Prescription: Makeover

by Jessica Andersen

  It took Ike a half second to remember the blood samples Zach Cage had FedExed her from Boston General. That was ostensibly the reason she was there — to use Kupfer’s highly optimized fluorescent hybridization techniques to identify the genetic defects in three BoGen patients who had all the symptoms of the Duchenne but had so far screened negative for the known DMD mutations.

  She nodded. “That’d be great.”

  Beyond the heavy-duty negatively pressurized door, Kupfer’s lab consisted of five interconnecting rooms along one side of the building, plus a hallway leading to several smaller individual rooms that could be sealed and pressurized as needed, to protect the purity of the samples and experiments. As Ike followed the scientist from room to room, she inhaled the mingled scents of solvents, tissue culture media and floor wax that seemed to pervade just about every academic biotech lab she’d ever entered.

  Kupfer led her through a long room. “We process the patients’ blood samples in here, isolating the white blood cells and either immortalizing them in long-term culture or extracting DNA for amplification and sequencing. All of the procedures are performed under the hoods, to reduce the chance of cross-contamination.” He gestured to a series of glass-enclosed boxes along one wall, where panels could be pulled down to just above a tech’s gloved arms, allowing a gentle vacuum to suck up any fumes or debris. Lab benches were set along the other wall, some holding basic microbiological equipment, others piled with the bits and pieces of a working lab.

  “See if you can get him talking about the press conference,” William’s voice said suddenly in her ear, startling her.

  Ike hid the flinch and inwardly berated herself for needing the reminder. Focus, she told herself, feeling the press of the small transmitter in her ear and the scrape of the wire beneath her bra. You’re supposed to be investigating.

  “Tell me a bit about what you’re doing in here,” she requested, knowing that most scientists would talk endlessly about their work given the slightest provocation.

  Sure enough, that was all the encouragement he needed to give her a mini lecture on DMD. As he talked, he led her into the next room, which was full of cell culture equipment, along with several large incubators. The air was warmer and smelled faintly yeasty with an overtone of sweetness from the liquid media used to feed the growing cells. Kupfer’s voice gained volume and enthusiasm as he talked about how the cells of DMD patients couldn’t make a protein called dystrophin on their own. “So I’ve spent the past decade developing a genetic vector based on the flu bug,” he said. “Except instead of making people sick, the virus enters the patient’s body and tricks his cells into producing the dystrophin protein from DNA sequences contained within the virus.”

  “Fascinating,” Ike said and meant it.

  He glanced at her. “You’ve heard about the press conference on Friday?”

  She lifted one shoulder and flashed him a smile. “Rumor has it you’re about to put a couple of your competitors at a serious disadvantage.”

  That was a shot in the dark, but when one lab broke a big development, it was usually bad news for competing labs that might have been a few months, sometimes even only weeks or days away from publishing the same discovery.

  Kupfer shook his head. “Oh, no. I’m giving them an advantage. That’s why I’m going with a press conference rather than waiting for journal publication. I want everyone to be able to repeat my work and use it in their own studies as soon as possible.”

  That got Ike’s attention. “You’re not licensing it?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Free access.”

  “Dare I ask what you’ve found?” she asked, suddenly certain this was bigger than just DMD, which would explain why The Nine were interested.

  “I’ve finally found the missing piece that’s prevented DMD gene therapy from working as well as we’d like.”

  “A new viral vector?” Ike guessed, based on his last few papers.

  “No. An adjunct.” Kupfer’s face lit with excitement and he waved his hands as he spoke. “We got the virus optimized a few years ago, but the efficiency just wasn’t good enough. Some cells in each culture would produce the protein, but others wouldn’t, which meant we couldn’t predict or control its effect on patients. So we started looking for a helper molecule that would improve the efficiency of the viral infection and protein production.”

  “And you found it?”

  “Yes.” He beamed. “Even better, it’s not specific to just the dystrophin gene. Our preliminary results suggest that it should enhance the transcription and function of just about any foreign gene loaded into an adenoviral vector.”

  And there it was, Ike realized, sucking in a breath. The reason Odin was after Kupfer’s work. Not because of the muscular dystrophy cure but because researchers had been searching for a functional gene therapy adjunct for…well, for as long as the term gene therapy had been around.

  “Wow,” she said after a moment. “Congratulations, that’s huge.” And he was giving it away for the greater good rather than licensing it and reaping the rewards, which could have amounted to millions of dollars, maybe more.

  That is, unless Odin got his hands on it first and managed to license the work, which was exactly the sort of thing The Nine were reputedly involved in. If they couldn’t control a major discovery, then they did their best to discredit it, ensuring that scientific progress moved in the direction they wanted, benefiting the group members and their friends, often to the detriment of world health. Granted, The Nine were down to just one, but he was the most dangerous of them all.

  Thinking of Odin’s possible plans, Ike said, “Aren’t you afraid of a leak between now and then? If someone gets their hands on the adjunct and claims priority with the U.S. Patent Office, they could license it themselves.”

