Megan's Cure (6 page)

Chapter 11

Las Vegas

THE MERCEDES CONVERTIBLE pulled into the cool shade of the Palladian Hotel and Casino parking garage and Gray Axmann pressed the button to raise its roof.
 
He watched the rear view mirror with quiet satisfaction as the panel behind the back seat lifted open and the black hard top slowly emerged, reached upward and then pivoted down over his head before finally clicking gently into place.

Smooth.
 
It still tickled him six weeks after buying the car, his latest toy.
 

“Those Germans,” he thought.
 
“They know how to make a car.”

Axmann shifted his gaze in the mirror to himself, running his fingers through his hair to tame it from windblown to merely tousled.
 
He still was getting accustomed to seeing chestnut brown hair in the mirror rather than the natural yellow bleached nearly white by the desert sun.

Growing up in Las Vegas with his twin brother Troy, the pair had attracted confused glances wherever they went.
 
They might have been identical twins with the kind of good looks that garnered attention, twins or not, except that he was blonde while Troy had dark brown hair.

The other differences were less obvious.
 

Gray was a born athlete and a natural leader, giving off lead-dog pheromones as if he applied them each morning along with his cologne.
 
He had never had to look far to find the next opportunity – or beautiful woman – waiting in line to be plucked, drawn to his looks and charisma.

Troy, on the other hand, had been an average athlete and both a brilliant and slavishly dedicated student.
 
He rode his nearly perfect college entrance test scores and straight-A transcript to Princeton and a PhD from UCLA in microbiology.
 
Eight years later, Troy started Axology, a biotech startup focused on applying cutting-edge gene technology to the development of cancer treatments.

Meanwhile, Gray remained in Las Vegas, earned a business degree at the local university and then took over their father’s business, “negotiating” with the employee unions on behalf of the casinos.
 
The business had evolved from one mainly relying on broken kneecaps and blackmail to the more genteel technique of bribery.
 
Along the way, Gray had diversified the business to handle all the security needs of several of the largest Las Vegas casinos, including the Palladian.

The parking garage elevator came to a stop four floors beneath the one where Gray Axmann had parked and the doors slid open on the far side of the Palladian hotel lobby.
 
He strode across the marble flooring toward the casino floor beyond.
 
Along the way, he checked himself in the mirrored surfaces he passed, adjusting his dark blue blazer over khaki pants and a teal polo shirt.
 
He would be on a golf course in two hours, dispensing tips and giving up strokes to visiting casino bigwigs from Singapore.
 
And, damn – he did look just like his brother Troy with the new hair color.
 

He glanced around the casino floor with a practiced eye.
 
Lunch time.
 
Still quiet.
 
He saw his floor chief in the middle of a conversation in the black jack pit.
 
They were going to talk about the ongoing problem of drug use in the hotel restrooms.
 
It was mostly meth but cocaine still retained a loyal fan base. He was convinced a couple of arrests with just the right amount of publicity would nip it in the bud without distressing the customers.

While he waited for his chief to finish his conversation, Axmann checked his watch.
 
Then, he felt a hand caress his neck and slide up into his hair.

“Hello, Gray,” said Eileen.

She was the new supervisor of dealers at the Palladian.
 
She was 30ish, tall and wonderfully built with long black hair that reached far down her back.
 
Her father was the general manager at another casino on the strip.

“What did you do to your hair?” Eileen asked.
 
She moved her hand deeper into the hair at the back of his head and gripped it so hard it almost hurt.
 
It also triggered images of the night two weeks ago when Eileen had gripped his hair the same way while she wrapped her long naked legs around him and they went at each other like a pair of wrestlers – biting encouraged.
 
It had been their first time together.

From her smile when he caught her eyes, Axmann knew Eileen was thinking of that night as well.
 
He thought he felt a tingling pass through her fingers and race through his body. He actually gasped. Then he regrouped.

“Just trying it to see how it hides the gray,” said Axmann.
 
“It’s enough to have it in my name...Gray.”

“I get it and I like it,” she said, releasing her grip and letting her fingers caress his ear quickly and run off his shoulder.
 
Her smile hadn’t changed.
 
He smiled back at her as his eyes quickly ran down her front and back up again, taking in everything.

“Dinner?” he said.

“Perfect.”

Chapter 12

FROM HIS VANTAGE point 12,500 feet above the Richmond Bridge, Troy Axmann could see the other three main bridges connecting the west and east sides of the San Francisco Bay lying in the distance in front of him, the farthest – the Dumbarton – almost all the way to Palo Alto.
 
The Golden Gate Bridge was off to his right.
 
Its orange-red towers looked like lonely fortresses guarding the comparatively quiet waters of the Bay from the tumult of the open ocean beyond.

It was only when he was up here in his Cessna Skyhawk that Axmann felt truly relaxed.
 
He was new enough to piloting, having received his license a year ago, that most of his attention was consumed by flying itself.
 
He watched every gauge, parsed each radio transmission and scanned the skies for any unexpected aircraft.
 
