He opened his email, scrolling through it quickly. Everyone always thought everything was so damn urgent. Normally, he did, too. Not today, though. The HepataNix roll out was going as smoothly as it could with the loss of Beth.

  He shook his head over that. Who would do that? And why Beth? You didn’t get to her level in the company without stepping on a toe or two, but she’d stepped on fewer than most and nothing she’d done would warrant what had happened to her.

  It was a credit to Beth that the roll out had continued. Her plans had been so well-made and explained that everyone knew exactly what to do. He hated to think about what it could have been like if she hadn’t been that damn good at her job.

  He shuddered and made a note to make sure his secretary sent flowers to the funeral. Maybe they could do something for the kids too. Perhaps a contribution to a college fund or something like that?

  Poor kids. What a shame that they’d have to grow up without her. He thought of his own two little ones. They were younger than Beth’s kids, but the idea of them growing up without him made something in his chest get very tight.

  He pulled up the video from the security cameras. Some damn deer had been getting onto the property at night or early in the morning and feasting on their garden. Ellen was going to be out there with a shotgun if she had to replant those gladiolas one more time. Maybe if he knew when and how they were getting in, he could do something about it before she got home. Then he’d feel a little less guilty about playing hooky from work—and his family—today to enjoy the peace and quiet in his house.

  He scrolled through the footage. No deer that he could see. Wait. No. There was some movement. He checked the timestamp and his eyes widened. This wasn’t last night or earlier that morning. This was happening now. He zeroed in on the camera that had shown the movement and watched in disbelief as a man, dressed in dark clothing with a baseball cap pulled down low over his face, made short work of the alarm sensors that would warn the guards at the front that someone was on his property.

  What the hell?

  He grabbed his keys. Did he have time to get to his car?

  He glanced at the camera again. No. No way. The man was jogging toward the house and was moving at a good clip. If Gil opened the garage doors, the man would be on him before he could get out to the driveway.

  He didn’t know what to do. His heart raced in his chest. Why wasn’t the alarm going off? How was this happening? What should he do?

  He grabbed his cell phone and pressed the buttons to call the guard house. Nothing happened. Why didn’t he have cell service?

  What was left?

  Hide. That was it. He should hide. It was a big house. He raced upstairs. Maybe the closet? No. That would be the first place someone would look.

  The bed. He could hide under the bed. There was a narrow space up the middle of it that would be hidden from either side by the sliding drawers under the bed. The only reason Gil knew about it was because Randy had crawled in there one time when they were playing hide and go seek and had fallen asleep. Ellen had almost called 911 when they couldn’t find him.

  He hit the floor and slid in-between the drawers as he heard the front door open and close.

  Damn. He knew that he’d locked it before he went to bed last night and hadn’t unlocked it yet. It was his nighttime routine, securing the house for his family. Whoever it was had gotten past their fancy dead bolt with apparently no problem at all. No double beep either. Someone had managed to completely disarm their system.

  He was alone, and no one was coming to help. No one even knew that he was in trouble.

  Someone. Who, though? Who would be able to disarm the security system, jam his cell phone, and pick the front door lock? More importantly, what did whoever it was want?

  His heart raced even faster. Could it be the same person who killed Beth? Please no. Please let it be someone who wanted jewelry and electronics, someone who thought Gil had gone with Ellen and the kids to Martha’s Vineyard instead of playing hooky. Someone who wanted their laptops and televisions and the emerald and diamond tennis bracelet he’d bought Ellen for her last birthday. Let whoever it was take whatever they wanted and leave. Those were just things. He’d buy more. Hell, the insurance company would probably pay for most of it. Please. Take the things and go.

  Gil willed his breathing to slow and listened. He couldn’t hear anything. No footsteps on the stairs or in the hallway. No one talking. No one breathing.

  Maybe they’d left. Maybe they’d realized someone was home and slipped right back out the door. Burglars didn’t want to mess with homeowners. They wanted stuff. Not confrontation.

