“How’d the meeting go with Price?” His office chair groaned as he looked back at her.
“Fine,” Gabriela said. She dug in her purse, looking for her mascara.
“What did she say about getting that banner made for the kickoff celebration?”
Banner? What banner? Who cared about a banner?
“Gabbie?”
Right. The banner. Her cover story.
“It didn’t come up.” She found the black tube of mascara tucked in an out-of-the-way pocket, separate from her hot pink makeup bag. Flor must’ve been playing in her purse again.
“You said you were going to ask her.”
This wasn’t going away. She sighed, her hands flat on her desk, and then she turned around to face him. He didn’t know about Flor. None of her subordinates did.
“Call the printing company and see if you can get it put on our account. They’ll work with us.”
Paul crossed his arms. “What’s their name again?” he asked.
“I’ll find it.” Gabriela turned back to her desk, unlocked her computer, then opened the company directory system. Numbers for all of Hildon’s vendors, contractors, and researchers crawled up the screen as she scrolled to the entry for M&G Print Services, but a moment after seeing it, she froze.
The next entry sent a flutter up her spine. Markel Research Group—the Anthradone trials.
Gabriela looked over her shoulder, and saw Paul with his back turned, grumbling, his nose six inches from his computer monitor as he pored over whether the napkins at the kickoff celebration should be aqua or turquoise.
She clicked the entry for Markel Research, scrolled down and snatched a piece of paper off a notepad she kept next to her keyboard. After scribbling down the office number, she backed out of the Markel entry, clicked M&G Print Services, took that number down, then gave it to Paul.
A half second later, she was three paces down the hall, fighting every urge to sprint.
Then she slowed as her thoughts coiled around a new problem: where was she going to call Dr. Markel without anyone noticing? She couldn’t go back to her car. She’d have to swipe her ID badge at the door, and if someone got suspicious a week or a month or a year from now, she’d have to explain why she took an irregular trip out to her car that morning. No empty offices here—they were behind schedule on the new building, and all the new hires had been stuffed in. Bathrooms were right out. Too many people coming or going.
She opted for a particular broom closet—one crammed in a corner on the opposite end of the building, near an IT services storeroom.
The janitors worked nights, so it was a perfect place.
When Gabriela turned into the hall on the southwest side of the building, she found it empty, the lights off.
Perfect.
Inside, the closet was plenty big for someone as small as Gabriela. It smelled of bleach, latex and dust—something that normally bothered her, but not now.
Her left hand clutched the note with Markel’s number. Her right hand held fast to her phone. She’d kept the broom closet light off, only using the light from her phone’s screen to illuminate the note.
She tapped in the numbers, her thumbs trembling. Once she had the number in, ready to dial, she paused and prayed. Let the prayers guide her through. Then, she hit the button.
She was barely able to hold onto the phone as she pressed it to her ear.
It rang once.
“Markel Research Group, how may I direct your call?” a woman’s voice answered.
Gabriela went numb. She hadn’t thought about what she was going to say, much less who she was going to talk to. Should she ask for a supervisor? Maybe the person in charge of planning trials? But what would she do then? Ask them for a spot for Flor Ramos, the girl they’d rejected already? What in the hell had possessed her to zip off on her own and do this? How small she was, how insignificant. No one would listen to her.
“Hello?” the receptionist said.
The veins in Gabriela’s ears pounded. She could barely hear herself think. Now or never. Do it or leave yourself wailing at Flor’s funeral about how you had a treatment so close, you were only a few words away from getting it to her. Live with that the rest of your wretched life.
She had to say something.
“Dr. Markel, please.” Right to the top. A big gamble, one she knew could backfire, and likely would. If Markel were the kind of man who micromanaged everything, he’d sniff her out as a liar before she could say much at all. But if he were too detached from his own company, she’d be wasting her time.
There has to be a way, oh Lord. Shepherd me.
“May I ask who is calling?” the receptionist said.
