Forever, page 11
The effect was quick, a whoosh of numbness going through him, his balance taking a knock such that he had to sit down next to his jacket. As the pads of his fingers went numb along with his feet, the tide continued up his limbs and spread throughout his torso.
Goddamn, he was cold already. He needed to go back and get his mink so his lips and nail beds didn’t turn blue.
This was not how he’d envisioned the evening going.
And he was not the only one.
TWELVE
AT 7:01 THE following morning, C.P. Phalen was shown into a conference room on the seventy-fifth floor of a skyscraper in Houston, Texas. Unlike most of the business environments she’d been to in the Lone Star State, the decor was sleek, the furniture modern and simple, the palette a blend of soft grays and cream. There was no art on the walls, no crystal dangling from ceiling fixtures, no gold leaf, marble, or mirrors.
“Would you care for coffee while you wait?” a voice inquired in a European accent.
She glanced back at the executive assistant. The dark-haired young man was probably mid-twenties, his suit was definitely Italian, and that accent was the result of a German being taught English by a Brit. Cologne was French. So were the shoes.
“No, thank you.”
The kid bowed at the waist and exited by backing up. The door was shut quiet as a whisper.
C.P. went over to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows. The morning traffic was still moving pretty well on the highway, lines of cars paring off at exits to funnel out onto the surface roads, the parking lots and garages just starting to fill up. The urban landscape could have been that of any city, the skyscrapers and office buildings gleaming in the early sunlight, the strips of asphalt dull tracks that formed boxes around the real estate.
C.P. checked her watch.
She had flown in on her plane and landed thirty-eight minutes ago. The disembarkment and car ride over from Hobby Airport had taken twenty-one minutes. Then she had waited fourteen minutes in the SUV before entering this building, checking in with security, and riding up the express elevator, which skipped floors two through fifty-five. The pro forma greeting with Pharmatech’s executive receptionist had taken three minutes, and then she had waited for only a couple of heartbeats for the executive assistant to bring her down here. The fact that there was staff on deck so early was not a surprise given how much work the company did with Japanese investors—
Behind her, the door opened, and in the glossy panes, she caught the reflection of the man who entered the conference room.
Pivoting back around, she said, “You’re late.”
Gunnar Rhobes, CEO of Pharmatech, shut them in and made a show of unbuttoning his pin-striped double-breasted jacket as he came forward. His suit was also Italian and so were his shoes. His attitude was gift-from-God.
“You were early,” he said in the same accent as the assistant.
“I was on time.”
Pulling out the leather chair at the head of the table, he sat down and crossed his legs knee to knee. Then he steepled his fingers and stared at her over the manicured tips. He was a lean man, but not because he was unwell. He was a triathlete, an internationally ranked amateur, even though he was how old? Forty? As a result, his already narrow features were whittled down to the point where he had hollows in his cheeks, under his jaw, and on either side of his windpipe. Adding to the austere look, his skin was leathery and prematurely aged, like he never wore sunscreen while he trained outdoors, and his hair was cut so short that it was but a shadow over his skull.
“So to what do I owe this pleasure, Miss C.P. Phalen.”
“You asked for this face-to-face, not me.”
“Did I? Perhaps your scheduling people were confused.”
“They weren’t, and stop playing games. It’s boring. You have the data. You know what the price is. What are you going to do about it.”
A brow rose. “Your arrogance is well known in our industry, but I find it a surprise nonetheless. Do you honestly think you can just demand whatever you want and someone will give it to you—”
“The protocol works. What’s your price, Gunnar.”
“It works in the lab.” His pale eyes narrowed in a way that emphasized his hawk-like features. “It’s early days for you, Phalen. And you’ve been in the R&D business long enough to not let optimism and a profit motive cloud your judgment.”
“What a relief for you, then.”
The left eye twitched. “How so.”
“There are many ahead of you in line, so you don’t have to get tangled up in my delusion. Or did you think you were the only one who’s interested in Vita.”
“I am the one who can pay the most.”
“Money isn’t everything.”
“Then why did you come down here to talk to me.”
“Due diligence. I wanted to see if you were still the asshole I remembered.” She tilted forward and lowered her voice for a beat. “You haven’t disappointed me. Guess I’m one of the first women who’s been alone with you to say that.”
“Petty insults are beneath an intellect like yours.”
“If it’s so petty, why are you flushing like that? And I know what you’ve been saying about me behind my back. I’m flattered you want to come on my tits, but I’ll turn down the kind invitation. Thanks.”
During the pause that followed, she was glad to get the sexual shit out of the way. Misogynists usually led with either a you’re-stupid or a cross-the-line-with-harassment move. Maybe now the two of them could get down to the substance.
“Tell me, Phalen,” he murmured. “Why are you selling such a valuable piece of business?”
C.P. crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s just one more drug in my pipeline.”
“I think you’re lying.”
He was right, of course.
With a shrug, she said, “And you have an easy solution here. Don’t make an offer. It’s just that simple.”
