A Shot of Red (15 page)

Mia made a cup of coffee and gazed out over the city. The news that the flu had become epidemic in the U.S. weighed on her. She hated that she’d piled on to Lila’s stress last night, considering how personally her grandmother took the success of the vaccine.

“The vaccine is working,” Mia had said reassuringly. “People just have to get their shots.” Now that the virus had officially reached epidemic proportions, people would be more motivated than before. Mia bet the media were in a crisis-fueled frenzy. As frightening as it was, that was the best publicity they could get for the vaccine. Hopefully fewer people would become ill—and die—because of it. At this point, curbing the virus wasn’t a business proposition for Moncure Therapeutics—the company had gotten the government contract for the vaccines. It was about public health, which had always been the basis of its motivation—all the way back to Mia’s grandfather.

The company had a reputation beyond reproach. Mia expected that to continue with the success of the current vaccine. But a company can die from the inside, and whatever Brent had suspected was going on had already turned into something deadly. Mia had to figure out what was going on and stop it…fast.

Last night, she and Lila had agreed on how to proceed. To protect Moncure Therapeutics, they had to keep their secrets among themselves. Lila had given Mia access to her company computer, allowing her into nearly every facet of the business. She’d start this morning by figuring out what Brent had been referring to in his letter when he’d mentioned a new vendor for syringes for the vaccine. It would be much easier to just call the procurement department and ask for the details, but she couldn’t risk raising a red flag like that.

Settling at the desk, she quickly tapped into the procurement system at Moncure. Between sips of coffee, she found that the company hadn’t used the vendor they’d done business with for years to supply the syringes for the current vaccine. The procurement agent had noted that the former vendor didn’t offer color-coded syringes, so they hadn’t gotten the contract. Mia popped over to their website and verified the claim.

Next she found the contract for the new vendor out of Jiangsu, China, which offered syringes with colored plungers—the green, yellow, and red ones that Moncure had needed to specify dosages to health care providers and the public. So Brent had been right when he’d written that a new vendor had supplied the syringes. But there didn’t appear to be anything suspicious about that.

Mia scanned the contract and found everything in order at first glance, then leaned back in the chair and scrolled through it more slowly. Again, nothing looked amiss until she got down to the shipping receipts. For every scheduled shipment, most of the syringes had arrived on time at Moncure’s production facility. But curiously, a portion of the red-coded syringes had been delayed by a week—for every shipment. Mia clicked over to view more details. All the shipments had come from China as expected. The on-time syringes had arrived from Jiangsu, but the delayed ones had been shipped from Zhejiang. The same company name had been used, but not the same address.

A quick search revealed that the company had a satellite office in Zhejiang, but not a factory. So why had a million syringes come from there? If the discrepancy had been noticed at all, there was no indication of it. And why should there have been any concern, since the vendor made good on their contract, albeit late, and that had been noted by procurement? Mia probably wouldn’t have blinked at it either.

Until now.

Mia set aside the information about the syringe vendor, eager to share it with Lila later today and get her thoughts. She’d have some time to mull it over before their Skype call. Maybe something would click.

Was this what Brent had overheard in conversation? Mia sighed and picked up the piece of his letter, now faded and pink from getting damp in the crimson envelope inside her wet purse.

Matthew came to Lucer…

Mia had agreed to look deeper into that, too. When she’d read to Lila the snippet of Brent’s letter about Matthew being in Lucerne, Lila had remembered him going last spring and meeting with a representative of the World Health Organization. But evidently there’d been more to it than a handshake and an agreement that Moncure Therapeutics would produce an efficacious vaccine, if Brent were to be believed. Now that Mia had Lila’s carte blanche access, she clicked over to view Matthew’s expense reports.

She scrolled through the months and soon found what she was looking for. Matthew had been in Lucerne at the end of March and stayed for a week at the five-star Palace Lucerne in the Palace Suite. Forget blending in as Mia was trying to do. Matthew had gone all out.

A few clicks of the mouse took her inside the grand historic hotel situated directly on Lake Lucerne’s waterfront promenade, and even into the Palace Suite with its luxury furnishings, two bedrooms, an expansive living area and an exclusive balcony with views of the lake and the Alps. Mia couldn’t imagine what Matthew would’ve needed all that space for—except for the opportunity to brag that he had stayed there. She shook her head thinking about how long her brother would’ve lasted in Haiti with the stark accommodations where she and the aid team had lived.

She glanced at the top of Matthew’s expense report to see what he’d noted in the “Purpose of Business” blank at the top of the form.

Meeting with
Thomas Sorensen
of the World Health Organization re: vaccine.

What about that had Brent suspicious, except for maybe the extravagance of Matthew’s expenses, which Matthew probably boasted about to him? But Brent hadn’t been the type to question anything the Moncures did.

So maybe there was something curious about Thomas Sorensen?