  “Not possible,” Kupfer said with a touch of pride. “I may be a touch disorganized, but I’m no dummy.” He tapped his temple with his forefinger. “Until the press conference, when the last results are in and I’m ready to go public, I’m keeping the recipe for the adjunct safe in my head. Nobody else knows it but me, not even Sandy, my most trusted tech. So we’ll just have to hope nothing happens to me between now and Friday.” He grinned at the joke and turned away, saying over his shoulder, “Come on, I’ll show you the sequencers, and that’ll put us back at the elevator lobby. I’ll give you a key and a pass code, and after you’ve gone over the test procedures with Sandy tomorrow morning, you can feel free to come and go as you like. We’re pretty casual around here.”

  “Far too casual for someone sitting on a billion-dollar discovery,” William’s voice said in her ear, and Ike almost nodded in agreement.

  She covered the movement by turning and pretending to be fascinated with a nearby cryo chamber that had the name Firenzetti scrawled across it in black pen, then frowned when the name struck a chord.

  Kupfer followed her gaze. “My former coinvestigator, Dominic Firenzetti. You may have heard the story of us parting ways. It was…less than amicable.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ike said automatically, vaguely remembering something about ethics charges, which got her thinking it was odd that the connection hadn’t come up in her searches on Kupfer. In fact, Firenzetti’s name damn well should have popped, she thought, which meant either she was slipping or someone very savvy had buried the info on purpose.

  She didn’t think she was slipping.

  THE NEXT MORNING, IKE used the pass code Kupfer had given her to buzz herself into the lab lobby just before eight o’clock and was surprised to find the place already bustling. Then again, she supposed they were hustling to finish the last few experiments Kupfer had mentioned.

  “You must be Eleanor.” A petite blond woman in an overlarge white lab coat detached herself from a group over near one of the copy machines and crossed the room, hand extended in greeting. “I’m Sandy. Luke asked me to keep an eye out for you.” She glanced down. “Killer boots, by the way.”

  Ike glanced down a
t the footwear in question, a pair of beige stretch-leather pull-ons visible beneath yet another Eleanor dress. “Thanks,” she said, thinking, You can have them.

  When she, William and Max had discussed the plan — or, rather, when she and Max had discussed it and William had glowered his disapproval — she’d figured she could handle just about anything for four days. And she could, really, she told herself as she half listened to Sandy introducing the rest of the six-member lab staff. It was just that she hadn’t counted on how vulnerable and out of place she’d feel wearing a dress and fussy shoes, how much it would bug her that people accepted her more quickly and spoke with her more easily than strangers did when she was dressed in her normal clothes.

  Unaccountably it made her feel as though Eleanor wasn’t the imposter in this situation. Worse, she was starting to resent the woman — she didn’t even exist, yet she’d had William’s full attention the night before, when they’d checked into a nearby hotel and gotten adjoining rooms with a connecting door. Ike had barely unpacked Tom, Dick and Harry and started her searches on Dominic Firenzetti when he’d knocked on her door and offered her a fragrant bag of takeout. Knowing it was the dress and the false intimacy of the situation that had prompted him to ask if she wanted to share the meal, she’d done them both a favor by taking one of the bags and locking the door between their rooms.

  Over the next few hours she hadn’t gotten much on Dominic Firenzetti, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. She’d pounded the information superhighway in search of Kupfer’s ex-partner and had gleaned only a few passing references. The frustration had kept her awake long into the night, long enough that she’d heard the sound of rushing water when William showered and had noticed the moment when his TV went off and the crack of light beneath the connecting door went dim.

  Worse, she’d nearly knocked on the door just to see what would happen.

  “Come on into the lab,” Sandy invited, jarring Ike out of her unborn fantasies. “We’ll get you hooked up with a white coat and get your samples started.” The head lab tech led the way into one of the offshoot rooms beyond the main lab, which turned out to be a storage area of sorts, containing enough protective equipment to do a level-three biocontainment lab proud, along with a rack of lab coats in various sizes.

  After finding Ike a coat that more or less fit, Sandy led her into the main lab, where they ran the Boston General samples through the extraction and test protocols Kupfer had developed for identifying some of the rarer DMD mutations.

  The tech chatted openly as she worked, though her friendly conversation added little to what Ike already knew or had surmised. It seemed as though Kupfer was a dedicated scientist who spent most of his evenings and weekends in the lab and didn’t date as far as the staff could tell. Sandy, on the other hand, had a new boyfriend she was dying to talk about. By the time half of the blood samples had been spun down to lymphocyte pellets and extracted to DNA, Ike knew everything there was to know about Dekker Charles, including the fact that he wore size-twelve shoes. Sandy nudged her and winked at that. “And you know what that says about the size of other portions of his anatomy, girlfriend!”

  Ike nodded and made the right appreciative noises, but her head was starting to spin. Is this how women talk when they’re together? she wondered, trying to decide if having very few friends — most of them male — was a good or bad thing.

  “Dekker Charles checks out,” William said, his voice transmitting through the hidden earpiece. “That doesn’t mean he’s in the clear, since Odin has plenty of money for bribes, but he is who he says he is.” After a moment he said, “At least according to my background check. You can take it a few layers deeper tonight.”

  Ike’s cheeks heated as his words accidentally synced with the conversation and her earlier thoughts.

