MC’s hands were clammy, her breath quick, as she dug out her key. She felt as though her body were on alert, sniffing out danger. Like when she heard Jake come through the front door after a few beers with his pals. This time she was in control, she reminded herself. Jake was half a continent away. So why was every hair on her sweaty neck bristling?
She’d stuck a small flashlight in her waistband and used it now to make her way around the mortuary parlors, mercifully empty of laid-out corpses, to the stairway to the upper floors. Quieter than the elevator, just in case …
MC entered her third-floor apartment, keeping the flashlight beam low. She looked out the window, saw the sedan still parked under the tree. No sign of life in the vehicle, however. She must have been mistaken the first time.
Still, she drew her curtains and turned her computer monitor away from the windows. She’d soon find out what Wayne Gallen was talking about, if anything. She had a suspicion that he’d made up the story about the buckyball memo—that really he was simply hot for her, and with Jake out of the picture, saw an opportunity to make his move. Still, it was a long way to come on the off chance … actually, not a chance.
Wayne could be sweet, but he was way too slow for her. He talked slow, walked slow, thought slow. Drove her crazy by constantly caressing that 1890s mustache, rolling the thin curve of red hair between his fingers. Also, to tell the truth, Wayne was kind of creepy. He did little things for her—brought her a bag of corn chips from the vending machine, wiped off her windshield on a rainy day, helped her out at the copy machine if she was overloaded. You couldn’t fault a guy for behaving like that, but something about the way he looked at her made her uncomfortable. She’d found herself not wanting to be in the lab when it was just the two of them working late.
MC took a long, cold drink from a bottle of water she’d taken from her neglected, smelly fridge, and maneuvered around a nest of wires to hook up her system. She welcomed the familiar popping sounds as her computer booted up.
CONNECT. CONTACTING HOST. SENDING LOGIN INFORMATION.
MC got up and cracked a window to get rid of the odor let loose when she opened her refrigerator. As soon as she straightened out this memo business, she’d clean up her act and go grocery shopping like a normal woman. Watch Friends reruns on TV. Have real friends over for dinner.
RECEIVING MESSAGE 1 OF 25. 2. 3 …
She read quickly.
YOU’VE WON A MERCEDES!
Delete.
SEE HEATHER UNZIP!
Delete.
MEET SINGLES LIKE YOU!
Hmm. Maybe I should give this a try. Delete.
Once she’d cleared the spam, MC scanned the list of To/From, mostly messages from human resources. As if she hadn’t filled out enough forms before terminating her employment at the oil company and the university. A few posts from students in her night class, mostly ones who had Incompletes to work out. She focused on several items from Alex Simpson, the university buckyball project leader, opened each one, read through routine memos on purchases, deadline changes, maintenance schedules, and visiting dignitaries (read venture capitalists with deep pockets).
The communications on grant money were also innocuous. MC already knew the team was forging partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. CRADAs, they were called. Cooperative Research and Development Agreements.
Subject: CRADA milestones
Subject: Tracking sheet for first quarter
Subject: New account numbers
MC sighed. Boring. A reminder of what was waiting for her when she attached herself to another job.
Subject: CRADA personnel
Subject: Interviews with new hires
Subject: Capital equipment budget
Then, finally an intriguing subject line. She opened the message.
From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Subject: Millions of $ in the offing!
This one sounded like a spam tag line, but the sender was Alex Simpson, so MC opened it.
We’ve got them hooked. The idea of smart medicines is too good for them to resist. We’ll plug the cancer vaccines first. I’m thinking $100 million in funding to start …
MC thought of Alex Simpson, a slick chameleon with as many faces as the number of venture capitalists on his list. He’d don an Italian silk suit for a New York CEO, a cowboy hat and a swagger for a wealthy Oklahoma rancher. He had every restaurant in town on hold until he discovered the favorite cuisine of a moneyed visitor. A Texas accent came and went, as swiftly as the airplanes that carried his potential benefactors. Alex was a master imitator, especially when it suited his purposes.
MC reread the message, hated the offensive tone, as if there weren’t human patients at the end of this drug research project. She remembered the promises made in the journal ads. “Smart medicine” meant drugs that go straight to a tumor or diseased organ. KNOCK OUT THE BAD CELLS WHERE THEY LIVE, said the headlines, WHILE LEAVING HEALTHY CELLS ALONE. She’d had enough lab experience to understand the possibilities were there, but she was enough of a realist to know how long it would be before the miracle prescriptions would be in local drugstores. Still, there was nothing new or incriminating in Simpson’s message. Just the usual hype.