me to feel sorry for him, are you?”

  Jack snorted. “No. But he was—is—my best friend. We go back a long way.”

  “And I put you smack in the middle, didn’t I?” she asked, leaning back to look at him.

  “No, I put me smack in the middle. Got that?”

  She gave him a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”

  The serious look on his face hinted that not all was well in Whoville. “How far are you willing to go?”

  She frowned. “I don�
�t understand.”

  “Well, compromise is always an option. Give them back the data stick but cover yourself by making a copy and leaving that copy in the hands of a neutral party. You won’t be able to work on the project anymore, but BioClin would have to be very careful about what they do in the future. One misstep and the neutral party makes the data public.”

  Her stomach fell. “I’m not going to be able to have my cake and eat it too, am I?”

  “It may come to that; you never know,” he answered, his tone trying to soften the blow.

  She let go of him and began to process out loud. “You would think that BioClin would’ve realized I would call their bluff. Then again, I’m a scientist not a spy.”

  His features tightened, filling with concern. “They probably should have. Yes.”

  Now the poor organ sank completely. “But you don’t think that’s my only problem, do you?”

  He shook his head. “No, kitten, I don’t. I’m too expensive to waste. Any PI would have found you eventually. Something else is going on, and I don’t think you know what that is.”

  “No, Jack. I don’t,” she lied.

  SHE WAS LYING. Jack knew it. But instead of being angry, he recognized her reasoning. She still didn’t trust him. And now that he knew most of the truth, he couldn’t blame her.

  “If you want to hate me now, it’s okay,” he said.

  “Hate you?” Her face registered surprise. “I don’t want to hate you.”

  “I’d deserve it though.”

  She bit out a brief laugh. “No doubt about that.”

  “Then I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

  “That you do.”

  Was there a double meaning behind her words or was he reading into them? He wished he knew. “What was your original plan?”

  She hesitated, which sucked for finding an answer. Then she said, “I thought if I gave the data stick to my old mentor and advisor, BioClin could be coerced into doing the right thing—finishing the project the right way. Dr. Lee has way too much clout to ever be called a liar. They’d have a ton of trouble trying to discredit him. If BioClin decided to go public too soon, he’d call their bluff. On the flip side of that, BioClin would get the expertise of a Nobel Prize winner.”