Too Far Gone

by Allison Brennan

  It seemed, the more Lucy thought about what Em Granger had said, that Cassidy had it in her head that the FBI couldn’t help, that they de facto felt the case was over because McMahon was dead and the hostages were all safe. The young woman may be a brilliant scientist, but she had no idea how the FBI ran investigations. If she did, her first stop would have been to the FBI.

  Still, Lucy understood that some people were skeptical of law enforcement, or they had a critical view because of bad press. All the political crap that went around—which was primarily focused on the DC region and high-ranking agents—had unfortunately affected the trust of local offices, which were mostly out of the political realm. Lucy and her colleagues did their job and did it well. But they were often painted with the same brush as their corrupt or high-profile colleagues. And it didn’t have to be simply the FBI. Negative press about any law enforcement agency had a domino effect on all law enforcement. Without the public’s trust, they would never be able to effectively do their job.

  Was that Cassidy? Was she skeptical that the police could help? Distrustful of the FBI? The evidence from Charlie’s apartment wasn’t here; where would she take it? Why?

  Leo came up to Lucy. “We got something—I don’t know if it’s going to help.” He handed her a sticky note. “A pad of sticky notes was next to where I suspect she charged her phone—there is a box in the wall for a USB plug, but no cord. She wrote down a name.”

  Leo had used the old-school method of shading the impression on the paper below. Cassidy had small, perfect block printing.

  HOGTIED

  “Hogtied? What does that mean?”

  “Not what, where. It’s a bar in Bandera.”

  “How far?”

  “About an hour. She didn’t write down a time, but it was the last thing she wrote.”

  “Definitely worth checking out.”

  * * *

  Cassidy Roth didn’t know what happened to cause her boss and mentor Charlie to lose his mind, but she knew the day it began. And now, unless Vince bailed on her, she might have another piece of this complex puzzle.

  It had been the last Friday in March. Most people had left for the day, but Cassidy always worked late. She didn’t have many friends, which was fine with her. She’d never been comfortable around people, even people she worked with. She much preferred working on complex problems—and right now she was working on stabilizing a chemical compound that had shown promise in slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s.

  Charlie stopped by her workstation.

  “You should go home, Cassidy,” he said. “It’s after seven.”

  “I will. I’m working on a computer model, I don’t want to lose my train of thought.”

  He smiled. “I completely understand,” he said. “I’m going to be leaving in a few minutes, so good night.”

  “’Night.”

  Charlie walked down the hall to his office. Cassidy continued working for another hour, then saved her data—she had a promising lead on her model, she couldn’t wait to test it out next week—and shut down her computer. Medical research appealed to her because it was methodical. There were so many possible variables to any given problem, and she loved working through them one by one in order to solve an issue. One microscopic change could be the difference in finding a cure for a disease. She was proud of her job and company. CHR was at the forefront of cutting-edge research that would, ultimately, save lives.

  She went down the hall to her small office—as a senior research assistant she had not only her own lab work space, but an office, which was very cool. She grabbed her satchel, made a note of something she didn’t want to forget next week, and left. She hesitated when she heard voices coming from the bio-lab at the far end of the hall. She had thought she was the last one here.

  She walked down and was about to call out when she recognized Charlie’s voice, but she hesitated when she heard a female voice.

  “You’re wrong,” the woman was saying.

  It was Cortland Clarke. Few people intimidated Cassidy, but Ms. Clarke was one of them. She rarely came to the lab building, and it was after eight on a Friday.

  “I can prove it, Cortland,” Charlie said. “Why are you fighting me on this? If I’m right—and I think I am—lives are on the line.”

  “Stop being melodramatic,” she said. “Clinical trials are heavily regulated, and we followed the rules to a T. Nothing is wrong with XR-10.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to run another set of trials.”

  “It will cost millions of dollars!”

  “Hardly.”

  “We’re scheduled to go to doctor trials in six months! Another round of clinical trials will delay us by a year—so yes, millions of dollars.”

  “But if I’m right, we can’t let XR-10 go wide.”

  XR-10 was CHR’s newest creation, a drug that halted the progression of Alzheimer’s in patients who had a certain gene. Though not everyone could benefit from it, the impact could be far enough reaching that they could gain a contract to expand trials to explore other remedies. It would be a game changer.

  “Paul, you oversaw the trials,” Clarke said. “Did you falsify data?”

  “Of course not!”

  Paul Grey never worked late. He must have come in while Cassidy was working in the computer lab.

  “I didn’t say that Paul did anything, only that some of the parameters are off. Something is wrong, I can’t put my finger on it, that’s why we need to go back to the beginning and verify all data. If we can do that, I won’t push for more trials.”

  “Which you won’t get,” Clarke said. “Paul, you lead this.”

  Charlie said, “This is my division, I will verify the data!”

  Cassidy had never heard Charlie so angry before. It surprised her, and she took a step back, made sure that no one could see her.

  “Paul is in charge of this project,” Clarke said. “He can put together an impartial team, one that wasn’t involved in the original data collection. You have one week, Paul—I’m not delaying this unless there’s a major flaw in the data.”

