The Timer Game (10 page)

The shelf held a wooden toy of Sara’s that always reminded Grace of a parking garage, a series of small wooden ramps and painted wooden penguins. Warren absently touched the spring and the penguins clicked up a ramp, and the first one began its inexorable slide down the first chute into the turn. He wasn’t watching it. He was looking at her.

“I have to tell you something in confidence, something that factors into all this. Want anything else to drink? Or a muffin or something?”

“Thanks. I’m set.”

He made himself a second drink. The last penguin was racheting up a ladder to the top. It dipped its head and dove down the chute. He took a chair across from her.

“Have any idea how much this company’s worth?”

She shook her head.

“The Center has developed, won regulatory approval for, and marketed over ten drugs dealing with specific immunology disorders: diabetes, Crohn’s, MS, transplants, cancer, AIDS.”

He paused. “It’s worth close to eight billion dollars, Grace. I know that because I just went through an extensive process of determining assets and liabilities. I’m selling.”

“What?”

“Just what I said. I built a world, and now I’m tired.” He smiled dryly. “And perhaps a little old. I’ve never publicly traded the Center so it frees me in some ways to do slightly unorthodox things. Of course I have a team of high-priced experts, many of whom are sitting around my conference table right now wondering where the hell I am, but we’ve passed due diligence and it’s in escrow. We close at the end of the week. Everybody’s signed confidentiality agreements and noncompete clauses, and we’ve played it close to the vest. I’ve already signed off at the secretary of state’s office on a release of the name, so the new owners can continue using it.”

There was a quiet knock on the door and Warren’s assistant, a striking black woman named Karen, stuck her head in the door.

“Sorry to interrupt, sir. The eastern sector pharmaceuticals rep has a plane to catch.”

Warren stood. “I’d appreciate it if you could stay. This will only take a minute.”

Grace nodded. Karen smiled neutrally and held the door open for Warren, closing it after him. They both retreated down the hall. Grace heard Warren’s voice in the conference room, muffled and hearty.

Eight billion dollars, Grace thought. To her it was Monopoly money, not real. She wondered what he was going to do with his share. His wife had died years before. All he had was this place. His telling her about it matter-of-factly, his trusting her with such a significant secret, troubled her. It had nothing to do with Eddie Loud and brought her no closer to finding Jazz Studio, and she feared it was his way of trying to hook her back in.

The door opened and Warren reappeared. He closed the door. “Sorry about that. I wouldn’t have told you if it wasn’t necessary, and of course this information is confidential and not to be shared.”

“I understand.”

“It’s a Swiss company named Belikond. They have their own marketing arm in place to smooth the way. They’ve pledged no personnel changes in the first twenty-four months, which makes it somewhat more palatable.”

“The Center’s worth close to eight billion dollars?” She was still on that.

“Not just the Center. The manufacturing plants are in the mix, too, but the most significant assets are patents. The deal’s gone hard.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Belikond’s had to put hard money down, and whether the deal closes or not—and it will close, I assure you—the seller gets to keep the deposit.” He paused. “Ten percent of the total purchase price is typical.”

She did the math in her mind and wished she were still drinking. She could use something a lot stronger than papaya juice.

“And that seller getting to keep the hard money would be you.”

“And others. Underwriting the Center are drug development companies, a cluster of university research deals, and some investment bankers willing to take huge risks. I’m the director but six others sit on the board, and getting them to agree on anything is like trying to get a bag full of cats to stop fighting. We’ve jumped through hoops the past ninety days—proof of title, physical inspection of the lands, the buildings, improvements—worldwide, Grace, not just here—and due diligence inspection of the IP’s. Intellectual properties. Checking that all the patents have been properly registered, and that there are no existing or potential claim infringements, and then dividing up each investor’s share. Oh, and then the lending bank sends over its own team and we do the dance all over again.”

“And you’re closing when?” She was certain he’d told her, she just couldn’t remember. She was on the verge of taking out a second mortgage on her house, just to repair the roof.