  He waited another minute and still heard nothing. His heartbeat began to slow and his own breathing started to return to normal. He was going to be okay. Whoever it was had left. He’d wait just a minute or two more to be certain.

  Two large hands grabbed his ankles and yanked him out from underneath the bed. He tried to grab onto the drawers or the slats beneath the bed, but whoever it was was too strong. Gil couldn’t keep a grip on anything.

  Then he was lying on the floor staring up into the face of someone he could swear he’d never seen before. “Who are you?”

  The man shook his head. “You don’t even know who I am. You destroyed my life, and you don’t even know my name.”

  What was he talking about? “How … how did I destroy your life?”

  “You let my wife die. You had the drug that would have helped her live for years to come, and you let her die.” The man’s voice was calm, but his eyes glittered with rage.

  “Wait. What drug?”

  “HepataNix.”

  Gil felt panic rising in his chest. This had to be the same man that had killed Beth and Tom. He’d done it because his wife couldn’t get HepataNix?

  “I had to watch her waste away, her eyes turning yellow, her stomach swelling while her arms and legs wasted down to twigs. It was excruciating.”

  Gil pulled himself into a sitting position. Maybe if he could keep the guy talking, he’d be able to figure out how to get away. If he could make a connection with the man, he’d let Gil go. “I know how you feel, man. My own brother died of the same liver cancer. I know how awful it is. It’s why I wanted to develop HepataNix in the first place, to keep as many people as I could from having to experience the same thing.”

  The man backhanded him and then got right in his face. “How is that the same? You didn’t choose to let your brother die, but you chose to let my wife die. You had the drug that would save her, and you wouldn’t give it to her.”

  “Wait. What? How?” That made no sense. The drug was only coming on the market now. The FDA approval had only been given a short time ago.

  “It’s a little late to be asking those questions now, Gil.”

  The man planted his knee in Gil’s chest, effectively pinning him to the ground, and pulled a hypodermic needle out of his jacket pocket.

  “In fact, it’s way too late.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  By the time Morgan walked into the conference room behind Danielle back at FBI headquarters, Henry had already managed to get hold of the list of people who participated in the HepataNix trials.

  “What have you found?” Danielle asked.

  “There’s nothing here.” Henry pushed the list across the table to Morgan as Morgan sat down.

  “Nothing?” Morgan pulled the papers toward himself and scanned the names. None of them rang a bell but that wasn’t surprising.

  “Nothing that stands out. Gibson was the only person bumped from the drug trial. Everyone else was in it for the full eighteen months. They started the trial at the same time, and they all finished it as well.” Henry tipped back in his chair and rubbed his eyes, the long hours clearly wearing on him as well.

  Morgan glanced down the list, not really sure what he was looking for. He turned the papers face down. Great. Just great. They might have done serious damage to his relationship with a colleague and perhaps his reputation as a physician, and they’d gotten nothing for their trouble.

  “I’m sorry, Morgan,” Danielle said.

  He sighed. He felt no need to belabor the point. She knew his objections. He wondered exactly how bad a hit his friendship with Arturo had taken. Even though no one had been implicated because of it, it was still an invasion of privacy and one that Arturo had been clear that he hadn’t wanted to have any part of.

  Morgan’s cell phone buzzed with an incoming text. He pulled it from his pocket. Ashley.

  Where r u?

  He stepped out into the hallway to text her back. Consulting on a case. Why?

  For the FBI?

  Yes. With Danielle.

  The three little gray dots appeared, then disappeared, then reappeared. Finally words arrived. Another one? So soon?

  He wasn’t sure what to say to that. That there were too many murderers out there? Even one was too many. If he could help stop one, he was going to do it. Yes. What’s up?

  I stopped by your place to show you something and was surprised you weren’t there.

  She’d come to his apartment. He was sorry to have missed that. What did you want to show me?