“You’re punching over your weight.” He mimicked fisticuffs. “And before you argue with me, I wouldn’t have come to this meeting if I were you. Don’t you know the first rule of negotiating? ‘He who states his terms first loses.’ ”
“I have another meeting at nine. Give me a price and we can talk. Otherwise, I’m leaving.”
Rhobes sat forward so fast, it was like his chair was spring-loaded. “MD Anderson can’t be a buyer. You’re too underground for them.”
“You do know what Vita is, right? It’s a radical new approach to immunotherapy for certain cancers. Have you read Anderson’s annual report? Been to one of their events? They’re not a diabetes center, you realize.”
“Your Vita is untested. You haven’t had it in a single patient’s vein.”
“Yes, I have. And the trial results are exactly what we expected.”
Gunnar blinked, another one of his subtle tells. “Well, then you have a problem. How will a place like Anderson explain that you’ve gone into testing on human subjects. And if the results were good, why aren’t they in your materials.”
“They’re proprietary.”
“Like the formulation and molecular structure, right?” He whipped his hand through the air like he was erasing text he didn’t like. “Anderson won’t pay what I will. And they aren’t going to want the complication you represent.”
“And what complication is that? If it’s operating under the radar of the FDA, you’re in my sandbox, too, so don’t get all judgmental on me.”
“My labs are all very well-known—”
“Tuttle. Pennsylvania.” C.P. smiled coldly as the man’s face froze. “Yes, I know what’s under that cornfield. So if your next tactic is blackmail? You muscle me, I’ll just expose you as well, and we all know how you don’t like the attention on your company.” When he opened his mouth, she put her palm up. “And I know one more thing about the way you operate. What happened to those two vice presidents of yours? Suicide? Really? I’ll bet if those cold cases got a couple of tips, particularly if the information turned up on the internet, the trails would get real warm, real quick. Have you seen Don’t Fuck with Cats on Netflix? Amateurs can be even more dogged than the pros.”
“Don’t threaten me,” he said in a nasty tone.
C.P. planted her hands on the glossy table, and leaned into her arms. “Don’t fuck with me.”
The silence crackled between them, and she almost smiled. She was quite certain that if he could have, he’d have sent her right out one of the windows, and she took a deep breath of the hatred-stained air.
Straightening, she walked down the length of the table, not breaking eye contact. As she approached where he was sitting, Rhobes swiveled in her direction.
“I’m your only buyer, Catherine.”
C.P. didn’t pause. “No, you’re not. And don’t get up. I’ll let myself out—”
“You’re going to regret this.”
She paused at the conference room door. After a moment, she looked back at him. He was still in that chair, but he’d sat back again and recrossed his legs, knee to knee. In fact, Gunnar Rhobes was looking so superior, he might as well have been standing up and looming over her.
“No, I’m not going to regret anything,” she said. “You’ve got your first rule wrong, you see. The number one thing to keep in mind at the negotiation table is don’t try to force the hand of someone who has nothing to lose.”
Those eyes darkened. “So you’ve declared war, have you.”
“We’re both capitalists. Did you think this was a tea party?” She nodded at him and opened the way out. “Enjoy your day, Rhobes. None of us know how many we have left—which is the point of my research.”
As she walked off, she got lost in thoughts of strategy, but they were interrupted by a drumbeat that made no sense—until a pair of suits came pounding down the hallway. The men didn’t look at her, and as they shot by her, she glanced over her shoulder. With their jackets open, the flapping made it seem like they had pin-striped capes.
Lawyers as superheroes. What kind of DC Universe was that? And there was satisfaction in knowing that something was going wrong in Rhobes’s world.
When she got out to reception, C.P. went to the elevator and called down for her car on her cell. Just as she hung up, the doors opened, and she caught sight of her reflection in the mirrored panels as she stepped in. Her blond hair was in a perfect swoop off to the side, and her face was unlined thanks to regular Botox between the eyebrows. Her uniform of professional garb was elegant as always, and her tall stilettos added to her height.
She was just as she wanted to appear. Imposing and in control.
The image had been honed after she’d gotten out of graduate school and started working at Merck. Her hair was actually ash blond, a color that was not even brunette but a gloomy rain cloud gray, and without the bleaching, it was thin and had little body. Before she’d gotten Lasix, she’d needed heavy-lensed glasses, and a modest breast enhancement had given her flat chest some cleavage. She’d also voice-coached herself by watching Diane Sawyer broadcasts, mimicking that trademark low push of smooth syllables—and actually, Ms. Sawyer had been where she’d gotten the shade of blond from, too. Her first attempts had been out of a box and brassy as a doorknob.
And now here she was, a creation of her own drive, a culmination of personal evolution… proof that you could, in fact, be anything you wanted to be if you just worked hard enough.
Her father had been a plumber. Her mother had been a homemaker.
She had been an only child and relatively normal until she developed a Wilms’ tumor at age four. That was what started her journey into big pharma—
Ding!
The soft chiming broke into her reminiscing, and for a split second, she couldn’t think of what it meant or where she was. When the elevator doors parted, she shook herself to attention and disembarked into the gray-and-black marble lobby.
