“Who’s this?”
“Iain McPherson. He’s another CLS researcher.”
“And you are…” Iain raised an eyebrow.
“Leonard Bowman.” He looked straight into Iain’s eyes. “Doctor Leonard Bowman.”
“Leo, that’s enough.” I pulled him aside. “Do you remember the black wolf?”
His nostrils flared. “Why?”
“I think I just saw him.”
“Give me five minutes, then get my clothes out of the alley.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Track him.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I glanced over my shoulder and saw Iain watching us. Poor guy, he had no idea what he’d just gotten himself into. But he’d be so excited to hear about what we’d found if he could get past the shock.
“No more dangerous than letting him roam around and making cars explode.”
“Touche. Fine. Good luck.”
He made sure that no one watched him, then darted into the alleyway and disappeared into the shadows.
“Is he...?” asked Lonna when I returned to the group alone.
“Yep.”
She nodded. “You’ll have to fill me in later.”
The rest of the day was a whirlwind. First we had to talk to the cops. Then to the bomb-squad guys. Then to another policeman, this one in plainclothes, at the station. Iain had to make a call to his travel-insurance company and straighten out things with the rental-car company as well as replace everything that had been in his suitcase in the trunk. Luckily he’d taken his laptop as well as his wallet and passport into Galbraith’s office, so the difficult-to- replace items had been spared. Lonna had left us at the police station to go to her office and finally rescued us just as the sun was setting. She suggested that we go out for dinner, but I wanted to be safely indoors if the black wolf was prowling about.
“So who do you think wants to kill you?” Lonna asked Iain as we sat with Italian take-out in front of us and glasses—big ones—of Chianti in hand.
“Are you always this direct?” Iain asked. He leaned forward and snagged another calamari ring.
“Yes. And you’re evading the question.”
Here we were again, Lonna taking the lead, and me just sitting quietly and keeping my mouth shut. Back in the city with the same old patterns. I couldn’t concentrate, though, not with the black wolf prowling around out there and Leo trying to track him.
“I honestly have no idea. I haven’t received any threats. I haven’t noticed anything suspicious. The first inkling I had of something being out of the ordinary was when my car alarm went off while I was in Galbraith’s office talking to Joanie.” He raised his glass to me. “I don’t know how to thank Joanie enough for saving my life.”
“She’s got a knack for self-preservation.” Lonna grinned, and the red wine gave her purple teeth. She looked like she’d been sucking the lifeblood out of a wine barrel. “Don’t you, Joanie?”
“I guess.” I swirled the wine in my glass. “I just knew something was wrong. Just like the night of the fire. Just like the night Louise died.”
“Wait a second.” Iain set his glass on the table and turned to look at me. “You mentioned her earlier, and it slipped my mind. Just how did she die?”
“She showed up one night bloody and hurt, badly hurt. She died on my suede couch. Or maybe it was microfiber. Either way, they took it.”
“She died in your house?”
“She knew my grandfather, was helping him at the house. I guess she knew how to get there from the village. It’s not like it’s a difficult path, just straight up the hill.”
He arched an eyebrow, his expression serious. “Then maybe I need to get as far away from you as possible.”
“That’s not nice, Iain.”
“Oh, forgive me, Doctor Fisher.” He stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets as he paced back and forth. “If you may recall, I just survived an explosion, one which you also witnessed. I lost my favorite luggage set, my rental car, and likely a few years off my life! I don’t know if I’m in the mood to be nice.”
Lonna opened her mouth, but I held my hand up. “If you’re not in the mood to be nice, then I’m not in the mood to deal with you. I suggest you call a cab and go find a hotel for the night. Then you can skedaddle right on back to Stirling tomorrow.”
“Skedaddle?” He frowned, then the corner of his mouth twitched. “I don’t think that a Scotsman would skedaddle.”
“Whatever. You can leave whenever you want to.”
He sat back down. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because that bastard Robert should be here to protect you, not me. He’s the real reason you’re in this mess. If he’d stood up for you at Cabal, none of this would have happened.”
“And what do you know about that?”
He looked down at the wineglass cradled in his hands. “Robert didn’t want to fire you, but he said he was under a lot of pressure from his bosses—who were getting heat, if you’ll forgive the pun—from the bigwigs at the pharmaceutical company that bought Cabal.”
“Wait a second. Cabal was bought by a pharmaceutical company? I thought it was another research organization.”
“It was the research arm of one of the big ones, I forget which one. I think it only has one word in the name. The information should be online.” He opened his laptop and waited for it to boot up.
“Lonna, did you have any luck figuring out where those vaccines came from?”
“I’d almost forgotten. Yes, I talked to Jasmin, who looked in the state database. I could only get an idea of which ones were distributed in the region. The only company that had both the flu vaccine and the Tdap vaccine came from…”
“Hippocrates Pharmaceuticals,” she and Iain said at the same time.
I wish I could say that everything became clear at that point, but I felt as though I had been punched in the stomach. My foe—and the threat to me and my friends—had just gotten a lot bigger. I also knew with certainty that I was going to have to talk to Robert and find out what this “pressure” was and how my projects had changed since I had been “terminated”.
I didn’t think I would be able to sleep that night considering the events of the day, so I was surprised when the ringing of my cell phone woke me up.
“Doctor, is everything okay?”
I rolled over and looked at the clock. Midnight.
“Yes, Gabriel, everything’s fine.”
“I was just checking the news online and saw the piece about the explosion in the Local/Arkansas section. Your name was mentioned.” He didn’t say anything about Iain’s, although surely his must have been as well. “Were you injured?”
“Only my left wrist again. You weren’t there to save me this time.” I couldn’t keep the resentment out of my voice.
“That is something I will always regret.”
The genuine sorrow in his voice tugged at my heart, particularly since I had meant to tweak him, but then the conversation with Galbraith and Iain popped into my head.
“You knew Iain McPherson? He said you were on his research team and left, then you showed up when my grandfather started looking for domestic help.”