Health agency executives were Moncure Therapeutics’ valued colleagues and clients, so the company kept an updated database with all sorts of information about them. Their favorite foods, preferred brands of liquor and cigars—as oxymoronic as it seemed—their hobbies and interests, and even the names of their pets. Moncure personnel commonly reviewed this information before calls and meetings.

Mia found Thomas Sorensen’s record and started reading. Mr. Sorensen worked at WHO headquarters in Geneva and lived there, too. Fifty-three years old. Divorced. No children. Siamese cat named Sebastian. Drank Glenmorangie, smoked Cohibas. Preferred French food. Built experimental airplanes. Longtime companion Katia Glasser—lived in Lucerne, art enthusiast, docent at the Museum Sammlung Rosengart.

Maybe that’s why Sorensen’s meeting with Matthew had been in Lucerne. Sorensen might’ve requested coming here so he could visit Katia Glasser.

All of this might be interesting reading if it were leading somewhere, but it wasn’t. Frustrated, Mia took the last swallow of her lukewarm coffee, stood, and stretched. Things would be a lot easier if she could just call Matthew and ask him about the meeting, but she and Lila had agreed to keep this between them, especially since Matthew had always been eager to tell everything he knew.

“Don’t tell everything you know” had been a lesson her father had taught them since they’d been little. Mia sometimes took that advice to an extreme. Matthew had never taken it at all.

She leaned over the desk and searched one more item.

Museum Sammlung Rosengart.

A dark-pink page popped up with a collection of artists’ names arranged randomly in bright white. One name shot Mia’s heart up into her throat. In the middle of the page, large font and bold—
Picasso
.

Chapter Seventeen

Mia decided to visit the art museum, as if she hadn’t seen enough disturbing paintings on the Spreuer Bridge last night. She showered quickly, still trying to figure out how the
Dance of Death
figured into Brent’s suspicions. She got the connection with the epidemic, and how no one was immune to a rampant virus. And she’d probably have recurring nightmares of the ghoulish skeletons on the paintings. She’d be fine never to step foot on Spreuer Bridge again.

Despite having seen the
Dance of Death
paintings, finding the shipping discrepancy with the red-coded syringes, learning about Matthew’s meeting with Sorensen, and discovering a possible Picasso connection, she was starting to feel desperate. That covered nearly every clue she’d gotten from Brent’s letter. What if she ended up with nothing but loose ends?

“That’s not going to happen,” she said, trying to overcome her insistent doubt.

She put on a pair of jeans, a cozy turtleneck sweater, and some boots. At the last minute, she remembered the bracelet Brent had left her. She clasped it around her wrist, wondering if she’d ever be able to wear it without second-guessing how she’d handled things with him.

As an extra precaution, she logged out of her computer and put it in the safe inside the armoire, then tucked Brent’s letter in her purse. Ready to go, she grabbed her coat. She’d washed it in the bathtub and hung it near a heat vent last night. It was already dry, but the fur around the hood was still damp. Her hands trembled a little as she put it on, latched the zipper and tugged it up halfway. She might be able to fool her mind into thinking she was over what had happened last night, but her body knew better.

Mia sucked in a deep breath and slipped the revolver into her coat pocket. If it turned out she had to shoot it, she hoped for steadier hands. She unlocked the door, opened it, and gasped.

A mountain of a man filled the doorway. Adrenaline flash-fired. She grabbed for her gun as her gaze darted to his face. Shock and relief sent a dizzying rush to her head.

“Gio! Oh my God, what are you doing here?”

…

Gio hadn’t decided what to say or do when he saw Mia, but any plans he might’ve had would’ve been immediately ditched the second he saw her—blue eyes wild with fear, grabbing for a gun he didn’t know she had, looking so damn beautiful and even more afraid. Deep red scrapes streaked along her jawline. Again he got the urge to kill the asshole who had dared lay a hand on her.

He instinctively took her in his arms, drawing her close to his chest and kissing her hair. “God, Mia. You should’ve told me what was going on.”

“I couldn’t.” Her voice was muffled against his coat. She pulled away enough to look into his eyes. “Lila sent you?”

He nodded.

Mia winced. “She shouldn’t have.”

Gio flinched. He’d just spent all night on a plane, more time on a train, and this was the greeting he got? He couldn’t keep the anger off his face.

“What I meant is…” Mia tipped her head toward the room. “Let’s go inside.”

He followed her into the room, leaving his suitcase by the door. If it weren’t for the wrinkled pillows and a pile of covers thrown haphazardly over the bed, he’d never know anyone was staying here. Everything else was put away.

He leaned against the door and crossed his ankles. “What you meant was…?”

She unzipped her coat, slid it off her narrow shoulders, and draped it on the back of the desk chair. One side hung lower than the other from the weight of the gun she’d put back in her pocket.

“It’s not that I don’t want you here.” She sat on the bed and clutched a handful of one of the blankets strewn there. “And if Lila thought we could trust you with more of this, then so do I.” She bit her bottom lip.