He continually recited in his mind the checklists he’d been taught.

He treasured this required vigilance, the need to fill his mind with the details of his flight.
 
Elevation.
 
Air speed.
 
Heading.
 
Wind direction.
 
Fuel. Weather.
 

It pushed all his other worries away for a couple of hours.
 
Maybe not as distant as the ferries, tugs and freighters felt, inching across the Bay far below him.
 
But far enough that he felt the worries lose their constant grip on his insides.
 
He felt he could inhale again.

“Remember.
 
Breathe,” he said to himself, adding it to the checklist.
 
“Remember.
 
Breathe.”

The purchase of the Cessna had been Axmann’s big indulgence when he sold his startup company to Merrick & Merrick along with the rights to its flagship cancer drug, Morceptin.
 
He actually thought the transaction would make his life easier, reducing the pressure
 
a notch or two.
 
He’d known that sooner or later he would need one of the Big Pharma conglomerates to continue the heavy investment required to get the drug to market, not to mention the marketing and distribution network to get the drug known and available to every oncologist and hospital in the developed world.
 

It was an easy sell.

Morceptin was one of the wave of cancer drugs designed to turn off specific genetic switches in patients’ cells that enabled cancers to flourish.
 
Early results showed it was more effective and had fewer side effects than the scorched-earth chemotherapy regimens it replaced.
 
Axmann knew it would be a valuable piece of any major pharmaceutical company’s drug portfolio.

Troy convinced the backers of Axology, his startup, to accept a small initial sum from Merrick & Merrick in exchange for a potentially huge back-end payment that was based on Morceptin’s success.
 
Merrick liked the arrangement because it reduced its risk in case Morceptin failed, and gave Troy Axmann’s team a huge incentive to make Morceptin successful.
 

Initially, it appeared to be a brilliant strategy for everyone.
 
And it gave Axmann the resources of a giant pharmaceutical company even though he still had the promise of immense personal wealth.

Morceptin was approved for treatment of liver and colon cancer as well as some types of leukemia and lymphoma.
 
Applications for kidney and prostate cancer were pending. The average Morceptin patient stayed on the drug for 17 months at a cost of $78,000, Merrick’s studies showed.
 
If revenue growth stayed on track, Morceptin sales could easily exceed $5 billion annually in another four years.
 
That was the key number in the formula for the back-end payout.
 
It would bring Axology’s original shareholders $800 million, one-third going directly to Troy.

But in recent months, that smooth upward flight to success and riches had encountered stormy, uncertain weather.

The new threat was Merrick’s purchase of Walter Novak’s company, Medvak.

Medvak was bought on the cheap – only $80 million – and mostly due to the whim of Edwin Merrick, grandson of one of the pharmaceutical company’s founders and current CEO. Someone – an ex-professor or another Big Pharma executive – had put the bug in Merrick’s ear about Walter Novak.
 
“Brilliant but erratic” had been the catch phrase.
 
A man with great ideas but no execution.
 

Edwin Merrick had judged Novak incapable of managing a pizza parlor much less a team that could successfully move a new drug down the complicated path toward FDA approval.
 
But he thought Walter Novak’s raw research was promising and might eventually lead to marketable drugs.
 
The chairman assumed it would take at least several years and, perhaps, a couple of billion dollars to bring anything to fruition.

Within a week of the acquisition, Axmann realized that Edwin Merrick’s assessment was totally wrong.
 

Novak’s drug looked good and earlier trials had gone well.
 
It might race through FDA approval and reach patients within two years.
 
If so, it could cut Morceptin sales dramatically, perhaps even blow it out of the market completely.
 
And there were additional longer-term implications in Novak’s work.

All this would be disastrous for Troy Axmann and the original investors in Axology.
 
When he realized the possible consequences, Troy called his brother Gray.
 

In part it was habit.
 
Gray was the one who knew how to fix things.
 
As kids, it had been deterring a bully or convincing a girl to go out.
 
Now it was getting the better end of a tough negotiation or backing down an angry employee threatening lawsuits.
 
But there was another important reason, too.
 

Gray had brought in all the major investors during Axology’s early days.
 
Indeed, once he realized Troy was working on something truly promising, Gray had managed the fund-raising side of the startup while Troy dealt with the science and regulators.
 
Gray Axmann had convinced his bosses, the wealthy owners of casinos from Reno to Bangkok, to buy into Axology.

Climb on the Morceptin rocket, the Axmann twins had told them.
 
It can’t miss.

As Troy Axmann brought his plane down to the runway at the Charles M. Schulz Airport in Sonoma he resisted the temptation to touch his wheels and take off again.
 
He had afternoon meetings.
 
He was out of time.

He taxied to his parking spot and went through the final check list.

Turn off the master power and ignition.
 
Lock the doors and windows. Install the gust lock on the tail.
 
Turn off the emergency beacon.
 
Tighten the tie-down straps.

And remember.
 
Breathe.