by Naomi West
“Sorry to interrupt,” he announced, as he made his way inside, that damn shit-eating grin of his on his face.
“Haven't you ever—”
“I just wanted to let you know the conference was a huge success,” he said, still as cocky as ever. He must have seen how intently she was focused on the screen, though, because his demeanor changed instantly. “What are you doing, anyway?”
“Just getting some paperwork together, about some of the things we discussed in the last meeting. Because of the, uh, car wreck, I haven't been able to work much. But the headaches are getting somewhat better.”
“Headaches, huh?” he asked, as he came around to the side of her desk.
She quickly canceled the print command and began to email the documents to her personal home email instead. She just hoped they would send quickly enough, and not set off any alarm bells in IT. “Yeah,” she said, standing up from her desk as the email went off, files attached, to begin its zipping trajectory through the internet, “I hit my head during the accident, and they start to come on at the weirdest times.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, but Abby just shook her head.
“I should probably just work from home for the next few days,” she said. “Doctors said to take it easy, and I guess they were right for once.”
“Yeah,” Mark said, nodding in agreement. “Guess so.”
She turned and powered down her computer.
“So, about what we discussed earlier,” Mark said, as she grabbed her briefcase.
“Yes? What about it?”
“I think we should discuss how we're going to get Dimalerax back on the market. Before the board starts to worry about their revenue, of course.”
The audacity of this man! To think he could threaten her like this, and knowingly try to make her complicit with putting it back on the market! Eyes narrowed, Abby shot him a look as he finished speaking. “Give me a couple days to think about it, Mark. I'll get back with you.”
Then, without saying another word, she left her office and headed to the elevator. Her mind was swimming with all of the possible ways she could get screwed over all of this, and trying to formulate a way for her to get out of it with her integrity, and her career, in one piece.
# # #
Zed
Holding Jackie hostage was much easier than he'd thought it would be. He hadn't even needed the pistol, or any threats of violence. She seemed as interested in sticking around as he did with keeping her.
“So, you two just hit it off, then?” Jackie asked, smiling delightedly and waggling her eyebrows as she sipped her wine.
Zed laughed. “You could say that. It's certainly been a fresh experience, that's for sure.”
“She's definitely a fresh experience,” Jackie agreed, laughing with him.
“Oh, she's a spitfire all right,” he admitted. “And pretty hardheaded. But I like that about her. I really do.”
“Come on!” Jackie replied, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “Abby, hardheaded? Never!”
They both laughed as Zed leaned forward with the wine bottle and topped off her glass without asking. Her having a glass or two of wine in her had definitely helped with his little charade, that was for sure.
“What have you guys been doing this whole time?”
“Just, you know,” he said, with a shrug, “relationship stuff. Working in the garden and cooking dinner together. That kind of thing.”
“Abby cooks?” Jackie asked, grinning. “I didn't know that!”
“Well,” he admitted, as he poured a touch more wine into his own glass. “We're both still learning. We've been talking a lot, too. We’re getting to know each other. She's a very remarkable woman, unlike anyone I've ever met.”
He meant it, too, he realized. She was perfect. Hardheaded, spirited, beautiful, and intelligent. One look from her could cut a man down to size, or lift him up to the heavens. She was everything he'd ever sought in a woman.
“What about you?” Jackie asked. “I mean, I know all about her history, kind of, but what about you, Zed?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No, you don't want to hear about me. I'm boring.”
She grinned. “If you stole Abby's heart this way, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're definitely not boring.”
He laughed. “Well, I was in the military for a while. In the Air Force.”
“A fly boy, huh?” Jackie said, leaning forward with her chin resting on one hand, a devilish gleam in her eyes. “Tell me more.”
For the next little while, Zed talked about his life and his time overseas. He steered clear of any talk about Kai, only telling Jackie that he didn't get to see his brother as much as he wanted.
He took another sip of wine. “What about you?” he asked. “What do you do at Pharma-Vitae?”
“Oh, I don't know. I'm just Abbs' assistant. My job's pretty boring. Nothing like being a fighter pilot.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Oh, I don't think so. Come on, we're sharing here.”
Jackie smiled a little. She was much more excited to talk about her job than he was to discuss his past. He carefully teased out more and more information from her, plumbing her for information about the massive corporation and how it worked. There were some useful nuggets here and there, but nothing too earth-shattering. Clearly, she wasn't very close to the action. Which would make sense, of course. She might be the CEO's assistant, but, at the end of the day, she was still an assistant.
When recent developments came up, though, she definitely piqued Zed's interests. “And now some reporter has been calling, trying to get Abby to give some on-the-record response to a story she wants to write. I've been having to push her off, though. She won't speak to our press department, or take a boilerplate form.”