  “One week?” Charlie said. “That’s ridiculous! It’ll be a month minimum to pull together all the figures and compare computer records with written records.”

  “This is my company. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

  “Garrett would never agree to this.”

  “You’re welcome to talk to him when he gets back from Japan,” Clarke snapped.

  Cassidy heard footsteps, and she ducked back into her office and shut the door without turning on the light. She waited and was about to leave when Paul and Charlie walked by, talking.

  “Let me do this,” Charlie said to Paul. “You know I’m better qualified.”

  “Charlie, don’t put me in this position.”

  “You know there’s something wrong here!”

  “No, I don’t. For what it’s worth, I think you’re wrong.”

  “I’m not wrong. Not about these trials.”

  Cassidy waited until they’d left, then she slipped out. It wasn’t like she had been doing anything wrong, but she didn’t want them to know that she’d been eavesdropping.

  When she returned to work on Monday, Charlie was at his desk. He was rubbing his head.

  “Do you need aspirin?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. He pulled out a bottle of aspirin from his drawer and swallowed three with coffee. “What do you need?”

  “The computer model I was working on Friday is ready to be vetted.”

  “What computer model?”

  “On the gene therapy? Remember? We were investigating possible blockers…”

  “Oh. Talk to Vince about it. I’m working on something else, I don’t have time.”

  She tried not to be hurt as she sought Vince’s review. She remembered Charlie’s argument with Paul and Cortland Clarke on Friday. Maybe Paul had tapped Charlie for help. Serious problems with a clinical trial would definitely trump a long-term research
project.

  She put everything out of her mind, but not for long.

  * * *

  A week later, Charlie had become forgetful and erratic. He let important things slip and acted short-tempered with everyone. A month later, Charlie was fired. And when Vince was fired for letting Charlie into the lab, Cassidy knew that she had to do something. She’d spent nearly two months pulling out as much information as she could about the clinical trial that Charlie was obsessed with, but Paul became suspicious of her. Then he, too, started to change. He had always been friendly; now he was quiet and spent most of his time in his office, with the door closed.

  Last Monday, Cassidy had no answers, just a lot of suspicions. She arrived at work early and confronted Paul as soon as he drove into his assigned parking space.

  * * *

  “Something happened to Charlie the night you and he argued.”

  “What in the world are you talking about, Cassidy?”

  “End of March. Late, in the lab. And after that, he changed. You know it, you had to have seen it, too! He’s worse now.”

  He paled. “Lisa left him. You need to stay out of it.”

  “This happened before Lisa walked out. I’ve been trying to help him, but he doesn’t want help. He’s in pain, Paul—intense pain.”

  “He needs to see a doctor.”

  Cassidy had said the same thing, and Charlie said he would go … but he hadn’t. She looked up all the possible chemicals he could have been accidentally exposed to in the lab, and while some might create some of the symptoms Charlie had, nothing would last this long—especially since he hadn’t even been in the building in two months. And no one else at CHR had the same symptoms.

  “There are holes in the XR-10 clinical trial, and I think you know exactly what went wrong.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cassidy. There were no problems with the clinical trial.”

  “Yes, there were. I just told you—I heard you and Charlie arguing in March. Cortland Clarke was there. Charlie wanted to delay the expanded trials, and Cortland said that would cost millions of dollars.”

  “The problem with eavesdropping is that you only hear half of the conversation.”

  But he wasn’t looking her in the eye.

  “But Charlie doesn’t remember it. And he doesn’t remember anything he did before he was fired. And his day-to-day memory is spotty. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  “His personal life—Lisa—he has a lot to deal with.”

  Why did he keep blaming the separation for Charlie’s behavior? “You know that’s not it, Paul! Charlie forgets anything complex, and he has been writing in code—but neither of us understands it. It’s like a made-up language.”

  “You’ve seen him?” He sounded surprised.

  “He’s your friend and he’s hurting. I think he’s dying, Paul, and I don’t know what to do to help.”

  Paul glanced around, nervous and worried. “I can’t talk about this here.”

  “After work.”

  “I can’t—”

  “I swear, Paul, I’ll go to the FDA about the irregularities in the clinical trial if you don’t help me figure out what happened to Charlie!”

  Paul seemed torn.

  “I mean it.” She was scared to death, but she stood her ground.

  “Five thirty,” he whispered.

  “Where?”

  He gave her the name of a bar. “It’s thirty minutes away. I met Charlie there a couple weeks ago. Are you bringing Charlie?”

  “No. He’s sick. He’s in constant pain and eats aspirin like candy.”

  Paul looked sick himself. “I have to go to a meeting,” he said. “We’ll talk, Cassidy, but I can’t promise I know how to help.”

  Cassidy watched Paul enter the lobby of CHR. She got back in her car and drove away. She called human resources and said she had the flu and wouldn’t be in for the next couple of days. They didn’t even question it—she had never called in sick in the nearly five years she’d worked here.