  The little gray dots did their appearing and disappearing act again. Then she wrote, Not a big deal. I’ll show you later. Let me know when you’ll be home. Okay?

  Sure.

  He stared down at the phone for a second, trying to figure out what Ashley might want to show him. Maybe it was an excuse. Maybe she just wanted to see him. She’d been thawing toward him. He tried not to get his hopes up, but it was hard not to.

  He missed her. A lot. Maybe he still had a shot. Wouldn’t that be something? If he could get back together with Ashley, would he also find his love of medicine again? Would it be like none of this had ever happened?

  He slipped the phone back in his pocket and went back into the conference room.

  Danielle, Henry, and Divinia were all standing in front of the whiteboards, arms crossed over their chests.

  Yesterday, there’d been only one name up on the board. Now there were two. Was their killer done? Or was this only the start of a spree? What did they need to do to be sure there were no more photos than the two that were already up there?

  Below them were photos of Paul Gibson and Tristan Lee, both with their faces crossed out. Dead ends. No other leads to follow at the moment.

  Henry tapped on the photo of Beth. “Let’s go back to our first victim. Maybe we missed something. We should go over the victimology again.”

  It made sense to Morgan. He often went back to a patient’s medical history when he was stumped. Sometimes something he hadn’t noticed before would jump out at him.

  “We looked at her personal life. Nothing rang any alarm bells there,” Divinia pointed out. “It seems too coincidental that she was killed with HepataNix, especially since that’s what Hatton was killed with as well. It’s got to be related to their work for SowerMed.”

  Henry went back to his seat and slumped down into it. “There has to have been a trigger, something that started this off.”

  The timing meant something to their murderer. Morgan joined Henry at the table. “HepataNix was only recently approved. Even though the company had everything ready to roll, there would be a bit of a gap between the approval and the actual roll out. People would have started to hear about the drug before they could actually get it. When did the first ads hit the air?”

  Henry grabbed his laptop and typed. “Last week.”

  He turned the laptop around so they could all see and started a video. An attractive couple in their early thirties walked along a beach. Wind blew their hair back. It looked like they were laughing while a voiceover said “We all deserve to spend as much time as possible with our loved ones.”

  Then a middle-aged man filled the screen. “I’m Gil Sower, CEO of SowerMed.”

  The camera followed him as he walked through a lab. “Fifteen years ago, my little brother was diagnosed with a rare liver cancer.”

  The picture of a young man replaced Sower’s image. Morgan leaned forward. He looked a lot like Sower. “He hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t drink or do drugs. He was a kid, really. It didn’t matter. There was nothing the doctors could do to save him.”

  Now Sower was back. “That’s why we at SowerMed have pushed so hard to develop HepataNix. I couldn’t save my brother, but maybe I can save yours.”

  Sower’s image faded as the voiceover started listing all the warnings that went along with television ads for prescription drugs.

  They all sat there for a moment in silence.

  “Let’s dig deeper into SowerMed. Maybe it’s something internal to the company.” Danielle rested one hip on the table. “We haven’t really considered that angle. Maybe HepataNix is only peripheral to the case. It’s part of it because it was developed by SowerMed, but it isn’t the main impetus behind the killings.”

  “I’ll dig deeper into what Tom Hatton’s been up to. Maybe there’ll be something there. HepataNix wasn’t the only drug he helped market or that Beth repped. Maybe the fact that the murderer took that particular drug from Beth’s sample case was a coincidence.” Divinia looked over at Morgan. “You said any number of drugs could have killed her if she got too much of them.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll see what else was in her case. Maybe there’s some kind of clue there.”

  “Good plan,” Danielle said. “Ready to go, Morgan? Let’s go see if we can find anything out at SowerMed that will help us catch this guy.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Morgan stepped out of the SUV and looked up at the SowerMed building. It was even grander than the Nesbitt & Landham headquarters, and no one seemed to be throwing chairs through windows at this particular spot. That was a bonus.

  “What’s our plan?” he asked Danielle as she walked over to stand next to him.