Her heels made a clipping sound that echoed up into the high ceiling. Ordinarily, she didn’t go around outside of her home or her lab without security, but she had wanted to come into Rhobes’s territory by herself to show she wasn’t intimidated by him.
Besides, he wouldn’t do anything really nasty here. Cameras were everywhere.
Her blond security detail, the one she was fucking, was waiting for her just inside the revolving door, this time in a black suit instead of a military uniform. And as he looked over at her, his eyes made a quick up-and-down that had nothing to do with bodyguarding and everything to do with what he anticipated doing on the return trip to Walters.
Would he have wanted her before the glow-up? she wondered. Without the money?
The answer to that didn’t matter to her any more than he did.
With a strong arm, he opened the static exit to the side of the rotating one, and as soon as she was through, another man in a black suit opened the rear of the SUV they’d rented from a local security company. As she crossed the concrete sidewalk, she imagined the small-town girl who was underneath the gloss schlubbing it to the vehicle. C.P. was proof that destiny was engineered, not a passive reception of some star-given series of calamities.
“Where to, boss,” the driver asked as her door was shut and the two security men got in the front seat. “You said change of plan?”
She looked out her tinted window, at Pharmatech’s giant glass penis of a skyscraper. “The airport.”
“No meeting at Anderson, then?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m rescheduling that. I’ve got work to do back in Walters.”
Settling back against the plush leather seat, she got out her laptop. Her hands trembled as she composed the email to Gus, forcing her to delete and start over one out of every five words. Good thing it wasn’t a long communiqué.
Besides, he would be excited by the news.
They had their patient one.
Rhobes, in all his arrogance, had been right about one thing. It was time to put Vita to the test, and the drug was her fucking baby, too.
After she sent the email, she got her assistant on the phone. “I need my lawyer. Now. I don’t care where he is on vacation.”
THIRTEEN
BACK AT C.P.’S subterranean lab, Daniel was having a bag of saline, a B12 shot, and a blood panel for breakfast. Not exactly Wheaties, but in his condition, the three-course meal was definitely for champions. Or someone who wanted to have enough energy to tackle a flight of stairs at more than a snail’s pace.
As he lay back in the hospital bed and stared at his bony ankles and his thick socks, he considered the merits of buying a new pair of pants. Like, sweatpants. $19.99. From Target. When he hadn’t been sleeping, he’d looked them up on his phone—but felt like he was cheating on QVC.
And it’d seemed like a waste of a twenty-dollar bill.
“What is?”
He glanced past his floppy pant legs at Lydia. She was sitting forward in the chair she always sat forward in, her elbows on her knees, her worried face pinched like she had a spike in the center of her forehead. Next to her, the built-in desk with its computer and rolling stool was a doctor perch waiting for a white coat. Undoubtedly, the vacancy would be filled soon enough.
“Daniel?”
“Ah, nothing.” Had he been speaking out loud? “Your head hurts, doesn’t it.”
Her brows popped. “I’m sorry?”
He pointed to the nape of his neck. “Tension headache, right? I can tell by the way your jaw is twitching, and you’ve got that pale thing going on.”
With a flush, she eased back and rolled her shoulders. “Oh, I’m fine. Really.”
At which point, the Jeopardy! theme started playing.
Closing his eyes, he cleared his throat and said weakly, “Lydia…”
There was a shuffle as she jumped up. “Do you need Gus? The nurse? Here, I’ll go get them—”
By the time he lifted his lids and opened his mouth to tell her he wasn’t stroking out, she was already leaning through the door and barking orders. No competing with that. He waited until she ducked back in and came over to the bedside.
“I don’t need Gus,” he said as she took his hand.
“Better safe than sorry—”
“I don’t need him!” As she recoiled, Daniel couldn’t decide which out of the two of them he wanted to curse more. “I need you, goddamn it.”
Lydia shook her head like she was trying to translate his words into a combination she could understand—and as she winced and rubbed the back of her neck, he wondered why he had to be such a dick.
“You have me,” she said with exhaustion.
“No, I don’t. I have a nurse who looks like you.”
“Daniel.”
The image of her covering her breasts in the bathroom would not leave his mind. Of all the side effects of the medication and the cancer, losing her while she was right in front of him had not been on any of the warning labels he’d seen. Then again, did the FDA screen drugs for that kind of shit? Nope.
And he couldn’t blame her. Not only was he impotent now… given the way he looked, he wouldn’t want to have sex with him, either. Could he fault her for not wanting him?
Maybe the truth was, he was just hurt. As much as he understood her reaction, it was still painful.
But sex wasn’t everything, right? The commitment was there, he didn’t doubt that, and so was her love.
“Or maybe I’m just a responsibility to you now.”
“What?” Lydia rubbed her eyes. Her face. “What are you talking about? Look, can we not do this right now—”
The door to the exam room flew open and Gus jumped into the room. Today’s t-shirt was a faded peach color and had “Harvey Milk for Supervisor” in two lines on the front.