“Yes, my name is Flor Gabriela—” the only two names that came to her “—and I’m calling from the Associated Press wire service. I wondered if Dr. Markel wouldn’t mind telling me about a new cancer drug, I’ve heard he’s working on? Anthradone, is it? Am I pronouncing that correctly?”
Gabriela braced for the receptionist’s answer. Her hands had gone back to trembling. She noticed everything now—her own breathing, the faint thud of footsteps on the floor above her, and the worrying silence on the other end of her phone call.
“Dr. Markel is currently not in the office,” the receptionist finally said. “May I take a message for you, Miss Gabriela?”
Without meaning to, Gabriela breathed a sigh of relief.
“He’s not?” She asked. “Is there another way I can reach him?”
“I’d be happy to take a message for you, ma’am.”
“Oh, no, that’s fine. I’ll talk to someone else.” Gabriela ended the call.
What the hell was she doing? Impersonating someone to talk to a doctor she didn’t even know—one that she had a truly clear conflict of interest with? And what if she did get Dr. Markel on the line? What then? Did she sob into the phone and beg him to bend the rules and put Flor into the Anthradone trial?
Another prayer came.
Gabriela stared into the darkened closet. She saw vague shapes in the shadows. She saw a future without light, a barren, gray smear. She saw herself barefoot and shivering, damned to wander through a wilderness of dead plants, dried riverbeds and sulfur, the shimmering heat, the sleepless nights of mourning. A lake of fire.
Her mind pictured Flor, a preschooler, squeezing her thick, black hair together with a rubber band, like a farmer wrestling with a bundle of hay. She tamed her hair, then put a tiara on her head and twirled in the living room of their old house, showing off the ballet steps she’d learned.
Six years ago. Half her daughter’s life. She was so full of energy before Li-Fraumeni, when the worst illness Flor ever had was a string of stomach aches that a doctor found out was chronic indigestion caused by a bacterial migration from her gut.
All it took to cure that was a single treatment of Poraxim—another of Hildon’s products, which they were happy to sell for a couple hundred dollars.
No one batted an eye about giving her that medicine. No one had yanked it away or told Gabriela it would be unethical to use it to heal her daughter.
Now it was all different.
Gabriela wiped her hand on her skirt, then she opened the closet door and checked the hall. Just as she was about to step out, her phone rang in her hand.
She jumped. Somebody was going to hear it. She shut the closet door and hit the button to silence the phone.
On the screen was a number she didn’t know. It wasn’t saved in her phone, and it wasn’t the number for Markel Research—it was a couple digits off.
She let her phone vibrate in her hand until it stopped, and the screen went dark. Then, she switched her phone over to silent.
As she started to open the closet door, the phone buzzed again.
Same number.
Gabriela couldn’t answer. She knew it had to be someone from Markel. Probably an attorney or a fraud officer—she didn’t want to face up to what she’d done. How could she explain herself? More l
ies? She wouldn’t be able to keep track of them all.
But when the phone started rattling at her a third time, Gabriela knew this wasn’t going away. She had to face whomever it was head on, offer a sincere apology without elaborating too much, and hope that would be enough.
She answered, bringing the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Is this the reporter from the AP?” A man’s voice asked. Not the receptionist.
Her heart jumped into her throat.
“Who is this?” Gabriela asked. “How did you get my number?”
“You called my lab and asked for me.”
Impossible.
“Dr. Markel?”
“Yes.” He was whispering into the phone. Gabriela pictured a man in a dark closet hiding, like her. “You stirred up my receptionist, Angela,” he said. “What did you tell her?”
“Just that I wanted to talk to you about Anthradone,” she said. “But I don’t think that’s what upset her, I hung up on her.”
The call went silent for a handful of seconds. Long enough for Gabriela to consider telling him the truth.
“Dr. Markel, I—”
“I can tell you everything you’ll want to know about Anthradone, but we can’t do it over the phone. How quickly can you come to my house?”
Now wasn’t the time for the truth.