That had been the undoing of him before, and he could feel it having the same effect now.

Focus, Gio.

“Then what’s the problem?” he asked.

“You know this is about finding out what Brent knew about the vaccine.” She looked away from him. “But it’s also about Brent’s murder—getting to the truth about what happened to him.”

Gio nodded once, having understood her meaning without her having to say it.

This is about Brent.

Of course that made things awkward. Mia’s emotions would be focused on her ex. They hadn’t been broken up long before Gio had been with Mia, and she had left for Haiti. Gio wasn’t naive enough to think that Brent’s death hadn’t affected her. She loved him. And she might be wishing she’d handled things differently with him now.

Gio had enjoyed working with Brent—genuinely liked the guy—and hated to think he’d been murdered. The idea that he’d died was bad enough. He wanted to help Mia investigate. She needed to do it for Brent, and for Moncure Therapeutics. And maybe afterward she’d find closure. A relationship between Gio and Mia was already a long shot, but they’d have no chance if the specter of Brent continued to haunt them. The best-case scenario would be if they could figure out what happened to him, and what had been going on in the shadows at Moncure, then leave it all behind. But Gio had no illusions that solving those mysteries would be simple or safe. More like complicated and dangerous, with emotions running high.

Mia kneaded the blanket in her hands.

Gio could practically hear Mrs. Moncure’s words.
“When she looks at you, I see fear and longing that breaks my heart. She’s afraid of how deeply she feels for you…but Mia’s not one to share her feelings—especially since her dad died.”

He had to trust that, at least until Mia could tell him herself.

“This is about a lot of things,” he said. “Your family’s company. Brent’s death. I understood that when I got on the plane.” He stepped over to the bed and sat next to her, but not as close as he would’ve liked. The situation was touchy, and he knew better than to smother her. She looked at him skeptically.

He took her hand in his. “But it’s also about you and me. When I heard what happened to you last night…” Gio inhaled sharply and his breath hitched. He dragged his hand down his face. “It’s like I already lost you once when you went to Haiti. You’re back now, but I’m still not sure what’s going on with us.” He swept his fingers beneath the angry scrapes on her jawline, kissed her just above them, and gently turned her head to face him. Her blue eyes glinted with the fear and longing her grandmother had noticed. “Whatever it is, I can’t risk losing you again.” Pressure built in his throat. It wasn’t like him to get so emotional, much less say the sappy things that came out of his mouth when he was with her. No woman had ever gotten to him the way she did, and he hardly recognized himself.

She blinked several times. Without a word, she leaned in and brushed her lips against his, velvety soft and incredibly tempting. It took all his discipline not to respond to the heat surging in his body and turn her kiss into more. But she’d suffered the trauma of a murder attempt. He couldn’t begin to relate to those kinds of emotions, or understand how she’d react. It was up to her to show him what she needed, because there was little chance she’d tell him.

Mia turned, propping herself on one knee and draping her other leg over Gio so that she straddled him. She pulled herself in close, rested her head against his shoulder, and wrapped her arms around him tightly.

Gio enveloped her in his embrace. Delicate, yet strong, she fit just right. The rhythm of their breathing synchronized as they sat for a while, quiet. He worried this was the calm before the storm that was no doubt coming, but he closed his eyes and settled into it. She might still be somewhat of a stranger to him but, God, she felt like home.

If time had stood still right then, Gio would’ve been okay with it. But soon she stirred and pulled back a little, gazing at him. “Thank you for coming.”

He gave her a small smile. “You want to update me on what’s going on?”

She nodded. “But first I want to hear what Lila told you.”

There were some things that would remain between him and Mrs. Moncure. The rest he was eager to share, but his head was fuzzy from the long night on the plane. “It’ll cost you a cup of coffee.”

“Cheap date.” She winked and got to her feet. “I could use another cup myself.” She set the coffee brewing.

“How about I take a quick shower and clear some of the cobwebs from my head?” He shot a look at his suitcase, still sitting next to the door.

Her gaze followed his and she narrowed her eyes as if she was deciding whether she liked the idea of a roommate.

“Your grandmother,” he said, “who’s really insistent and hard to say no to, told me to stick by your side as much as possible. Kind of hard to accomplish from another room.”

Mia watched as he walked over and got his shaving kit and some fresh clothes out of his suitcase. “She is insistent.”

He grinned and headed to the shower. On his way, he leaned in close to her and said, “That hard-to-say-no-to thing runs in the family.” And he definitely wouldn’t say no if Mia decided to join him in the shower. The idea tugged at the back of his mind and threatened to sidetrack him. But he and Mia weren’t here on a honeymoon.

Someone had already tried to kill her, the epidemic was exploding in the States, and both their cover stories expired in a few days. Gio stood beneath the steaming shower stream, eyes closed, feeling the clock tick with every beat of his heart.