  “I’m not sure I have one,” she said. “What I have is a bad feeling that this unsub isn’t done killing yet, and I want to stop him before he gets another chance. I’m going to try to start at the top and work my way down, knocking on every door I can find until something shakes loose.”

  Morgan shot her a look. “Do you think something will?”

  “No way to know until we try.” She strode off toward the entrance.

  Morgan followed at a slightly more leisurely pace, taking in the well-kept grounds. It cost a lot of money to keep a place like this going. Of course, Nesbitt & Landham’s grounds had looked good, too, and that hadn’t meant much. Companies liked to keep up appearances just as much as people did.

  Danielle was already talking to the security guard when Morgan walked in.

  “We’d like to speak with Gil Sowers, please.”

  The guard snorted. “You and everybody else who walks in here. Do you have an appointment?”

  Danielle pulled out her badge. “No, but we need to talk to him about an ongoing investigation.”

  The man frowned. “Into what?”

  Danielle cocked her head to one side and regarded the man for a moment. “I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Then I can’t help you.”

  Danielle might not be able to discuss an ongoing investigation, but Morgan wasn’t subject to all the same rules and regulations. Yet. “Did you know Beth Schultz?”

  The guard’s arms dropped to his side and he blinked a few times. “Sure. I knew Beth. Everyone did. She . . . She was a great lady.”

  Morgan didn’t say anything more.

  “This is about her? About what happened to her?” the guard asked.

  Morgan just looked at him, letting him draw his own conclusions.

  The guard sighed. “I’m not supposed to let anybody up there unless they have an appointment, but I think everyone would want me to make an exception in this case.” He picked up his phone and dialed. “Got a couple people here from the FBI. They want to talk to Mr. Sower. It’s … it’s about Beth.” His voice cracked a little.

  He listened for a moment and frowned. “Okay. I’ll send ‘em up.” He hung up the phone and pointed to the elevators. “Twelfth floor. Hang a right as you get out of the elevator.”

  Once they were in the elevator alone, Danielle said, “Well played.”

  Morgan shrugged. “Every once in a while you get more flies with honey than vinegar.” It had been a calculated risk. So far, everyone had spoken highly of Beth. She seemed to be truly liked and respected. He didn’t have any qualms about plucking at someone’s heartstrings to get what they needed.

  Danielle sighed. “I probably revert to vinegar too fast.”

  He snorted. “Then it’s a good thing I’m here to sweeten you up.”

  The elevator doors opened and they turned right as directed. A plump, older woman sat at a huge, cherry wood desk in front of a set of closed double doors. The carpets were so thick, their steps barely made a sound. Along the hallway were framed landscape paintings of the area and tables with huge bouquets of fresh flowers set in niches.

  “Hello, ma’am.” Danielle smiled, clearly trying to take his advice. “I’m Special Agent Danielle Hernandez. We’d like to speak to Mr. Sower.”

  “Gil isn’t in today,” the receptionist said. “He’s taking a vacation day.”

  Danielle pinched the bridge of her nose.

  Morgan let his head drop back, fatigue suddenly surging back. Had they really gone through all that with the security guard just to find out that the person they wanted to speak to wasn’t here? Was there any way to keep this from being a wasted trip? Who would be the most useful person to talk to after Sower?

  Danielle was clearly thinking along the same lines. “Could we speak to someone in your HR department?”

  “Sure.” The receptionist picked up her phone and hit a few buttons. “Do you have a few minutes to talk to someone? It’s about Beth.” After a pause, she said, “Great.”

  She hung up the phone and stood. “Peggy in HR can see you. Follow me.”

  She led them down the hall to another suite of offices, her sensible heels barely making a dent in the plush carpet. The HR offices weren’t as sumptuously appointed as Sowers’ offices, but they were still nicer than anything Morgan had ever seen at the hospital and that included the admin floor where Ashley worked. Maybe he’d been in the wrong part of the medical field..

 

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