  “How about you?” Sandy asked, clearly settling in for gossip as she competently inserted the DNA samples into a heated vacuum spinner to dry. “I don’t see any rings. You got a guy?”

  “No,” Ike answered, acutely aware that William was listening in on the conversation. “Not right now. I was with someone a few months ago, but it didn’t work out.” She sent a mental apology to Zed’s memory.

  “So you’re in the market.” While she waited on the drying samples, Sandy stepped back and gave Ike a long up-and-down inspection. “Are you in town through the weekend? A friend of a friend’s having a party.”

  “Thanks, but I probably won’t be here past Friday.” Ike’s initial response was based on the case, on the knowledge that everything was leading up to the press conference, but something compelled her to add, “And I’m not really in the market. It’s…complicated.”

  She’d meant because of Zed and her focus on bringing Odin to justice, but the statement rang true on another level, as well. Ever since the moment she’d put on her first Eleanor dress, she’d been reacting strangely around William, feeling flustered and giddy if he so much as looked at her. He wasn’t her type and he’d made no secret of the fact that she wasn’t his, but the attraction remained.

  So, yeah, it was complicated. And getting more so by the minute.

  “Okay,” Sandy said as she popped open the dried DNA samples and added a few drops of buffer to each, working under a fume hood and switching out the disposable tips to her measuring device to avoid contamination. “We’ll give these a few minutes to resuspend and then move on to the amplification step.” She glanced at her watch. “That gives me time to run downstairs and grab a coffee in the cafeteria. You want anything?”

  “I think I’ll flip through a couple of the reprints Dr. Kupfer gave me,” Ike said, feeling a twinge of guilt at the deception. “Can I meet you back here in a little while?”

  Sandy grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”

  But once she was gone, Ike didn’t head for the desk she’d been given to use. Instead she wandered around the lab, appearing to be checking out the various pieces of equipment. In reality, she was planting the small audio bugs that William had given her, which would offer them an opportunity to monitor things in the lab after hours.

  Out in the far hallway nearest the ladies’ room, she opened a few doors, still trying to familiarize herself with the layout of the fifth floor. She discovered that one of those doors led to a back stairwell and she stuck her head out and took a brief look around, noticing two men keying through a locked door onto the fourth floor.

  She was just about to head back to the lab when William said, “Wait a minute. I need to back up the video feed and check something.” There was a pause before he said, “Son of a bitch.” His voice was colder than she’d ever heard it.

  “What’s wrong?”

  There was another pause, longer this time, and then he said, “See if you can get onto the fourth floor. One of the men you just saw was my old boss, Michael Grosskill.”

  “Seriously?” Ike said, shocked. Then she corrected herself. “Of course you’re serious. You’re not much in the sense-of-humor department. Which brings up the question of what the hell Grosskill’s doing here and whose side he’s on.”

  “That’s what we need to figure out.”

  “I’m on my way.” She took a deep breath and opened the door to the stairwell.

  “Careful,” William said, his voice tight. “He can’t know you made him.”

  She nodded even though he couldn’t see the motion. “I know.”

  It took her nearly a minute to bypass the keypad, and she was only that quick because Boston General used a similar setup and she knew a few tricks. Once the door was open, she slipped onto the fourth floor. The stairwell door opened near a corner where two short hallways connected, with doors on either side at regular intervals.

  “Nice job on the lock,” William said, an offhand compliment that shouldn’t have warmed her as thoroughly as it did. Then he said, “According to the Markham Institute’s home page, Drs. Minor Johnson and Karma Leon share the fourth floor. Both of them are on the financial board. Think they might have an opin
ion about Kupfer giving away millions of dollars?”

  We’ll find out, Ike thought. She padded across the hallway, where she pressed her ear to the first of the doors. Hearing nothing from within and finding it locked, she moved to the next doorway and repeated the process.

  The floor felt oddly deserted for midweek, making her wonder what she’d find if she investigated the Johnson and Leon labs.

  She was up to the fifth door, the one nearest the corner, when a man’s voice suddenly spoke from the intersecting corridor. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Ike froze as there was a pause and then the same voice said, “He can’t possibly think he’ll get away with something like that.”

  The one-sided conversation suggested a cell call, and only a single set of footsteps sounded on the tile. Adrenaline shot through her bloodstream in an instant fight-or-flight response. She could probably take a single unsuspecting scientist, but what about a trained federal agent?

  Hide! She wasn’t sure if that was her thought or William’s snapped command, but she twisted the nearest doorknob. Locked. Heart pounding in her ears, she tried the next two doors as the footsteps drew closer, so near it was too late to make it across to the stairwell.

  The next knob turned easily. She yanked open the door and found herself staring into a shallow closet containing a half dozen liquid nitrogen tanks, stacked from floor to ceiling, leaving only a narrow opening for her to wedge herself into.

  She froze, staring into the cramped, dark space.

  “Get in.” This time she was sure the command came from William, because her subconscious would never suggest such a thing. But what other choice did she have?

  Tension vibrating through her body, she backed into the closet. Nausea pressed up into her throat. The walls closed in on her, stealing the oxygen from the air around her.