If Gabriela could get into the same room as Dr. Markel, she knew she had a better chance of getting him to accept Flor into the Anthradone trial. He couldn’t turn away someone in need—not face-to-face.
“Where do you live?”
“West of San Juan,” he answered. “I’m on the coast, north of Manati.”
Gabriela wanted to leave now, but she couldn’t. Not after telling Miss Price she couldn’t take a personal day. And she’d have to arrange for Flor’s nurse to stay a couple of hours later than usual.
“This evening,” she said. “Around 6 p.m.”
“Then that’ll have to do,” he said. “Am I calling you on a cell phone number?”
“Yes.”
Silence followed her answer.
Gabriela looked at her phone—of all the times to get disconnected.
She started to re-dial the doctor when an alert to a text message appeared. She tapped it and a message from Dr. Markel’s number came on the screen—his home address.
Tamara Price lifted her head up high, pushed her shoulders back, and marched toward Rachel Little’s office door on the top floor of the Hildon building. It would be Tamara’s office soon enough, when Rachel Little stepped down, and Tamara, the odds-on-favorite for Hildon’s next CEO, took over. She had to act like she owned this place. She had to be confident to inspire the confidence of her future employees. She had to keep the money flowing.
But when she pushed the door open, her icy facade cracked the instant her eyes met those of the man on the other side of Rachel’s office door.
He stood in front of the desk. His slicked back, sandy brown hair seemed to absorb the last few threads of light filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows along the far wall. He shouldn’t have been here; it was an unnecessary risk.
The police officer, hat in hand, nodded Tamara’s way.
“Tamara!” Rachel did her big greeting, as always, her arms outstretched, ready for a hug, her wavy blond hair bouncing off her shoulders, and the flared hems of her white pants swishing around her naked ankles. She slipped around her desk and came Tamara’s way. “So glad to have you here.”
Always too familiar for business. Rachel was touchy-feely in ways that seemed premeditated. In any case, Tamara held her arms out for a hug as well, because you had to match the other person’s energy when in a social situation. Hinting at discomfort meant letting Rachel dominate the room, and that was social suicide. As sure as vomiting on her shoes.
The two women, CEO of Hildon, and VP of Hildon Special Projects, embraced each other like long-lost sorority sisters. It’d been a day since they’d seen each other.
Tamara watched the police officer over Rachel’s shoulder. His face betrayed nothing, and his hands were as still as a trained killer’s. While he kept his nerves together, so too, would Tamara.
Letting go, but still holding Tamara’s shoulder in her hands, Rachel tucked her chin and smiled so warmly, it almost turned Tamara’s stomach—that smile had definitely been practiced in a mirror.
“I thought this was going to be a one-on-one meeting,” Tamara said, breaking off from Rachel’s hug. “I hope I didn’t arrive early.”
“Oh please, as if you could. You’re right on time. I called you down because I wanted you to meet Officer Abalos and his men.” Rachel waved a hand from the officer standing in front of her desk to this year’s sectional, pushed into the corner, with a pair of uniformed policemen sitting on it. Tamara’s blood went hot. What kept her from bolting through the door was the same sheer guts and determination that had put her in Rachel’s office in the first place. A meek person didn’t rise to the upper echelons of a Fortune Global 500 company the way Tamara Price had.
Both the officers on the sectional smiled affably at Tamara.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she forced herself to say. “Welcome to Hildon, and I’m pleased to meet the both of you.”
“Officer Abalos,” Rachel said as she turned and strolled behind the desk, “I’d like you to meet our VP of Special Projects, and the youngest executive to ever serve Hildon Pharmaceuticals, Tamara Price.”
He extended his hand.
Not wanting to make a scene, Tamara took it immediately, and shook.
“Miss Little has said a lot of good things about you.” Officer Abalos may have looked white, but his Puerto Rican accent was every bit as thick as any of the other locals Tamara had met.
“She’s always flattered me,” Tamara said, breaking the handshake. Modesty was always good. Showed confidence.
