Under the Microscope

three local radio shows this week, and the Channel Four news is thinking about doing an interview. If we’re lucky, that’ll generate enough buzz to get you picked up by the national media.”

Raine fought the wince. “Yeah, and I already know two of the interview questions, guaranteed. Is there a personal reason you chose to develop a female sex-enhancement drug, and the ever-popular, have you tried it yourself?”

The answers were no and no. She’d developed Thriller because the corresponding male sex-enhancement drug had made its parent company approximately a bazillion dollars, and she hadn’t tried the product herself because, well, it was back to that whole empty-apartment thing.

She didn’t have anything against dating, but she was thirty-five, divorced, childless and focused on building her company. Most of the men she met were either post-midlife crisis and looking for arm candy, or late-thirties and wanted to start a family yesterday. In the absence of someone tall, dark, handsome and not looking to sow his seed at the expense of her career, she’d decided to go with the better off alone theory.

Jeff avoided her eyes and the pink deepened. “I’m sure you’ll come up with some clever answers between now and then.”

“Let’s brainstorm while we party. Everyone’s headed to the New Bridge Tavern, right?” She could hear the muted sounds of celebration out in the main office lobby, where she’d set up another TV so the rest of her employees could watch the launch ad.

Sure, it was 3:00 p.m. on a Monday, but who really cared? They deserved to blow off some steam.

Their lives were about to change. They could bear the chilly winds of winter in New Bridge, Connecticut, long enough to walk around the corner for a party.

Jeff grinned. “That was supposed to be a surprise, boss. We thought-”

Tori burst into the room at a run. She leaned over the conference table and punched a button to activate one of the built-in phones. “You’ve got to hear this.”

Raine grinned. “Another crank call? Something more creative than heavy breathing and fake moans?” Then she got a good look at Tori’s expression and a knot formed in her stomach. “What’s wrong?”

“Listen.” Tori stabbed another button and cranked the speakerphone volume.

After a moment of hissing silence, her recorded voice said, “Rainey Days, Incorporated, this is Tori speaking. How may I help you?”

“Thriller killed my wife.”

The oxygen evaporated from the conference room. Raine couldn’t breathe. She could barely hear over the roaring in her ears.

After a long pause, Tori’s voice said, “I’m sorry to hear about your wife, sir, but-”

“Cari… She had a sample packet.” The man swallowed loudly, and the sound echoed on the tense air. “The doctors say she had a heart attack. She was only twenty-eight. We have a baby…”

More hissing silence.

“Oh, God. Oh, no. Nonononono-” Heart pounding, Raine looked around to see who was saying that and realized it was her. She clamped her lips together and fought the nausea. Fought the panic.

Think. She had to think.

She was in charge.

On the recording, Tori’s voice said, “Will you hold, please? I’m going to connect you to-”

There was a click, and the line went dead. After a long moment, Tori moved to punch off the speakerphone. “I called back, but nobody picked up. Caller ID says it’s registered to James and Cari Summerton in Houghton, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philly. He must’ve used Google to find the company and gotten the main number rather than the help line…” She trailed off. “Do you think it could be a prank?”

Raine didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know what to do. She could barely feel her body-everything was numb besides her brain, which pounded that same panicked litany of no-no-no-no.

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be.

Fear for her company bubbled up alongside basic human horror. A woman was dead. A mother.

Panic brushed at the edges of her soul, trying to take over everything, but she beat it back. She wasn’t the weak woman she’d once been, ready to crumble and let someone else take over and fix things. She couldn’t be.

She was the boss now.

She placed her palms flat on the conference table and pressed until the numbness receded and she could feel the wood grain beneath her fingertips. “Cancel the party. We have work to do.”

THAT NIGHT, RAINE SLEPT a couple of hours stretched out on the couch in her office, waiting for new information. She had to have new information because what little they had didn’t make an iota of sense.

Thriller hadn’t killed Cari Summerton. It couldn’t have.

The fast-track clinical trials had shown that it was safe for human use. The toxicities were so minor as to be nonexistent. The drug researchers hadn’t noted anything unexpected-certainly nothing had suggested a connection between Thriller and heart attacks. There had to be another explanation for the woman’s death.

But what, exactly?

Coincidence? Fraud? Something else? As the cold winter dawn broke outside her office window, her mind buzzed with the possibilities, each of which seemed equally unlikely, but none more unlikely-at least to her-than the thought that her drug was a killer.

Please, God, let there be another explanation.

By ten that morning, as Raine downed her third cup of coffee, changed into the spare power suit she kept in the office closet and headed for a council of war, she wasn’t any closer to an answer. She just hoped to hell they found one soon.

Tension hung heavy in the conference room, which was crammed with nearly half of Raine’s forty-person staff. She sat at the head of the table and gestured for Jeff to begin with the first report. “What have we got on the caller? Is James Summerton for real?”

A sleepless night was etched in the young man’s earnest face, but he shook his head. “Not much. I’ve confirmed the names and the address, but nobody’s answering the phone. I can’t find an obituary on Cari Summerton in the local paper, but they may not have gotten it organized yet.” He paused. “Sorry. I wish I had more for you.”

So do I, Raine thought, but she didn’t say it aloud because she knew Jeff was already working as hard as he could. They’d each taken a chance on the other-her in hiring a young genius with no managerial experience, him in working for a startup company with only one major product in the pipeline. He was putting his sickly younger brother through college. She was trying to grow up at the age of thirty-five and learn how to take charge of her own life.

They both needed Thriller to succeed.

“Keep looking,” she said. “We need to be absolutely certain this guy is for real before we proceed.” Scam artists had planted severed fingers in fast food before, looking for a quick settlement. It was possible that Summerton was looking to cash in on an unexpected-or faked-death, figuring the company would pay rather than risk Thriller’s reputation on the eve of its launch.

If that was the case, she’d be tempted to pay, just to keep things quiet. But, if there was a problem with Thriller, they needed to know about it before the drug went on sale. She was trying to do this right, trying to protect the consumer while covering her own butt.

She had already called the Food and Drug Administration-FDA-where she’d filed an unexpected toxicity report that likely wouldn’t get read for a few days or even a week. Then she’d called her distributors, delaying the launch.

She’d said there were problems with the print ads and the commercials, that the hype wasn’t where she needed it to be. “Push it back a week,” she’d said. “We’ll have everything straightened out by then.”

She hoped.

That had taken care of the new prescriptions, but there were thousands of sample packets already in use. Were they safe or not? One possibly fraudulent death report wasn’t sufficient evidence for her to recall the samples, but if another user died and the press got wind that Rainey Days had known about the problem…

Instant media crisis. How could she balance the company’s welfare against the possibility that she might be