  But there was something odd about Paul’s demeanor, and she feared he would go to Cortland Clarke with her accusations. And if Cassidy was right—and Cortland had something to do with making Charlie sick—she didn’t want to be in the building right now. She couldn’t imagine what Cortland had done, or why Paul would help her if it was unethical or even dangerous.

  Cassidy didn’t have enough proof of anything to go to the FDA, but she had one thing that no one did—access to Charlie. She just had to convince Paul to help her. If she could get Charlie into a medical facility where they could do tests, they might find out what was wrong with him …

  And maybe it had nothing to do with CHR. Maybe he contracted a virus or had a head trauma that he told no one about or …

  She didn’t believe it. If she hadn’t overheard the argument in March, maybe she could buy that theory. But now? She was positive that Cortland Clarke had poisoned Charlie. But for the life of her, Cassidy couldn’t figure out how or with what or why he was still having symptoms.

  But maybe she could convince Paul to help her take Charlie to Baylor, a state-of-the-art research hospital in Dallas that had one of the best neuroscience departments in the country. They knew Charlie and his work, they would want to help him find the truth—and they had the clout to start a real investigation. At a minimum, they would find answers to what was wrong with Charlie. She was certain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Cassidy felt sorely out of place at the cowboy bar. Fortunately, it was early and the place was sparsely populated.

  Vince was already there. She was never late for anything, but she had to make sure no one was following her—the FBI or someone from CHR. She still made it almost on time.

  She sat down across from him. Vince was drinking a beer, though it was barely after noon. He looked awful. He hadn’t cut his hair in months—probably since he’d been fired—and it fell in his eyes.

  But it was more than his physical appearance. He was edgy, almost paranoid.

  Very similar to how Charlie had acted at the beginning of his spiral down.

  “What’s going on, Vince? Why have you been avoiding me?”

  His hand was shaking when he lifted the mug to his lips. He guzzled a third of his beer before putting it down.

  “I don’t want anything to do with CHR or Charlie or you.”

  “You know what happened to Charlie.”

  “It was all over the news. I don’t want it to happen to me.”

  Cassidy frowned. “Why would it? Are you…” She hesitated, assessed him. “You look strung out. Are you using drugs?”

  “Blunt as always.”

  “Dammit, Vince, this is important. I need to know. If you’re not using then maybe you were poisoned with the same substance that Charlie was poisoned with!”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You don’t know what? If you’re using drugs?”

  Vince rubbed his forehead. “I’m not using, but I feel perpetually hung over. At first I popped pain pills—so yeah, maybe that was a problem.”

  “What kind?” Charlie had eaten aspirin like candy. Maybe the acetylsalicylic acid had an adverse reaction with whatever he’d been poisoned with—though that seemed unlikely to have continuing side effects that lasted three months.

  Vince looked into his beer. “Hydrocodone.”

  So easy to become addicted to. “Oh, Vince. How long?”

  “I started right before I was fired—I had a splitting headache I couldn’t get rid of, and I still had a prescription from when I had my wisdom teeth pulled, but had only used a couple. But the rest of them—I didn’t realize I’d taken twenty-eight pills in less than two weeks. I was fired, and then I grabbed an old prescription from my sister—I went to stay with her in New Mexico for a few weeks. But I swear—I haven’t popped a pill in three weeks. I just feel … not myself.” He paused. “It’s getting better, though. I haven’t taken anything, not even aspirin.”

>   “What happened? You have to know something.”

  “No more than you know.”

  “But you let Charlie into the lab that night.”

  “I never should have done it. But he said he had to pull some old files. I told him I’d do it for him, but he was totally paranoid. You remember, right? If I’d done it, he’d never have been caught—we’d never have been caught—and maybe I would have been able to figure it out.”

  “What files?”

  “I don’t think he even knew. He said he would know it when he saw it, but he couldn’t even describe what he was looking for.”

  “I think you were both poisoned.” It was the only explanation for these odd symptoms. But how?

  “That’s the only reason I agreed to meet with you. You still work there—you’re the only one in the position to go through the files.”

  “I haven’t been to work all week.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I met Paul Grey on Monday and I had a feeling someone in the building knew about the meeting. People were watching me too carefully, and I didn’t want what happened to Charlie—and you—to happen to me.”

  “Do you think I’m going down the same path?”

  “No. You’re getting better, but Charlie was getting worse. I think they found a way to continue to poison Charlie, or he had an unexpected reaction to whatever drug they used. And Paul knew what it was.”

  “He does? What did he say?”

  “Paul’s dead.”

  Vince’s eyes widened. “How?”

  “He killed himself.”

  “How do you know?”

  She told him the truth. “I talked to him on Monday and he promised to help me. He said he knew what Charlie had been looking for in May when he was arrested for vandalism. He was supposed to bring it to me Monday night. I saw him sitting in his car under a streetlight. We were meeting in the middle of nowhere because he was paranoid.” She closed her eyes. She’d never get what happened next out of her head. “And he—he looked up at me as I approached his car. Then he shot himself.”

  Vince paled. “Oh, God. Was he … poisoned, too?”