“Delivery of assets, titles, full custody and control gets turned over at the end of this week. I don’t have to be present, but I have to be on top of it.”

Under the tan, there were dark circles under his eyes.

“My chunk—minus whatever part the government’s going to chip out for taxes—I want wired to an account in the Caymans. And since nobody but me has that access code, they’re going to electronically link me as the deal closes. I’ll have thirty seconds on my end to enter the access code, releasing my funds into my private account. If I miss that window, my share gets sent to my bank stateside, but for tax reasons, that’s something I’d like to avoid. My share is worth several hundred million dollars.”

The shock must have shown on her face. She looked around the immaculate space, studying his daughter’s photo so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. She wasn’t afraid of money and people who had it, but power tripped her up sometimes, and she could feel herself starting to fall.

“So. You sell. You leave. Eddie Loud acted alone as a crazy person, God knows how he got my name. Nobody else is after me.”

“Not exactly. I told you it was complicated. Yesterday, I got this.”

He went to his desk and unlocked the drawer and came back with a postcard. “Hand-delivered, left in a manila envelope for me downstairs at Information.”

The postcard was faintly blue in color, on handmade paper stock, with streaks of heavier blue weaving through it. There was no address or postmark. Warren Pendrell’s name had been typed on the message side, with a single typed sentence underneath:
He’s coming for you, the Spikeman.

She turned the postcard over. Warren’s picture had been cut and pasted onto the postcard. It was blurred, shot as he stepped through the front door of the Center, a hand shading his eyes.

Imbedded in his chest was a crudely drawn butcher knife, dripping with blood.

“‘He’s coming for you, the Spikeman.’ And the butcher knife. It’s the same threat, Grace. The same. One thing science teaches, there are no coincidences.”

“You’re saying somebody could be after both of us? Who? Why?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“I could take this in. Get somebody to run tests.” She and Paul Collins were colleagues, but Marcie had worked next to Grace in the forensic biology lab for five years, and they were friends. The tall, emaciated, jumpy woman would figure out a way to have the postcard tested if Grace asked, even though fibers and documents were not handled in their lab, and the paper wasn’t saturated with biological fluids.

Warren shook his head. “The last thing I want is the police involved while I’m negotiating this deal. Businesses run on rumors and innuendo, Grace. The total valuation of the business has been in flux over the period of time we’ve negotiated, and I’m talking a flux that could cost us millions. And here’s Eddie Loud, a patient, and he dies violently—” He held up his hand to stop her from responding. “Look, I know it’s not your fault, but it’s made some players at Belikond uneasy, nonetheless. I don’t want to hand Belikond anything else its team could use.”

“Marcie’s very discreet.” She hadn’t occurred to her that Eddie’s death might be having an impact on Warren’s business. But his getting a threatening postcard twisted things in a new direction.

“Grace, I’m serious. I want things quiet and on schedule. I’m telling you this because I want you to protect yourself. Let me rephrase that. I want to protect you. And Katie.”

“We’re okay.”

“God, you’re impossible. If you change your mind…”

She nodded. He held out his hand for the postcard and she reluctantly gave it to him. He relocked it in his desk and rang the receptionist.

“Yes. Cynthia. Please alert Lee Bentley we’re on our way.”

Grace felt a visceral surge of panic and anger. He was doing it again. Broadsiding her.

“Warren, you should have asked me first.”

“So you could say no?”

“I don’t have time.”

“Make it.” He reached for her hand.

Chapter 10

Warren walked down the brightly lit hallway toward a lab at the far end of the corridor, Grace seething behind him, the images of Lee tumbling one on top of the other.

When Grace had been tapped to work the pediatric side of heart transplants at the Center, she’d immediately come into conflict with a leggy young researcher, Lee Ann Bentley, doing postdoc work on kids.

There had been a whiff of scandal that Lee had falsified lab results before coming to the Center in an effort to prove the effectiveness of a new immune suppressor used on chimps in heart transplants. Two primates had died before anything conclusive could be determined, the bodies conveniently cremated. Lee had been exonerated of any wrongdoing, but it had left Grace feeling there was something creepy buried under all that perfection.