“A reporter, huh?” Zed asked, as he scooted forward in his seat. “Sounds juicy.”
Jackie laughed and brushed off the comment. “God, I wish. Nothing interesting ever happens at Pharma. Which, honestly,” she said, as she raised an eyebrow over her wineglass, “is probably a blessing in disguise.”
He laughed. “Take it from personal experience—‘nothing interesting’ is a good thing. Believe me.”
“But, yeah, this reporter, Kara Singh, keeps calling from the Times, and I might as well get a saddle fitted, for how hard Mark, that asshole who’s head of sales, has been riding me over the whole thing,” she said with a smirk.
Zed didn't laugh at the joke, though. How could he? He recognized the name. It was the reporter he'd been in contact with about Kai's case. She'd turned down his case before, but maybe something had changed. Had she gotten another line on some information, or was her interest up because Pharma had been stonewalling on her questions? Either way, it was good news for him and Kai. Definitely good news. Once he got the files in his possession, he could turn around and funnel them right to Kara.
“Get it?” Jackie asked after a minute. “A saddle, because he's been on my ass?” She put a finger to her chin and stared off into the distance. “Hmm, guess I could've made a joke about lube, too.”
Yeah, he figured. This could work. This might be the miracle he'd been hoping for when he jumped into this whole mess.
“Honestly, though, I just really hope Abby will make this reporter disappear somehow, just so she'll give my ear a rest. I mean, some of those allegations she was making, just with her questions, weren't exactly great for our image. And, you know, what's good for the company . . .”
He smiled. Yeah, what was good for the company—that was how lives were ruined. People just blissfully passed through life, thinking they were somehow shielded from their misdeeds, just because they were following orders. The truth was, though, that the people at the bottom were the ones who faced the legal penalties most of the time. When auto-makers dodged government emissions tests, it was the engineers who took one for the team, not the executives. Banks who fiddled with interest rates blamed everything on the guy on the phone, doin
g the trades.
“I'm really just worried about Abby,” she admitted. “I'm a small fry, and nothing bad would ever happen to me. But if some big scandal hit while she is the CEO? God, that'd just be awful!”
He waved it off. “I wouldn't worry about that reporter, especially not with some story that might affect Abby. She's a tough woman, right? And, besides, she's new to the position. Whatever's going on, or whatever allegations there are, how could she be tied up in it? And, besides, Abby's a good person. She'd never do something that got her bad press, would she?”
Jackie laughed and drank down the last of her wine, before proffering her glass for a refill. Zed obliged.
“Yeah,” she said, as the dark red liquid swilled into the large wineglass. “You're probably right. I'm just worried something bad might happen, that's all.”
Zed glanced at the time on the living room clock. Those two hours were coming up. And, if Jackie was telling the truth, it was even more important now that he get hold of those files.
“Worried about the time?” Jackie asked, as she followed her eyes to the clock, laughing a little as she took another sip. “She's probably just hit traffic, that's all.”
He grinned, showing her his teeth. He wasn't just worried about the time for himself. He was worried about it for Jackie, too.
Chapter Seventeen
Zed
Who was he kidding? He wasn't going to kill Jackie. Even with all his psycho tendencies in the last week or so, there was no way he was going to kill a woman whose worst crime was happening to work at a corporation that sold bad pills to soldiers and cops. She didn't know, just like Abby hadn’t known. And, hell, she just took messages for the CEO.
Sure, he'd killed before. He'd dropped bombs, bunker busters, and cluster munitions during war. But that had been during war, against enemy combatants, or at least people he was told were valid targets.
As he looked across the coffee table at Jackie, watching her innocently drinking her wine and twirling a lock of hair with her finger, he realized there was no way he could follow through on his threat to Abby.
The time ticked along, and the two-hour mark drew closer.
Maybe she was bringing the cops with her. Maybe she was working on a plan where they could surround the house before he could get out, or where they'd just burst in. Maybe, after all his time fighting the system and finally being within reach of the evidence he needed, everything was about to come tumbling down around his head.
“You okay?” Jackie asked, reaching forward to grab the bottle herself and pour the last bit into her glass. “You look kind of spooked, Zed.”
Of course, he was spooked. This could be it. This could be the moment Abby had been waiting for, before she closed the trap on his miserable ass. “Nah,” he replied with a grin, “I'm perfect. Though, I think I might have to run to the grocery store. We're running low on a few things, and I wanted to get in before the rush.”
“Grocery store, huh?” Jackie asked, before she downed the last of the wine. “Yeah, totally. Let's go! We can pick up another bottle or three while we're there!”