“Don’t let her downplay herself,” Rachel said. “Tamara is the brains behind our new campus. She went way beyond her title and has brought it all together in a way that has left even the board wondering where I dug her up.”
“You must be a very ambitious woman,” Officer Abalos said.
“I love this company and I love the work I do. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve never worked a day in my life.”
“You may feel like that now,” Rachel said with a smile. “But when you’re running the show, you’ll change your tune. Everyone wants a piece of my time, everyone wants more money, everyone wants, wants, wants! It’s never ending. There are times where I swear this job will drive me to murder.” She gave a playful smile to Officer Abalos. “Just a joke, of course.”
He laughed, his eyes meeting with Tamara’s.
“In any case,” Rachel said, as she sat in the big leather chair behind her desk, “you aren’t here to listen to me gripe and I’m sure you have work you need to return to. I only wanted you to have a face to put with Tamara’s name, since you’ll be working closely with her over the coming days. We’ll be in contact to talk about firmer security plans tomorrow.”
“And we’ll be here.” Officer Abalos reached across the desk to shake Rachel’s hand. “I’ll pass the word to a few watch sergeants who will post off-duty work opportunities for their people. We’ll have the manpower you need for a smooth, safe opening party for your new building.”
“Wonderful,” Rachel said with a smile. “Once you’ve got an actionable security plan in place, please send it over for our approval.”
Orders in place, Officer Abalos headed for the door. The other officers rose from the couch and followed him into the outer office, where Tamara watched Rachel’s secretary rise from her desk with a toothy smile, then escort them to the elevator. Tamara closed the door behind them, her pulse throbbing through fingers chilled with sweat.
“So,” Rachel said, with an expectant look in her eyes, “are you holding weed on your person, or do you get that jittery around cops just because it makes things more exciting that way?”
Tamara turned and faced her boss, watching as she pulled open the big filing drawer by her knee. Out of it, she brought a bottle of scotch and a pair of glass tumblers.
“I’ve had some incidents with the police,” Tamara said. “Every black girl who grew up in Southwest Atlanta knows what I mean. You don’t trust a man in uniform, until you know you can trust him.”
Rachel poured a splash of scotch into both glasses, then held the other one in Tamara’s direction.
“We’re a long way from East Point, little darling,” Rachel said with a smile. She bobbed the glass, urging Tamara to have a drink with her.
Turning down a drink with your boss was career suicide. Tamara walked over, accepting it from Rachel, who wasn’t ready to let it go.
“Besides, every officer you’ll see on Hildon’s premises from here on out is being paid by us. Handsomely. Nobody on that side of the law with half a brain would do a thing to us. Even after we write the checks, any cop in Puerto Rico who’s part of the union will give you and me and everyone else with an impressive title in this building the light touch treatment. You’ll see.”
Rachel sipped her glass. Tamara did too.
“There isn’t something you’re hiding from the law, is there?” Rachel asked, with that same rakish smile across her lips. “Right?”
Was she teasing? Or was that smile meant to mask the discomfort of a prying question?
“Dear, it’s all right.” Rachel stood up from her chair. “I know you’re a clean, wholesome type. Besides, everyone here has something they’re getting away with or from. Island life, right?” Rachel winked. “Things get wild. The Virgin Islands are a skip eastward from here, and everybody knows the kinds of things that happen over there.”
She took another sip from her glass and then walked toward the sectional, beckoning Tamara to follow.
After Rachel took her usual spot—on the shorter side of the sectional, in front of a Banksy original hung on the wall—Tamara took her seat on the longer part.
“In any case, there’s no need to worry.” Rachel stretched her slender arm across the back of the couch and crossed her long legs at the knees. “The one thing you should remember as you do this job is that a few extra work hours, a couple charitable contributions, a donation to the governor’s campaign—all those things are a tremendous value.” The meaning wasn’t lost on Tamara. Money could buy consideration, time, an attentive ear—all things worth more than a luxury yacht or a private airliner.
Wayward Sons Page 10