Lee was concentrating on xenografts and xenobiotics, genetically altering animal hearts so that one day, they’d be recognized as human by a transplant recipient. Grace was going another direction completely: chimerism. Mutual cell assimilation. Tricking the body into accepting a new, human heart as if it were its own.

She’d stumbled onto it by accident years before during her internship—that if she first transplanted bone marrow from the donor, the patient’s immune system could be tricked into accepting the donor heart almost as if it were its own. That meant lower doses of immune-suppressant drugs. The patient would still have to be on a rigorous drug program for the rest of his life, but at lower doses. Since the immune-suppressant drugs were so toxic, the lesser the dosage the better.

Later, that groundbreaking research was validated when transplant surgeons in Lyon, France, infused an Australian patient with donor marrow cells before performing a successful hand transplant, and then again when a woman in Paris, infused first with marrow cells from a donor, had a partial face transplant.

But when Grace was trying it, she was among a small group of surgeons and the only one at the Center. She’d been working there only a couple of weeks when she butted heads with Lee over a patient, a six-year-old boy who needed a heart transplant.

Lee talked the parents into putting a genetically altered pig’s heart into his small chest. Grace had passionately argued with her in private beforehand. It was too experimental. Risky. Safer options hadn’t been exhausted yet. Lee had shrugged and smiled, and the smile had been a cold thing.

“It doesn’t really matter, does it? If he dies?”

She’d said it so quickly, matter-of-factly, Grace wasn’t certain she’d heard correctly. “It does to his parents,” Grace said. “It does to me.”

In the end, the parents prevailed, signing off on the surgery. The boy died three days later. A week afterward, a human heart became available that would have worked, and Grace had never forgiven Lee for killing him.

The research side of the Center had always been Warren’s particular interest, and Grace had a growing suspicion that Warren was willing to sacrifice patients on the hospital side to be used as guinea pigs for research that was still experimental.

Or she could just be jealous that Lee was Warren’s favorite now, and had been for some time. Part of her still missed him.

A sterile tray the size Grace used for making cookies glowed in purple light as Warren pushed open the door to the lab. “Don’t turn on the light. She’s got cartilage cells that are light sensitive.”

A green light cast a glow over the counters. It was a narrow, windowless room and Grace felt slightly claustrophobic. Out of the gloom, Lee Bentley emerged, her hair gleaming.

“Well, well. We meet again.”

Her hair had grown long since Grace had last seen her, and she wore it in a thick braid that shone the color of wheat and made her cheekbones look high. She had the talent for smiling with her teeth and never having the smile incrementally ease up her face. Her eyes were pale green, humorless and cold. Somewhere in Lee’s genetic code, marauders clambered in fur boots over a dung hill, swinging mastodon thigh bones and shattering the skulls of slumbering children. She was taller than Grace and just as slender and could have easily modeled. Whips and chains, probably.

“Still killing chimps?”

“Please,” Warren said.

“She’s a lab tech,” Lee said. “She couldn’t find the jugular if she Googled it.”

“Biologist,” Grace said. “They call us forensic biologists. Or criminalists. That, too.”

“Both of you.” Warren held up his hands in a classic gesture of peace. “Lee, I’m sorry.”

He was siding with her. How could he side with her?

“I want Grace to see this.” His voice held a pleading note.

Lee narrowed her eyes, debating something with herself, and then whirled and went down an aisle. She walked past what appeared to be an ear floating in gelatin and stopped before a large metal container the size of a Crock-Pot, connected by a snarl of tubes to the wall. It was a bioreactor, for growing things. A monitor attached to the tubes beeped in a steady pulse, and Grace saw at the far end of the counter a printer spitting out a stream of data.

The human ear meant Lee was focusing now on an entirely different direction in her research, and it made Grace queasy. “What am I looking at?” she said irritably.

Lee slid her hand over the outside of the bioreactor, caressing it. “First, a few thoughts. There are almost three hundred kids—just in America—waiting at any given time for a heart. Often a heart that never comes.”