No, that wasn't going to work. He needed to leave here on his own. Otherwise, he'd probably just make matters worse by dragging Jackie along with him. “Uh, I really probably shouldn't be having much more to drink. I'll pick up one of the same bottles we had, though.”
“Really?” Jackie asked, as he started to get up from his chair. “You're going to abandon me?”
He made his way to the front door, no keys or anything else in hand. His only plan was to get out the front door and head out of the neighborhood on foot. A vagabond. Maybe he could move on foot through the surrounding neighborhood and avoid any kind of police contact.
Just as his hand touched the handle of the front door, a thought flashed into his mind. He'd left his pistol in the nightstand. Shit! He immediately headed back that way.
He rounded the corner and turned to head back to the bedroom just as the automatic garage door kicked on, sending its weird rumble through the house.
Was that her? Was that Abby, returned with the information he so desperately needed? He stopped in his tracks and listened.
“Zed?” Jackie asked. “Thought you were leaving?”
Out in the garage, a car door opened and closed, then the door in the mudroom opened and shut. “Zed?” Abby called. “Zed, are you here?”
His heart nearly sang in relief at the sound of her voice, unaccompanied by cops, SWAT, or flash-bang grenades. “Abby?” he called back.
He met her in the kitchen, her eyes nearly as frantic as he'd felt just a few short moments before. She dropped her briefcase on the floor and looked at him in a near panic. She crossed the kitchen to him and grabbed his arms. “Zed, thank God you didn't do anything stupid,” she said. “We've got a problem.”
A few minutes later, the trio were gathered in Abby's home office. The clothing was up off the floor, and the furniture had been placed back where it belonged, but Zed swore he could still smell the evidence of their little tryst the night before. If Jackie sensed it, though, he couldn't tell.
“Mark has been running this whole thing,” Abby said after a moment. “He’s been pushing the drug through approval, bribing federal inspectors—the works. This thing is deep, and might involve the top levels of the company, all the way up to the board.”
“Up to the board?” Jackie asked, a shocked look on her face. “You can't be serious.”
“I am,” Abby said, her voice cool and devoid of emotion. “Look, I've seen the emails, and I even spoke to him. He doesn't want to reexamine any of this. He just views the complaints and legal challenges as a minor inconvenience. The suits and fines are just going to be a small dent in the profit margin for PV, Jackie.”
“What can we do?” Jackie asked.
Zed knew exactly what they could do. With this information, they could burn the whole place to the ground, then sort out the dead. Figuratively, at least. Leaking the information would be far worse than letting the FDA be the one to take action, or individual lawyers. A big reveal was the way to go—something that really grabbed the headlines by the throat and never let go till the corporation was just a bleeding carcass on the ground.
“I don't know,” Abby admitted, shaking her head as she logged into her PC and began to pull up the files. “I don't trust anyone there, anymore. Except you, of course, Jackie.”
“Aw,” Jackie said, clearly a little tipsy. “Thanks, Abbs.”
“Here,” Abby said, ushering them both around, so they could better view her computer screen. “This is what I pulled off the servers.”
Jackie leaned forward and peered at the screen, her eyes squinting as she read through the files. Zed considered doing the same, but what was the point? He'd seen these already before. But, a sense of triumph and comeuppance did settle over him. These, after all, were the files he'd been looking for—the ones on which he'd staked his brother's future.
“Oh my God,” Jackie said, as she leaned forward a little. “This is totally fucked up.” She looked at Abby. “We really did this shit?”
The CEO of Pharma-Vitae nodded solemnly. “That's shareholder dollars at work, right there. That's what they paid for.”
Jackie sighed. “What should we do?” she asked, as she looked at Abby.
Zed loudly cleared his throat loudly enough that both women turned to look at him. “Go to that reporter at the Times. She’s the one who’s been trying to contact you, babe.”
Abby shook her head as she ran her fingers back through her hair, a look of indecision on her face. “I can't do that, Zed,” she said, her voice heavy with resignation. She looked like a trapped animal suddenly. She was a woman stuck between a rock and a hard place. “Mark and his little fucking cronies are lining me up to take the hit on this. I wouldn't be surprised if they are already figuring out what to say at deposition. They are going to pin it all on me. If I go to Kara Singh now, I might end up taking the fall on the whole thing.”
No, the solution to that kind of problem was to go outside the box, to push the envelope on what was acceptable, and abandon what was expected. He narrowed his eyes as he stared at the screen, nodding to her obvious point. What he needed to do was get the word out. If he didn't do that, the woman he loved was going to be caught in the crosshairs.