years.
It hadn’t been enough. He and Neil Barstow, the company’s chief financial officer, had been forced to create two phony holding companies that allowed Prolabs to borrow from itself. They had also given themselves sizeable stock options that had never been declared as a business expense. Without a merger, Prolabs would eventually collapse on itself from the weight of all its debt. Rudker could feel the twinge of a migraine coming on, but he couldn’t stop thinking about his situation. Prolabs was on the edge of the abyss, but the white knight was in sight. He just had to hang for a while longer.
If only he hadn’t borrowed so much money for personal projects-especially the llama ranch in Lorane that was intended to keep his new wife happy. It had cost him nearly $2 million. For fucking llamas! Now those loans were overdue and he couldn’t shuffle the paperwork to hide the debt much longer.
If Nexapra was FDA-approved by the time JB’s accountants sorted out the bookkeeping mess, his transgressions wouldn’t matter. The new owner would write it all off as a merger expense. If the product was delayed, or the merger fell through, he would be financially devastated. Maybe even unemployable. He could not let anything slow Nexapra down.
Rudker rubbed his temples. He would have to deal with Warner. She could be trouble. He suspected he had not heard the last of her genetic test idea. Warner was a neurologist who had come over to the pharma industry out of the frustration of not being able to help her patients. She thought like a doctor, not an MBA. He wondered if she had any dirty secrets he could use against her.
Rudker reached for his Imitrex. He washed down two tablets with the bottled water he kept at his desk. And that damn PR person! How much had she heard? He had been so startled to find her standing there. Maybe she would have to go away too. He could not take any chances.
He took another swallow of water, then logged on to the company’s enterprise software system and entered the clinical trial database. Only a certain level of R amp;D employees could access the information, but as CEO he had right of entry to all the systems-sales, marketing, patient registries, and pipeline progress. He entered 1299, the drug’s R amp;D number, into the search field, then scanned down the page for the Puerto Rico research site.
In a few minutes, he located the files of the patients who had died. They had signed up for a study in San Juan that had ended last year. Actually, that section of the trial had never really got going. Right around the time of the suicides, the clinic’s lead investigator had quit because of family problems. The research center had been having a difficult time recruiting patients, so they abandoned that arm of the trial. The suicides had never even been reported, and the results from the parallel studies in Eugene and Portland had provided enough positive data for FDA to greenlight the large Phase III that would lead to approval.
Rudker scanned the data. Both subjects had been diagnosed as clinically depressed and had tried a total of seven medications between the two. Miguel Rios was forty-one. His cousin Luis, thirty-four. An image of the two of them, sitting at a picnic table in a backyard filled with family, food, and noise flashed in his brain.
Rudker deleted the image, then deleted the first file.
Gone. As if Miguel Rios had never been in the study. Before Rudker could trash the second set of data, a popup screen notified him that another system user was trying to access the file.
Warner! It had to be. Damn her. What was she doing? Looking at the data again? Rudker waited for the message to disappear, then quickly erased the file. Of course, there was a paper back-up somewhere in the R amp;D building, and there was probably another set of paperwork in the clinic in Puerto Rico. Eventually, he would find and destroy all of it. At the moment, he had a million things to do before he left for Seattle tomorrow. The first was to prepare for a meeting with JB’s board of directors. Rudker buzzed his secretary.
Minutes passed. The wait made him irritable and he began to pace. A voice in his head began to rant about the stupidity and slowness of the average person. It caught him off guard. He usually only heard the voice when he was driving, or sometimes when he worked late. Rudker reminded himself to take his daily dose of Zyprexa as soon as he got off the phone.
He hated the damn stuff. It made him feel sedate. It also kept his paranoia in check and his relationships civil. Most people couldn’t handle his natural energy and directness. He’d learned that the hard way in his early twenties. After doing a few months in jail on an assault charge-which wasn’t his fault-he’d made himself swallow his meds and keep most of his thoughts in check.
Chapter 3
As Sula hurried toward the employee parking lot, her anxiety dissipated a little. A warm sun peeked through the clouds-perfect for an hour in the park. She climbed in her purple Dakota and sped out Prolabs’ long entryway. From Willow Creek, she headed down West 18th Avenue to Westmoreland Community Center.
She got to see Tate for only an hour every other week, but the community center had a lot of activities. Sometimes they played ping-pong or basketball. Today, they would goof around on the swings and the jungle gym and soak up the sun. Walking away from her sweet little boy after only an hour crushed her every time. But it was better than not seeing him at all.
Sula pulled into the parking lot the center shared with Jefferson middle school and shut off the truck. Knowing she was a little early, she leaned back and closed her eyes. Sound bites from the conversation she’d overheard at work began to play in her head. Sula tried to block them out, not wanting to think about Rudker right now.
At exactly four o’clock, Tate’s foster parents, Emily and John Chapman, pulled up next to her in their shiny silver Toyota Prius. Sula figured it had cost them about a third of the value of the house she lived in. She got out of her truck and waited for Tate, who was getting last minute instructions from his guardians. They were thirty- something, attractive, and perfectly nice people. Sula tried not to hate them.
In a moment Tate joined her on the grass. The first two minutes of every visit nearly overwhelmed her. Seeing him was such joy…and such longing, all rolled up in one raw explosion. Tate looked like his father. Blond, blue-eyed, and a smile that could light up the sky. He was good natured too and rarely complained about anything.
She gave him a big grin. “Hey, Tate. What’s new?”
He smiled back and shrugged. “Not much. What are we gonna do today?”
“I thought we’d stay outside, play on the swings and stuff.”
“Okay.” He held out his hand. Sula’s heart melted. She took his little boy fingers in hers and walked toward the swings. In a moment, he started to pump his arm and make engine noises. She joined him, and they ran for the playground.
For the next hour, she was a kid: climbing, sliding, running, and laughing. At times, Sula even forgot that Emily and John were sitting in the parking lot, watching them. At one point, they rested and Tate talked a little about preschool and T-ball, but mostly they played. She always made sure he had a good time with her. Her greatest fear was that her boy would decide he didn’t want to see her anymore.
What would be left in her life then?
Sula had a court-ordered visitation right, but Tate didn’t know-didn’t remember-that she was his mother. Or maybe he did. Even after a year and a half apart, he had taken right to her. Emily and John referred to her as a “friend of the family,” but Tate called her Aunt Sula. She had lost custody of him before his first birthday, and the guilt and shame were never far from her heart.
When he was born, she had been a kid herself, only eighteen and still grieving for her father, mother, and sister. Part of her had believed that a baby would make things right by giving her a new family. After his birth, her depression had deepened and she had no one to turn to. The baby’s father, James, had come and gone in her life in the space of one blurry month, and her mother’s family had long ago rejected the whole Moreno clan.
The Relief Nursery had helped her with daycare but it wasn’t enough. She had been so lonely and so overwhelmed by Tate’s constant needs that she tried to medicate herself into a state of numbness. Eventually a combination of pain pills and alcohol landed her in the hospital. She’d woken to the news that the state had taken custody of her little boy.
Losing him had spun her even farther into despair until a friend had suggested she try taking antidepressants. Prozac had changed her life. Not overnight, but in time. She began to see that she had a future, that she could find
