Trade Secrets
Synopsis
Clinical lab scientist Tony Leung lands her dream job working for Global HemoSolutions, a Silicon Valley company headed by Erica Sanders, the most famous female CEO in America. Tony crosses paths with one of the company’s investors, venture capitalist Sheila Graham, and their chance meeting turns into a love affair.
It’s Sheila’s job to help make GHS’s newest invention a reality, but all is not as it seems, and millions of dollars, not to mention countless lives, could be at risk. Tony wants to go public with their discoveries, but Sheila wants proof. When they face the biggest test of their loyalty amid an excruciating moral dilemma, will their love be strong enough to keep them together?
Trade Secrets
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Trade Secrets
© 2020 By Kathleen Knowles. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-63555-643-8
This Electronic Original Is Published By
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, NY 12185
First Edition: August 2020
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Shelley Thrasher
Production Design: Susan Ramundo
Cover Design By Tammy Seidick
eBook Design by Toni Whitaker
By the Author
Awake Unto Me
Forsaking All Others
A Spark of Heavenly Fire
Warm November
Two Souls
Taking Sides
The Last Time I Saw Her
Somewhere Along the Way
Trade Secrets
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my editor, Shelley Thrasher who always makes my books better. And thanks to the entire Bold Strokes team whose efficiency and precision never ceases to amaze and impress me.
Dedication
For Jeanette
Chapter One
The Moscone Convention Center exhibition floor in downtown San Francisco was populated with information booths belonging to over two hundred companies. Antoinette, “Tony,” Leung scanned the map of the convention floor in her hand and considered where she should start. Wandering up and down random rows didn’t seem like the most efficient use of her time, but she didn’t have an obvious organization such as alphabetical-by-name or grouped-by-company-type to guide her. Tony was all about order and method; she had to be because of the work she performed. Blood testing allowed no room for error, because people’s lives and health were at stake.
Tony didn’t hate her current job at St Francis Hospital, but she didn’t love it either, mainly due to her relationship with her supervisor. Clinical-lab specialists tended to have somewhat rigid, by-the-book personalities because that was part of the job. The problem arose when that lack of flexibility extended to their interpersonal relations. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Tony considered her supervisor kind of a bitch. She was looking for a new job, and a job fair would be a good place to start. Tony was a certified clinical-laboratory specialist, but she could do all sorts of lab work. Working for a private company, as she had once before, might be a nice change from the hospital-run, clinical testing labs.
A brown-haired woman in a conservative business suit stood in front of the sign reading Global HemoSolutions at the corner booth. She might as well start there. She wrote the name of the company on her legal pad, and the woman showed her a practiced HR grin.
“Hi,” Tony said, amiably.
“Hello, Tony, uh, Leung.” She was reading Tony’s name tag. “I’m Heather, and I work in HR for Global HemoSolutions. GHS for short.”
“Nice to meet you. Here’s a copy of my resume.”
Heather read through it in less than thirty seconds, checking for key words, but when she looked up, she appeared interested.
“It says you did immunoassay R and D, and you have a med-tech license. Very impressive.”
Tony didn’t know about impressive, but it did show she was versatile. Performing routine testing and conducting research had radically different requirements.
“I like both types of lab work. For various reasons.”
Heather said, “GHS is still in the R and D stage, but we would probably need clinical-lab people down the road.” Heather handed Tony a glossy pamphlet.
She read, “Our vision is to make blood testing simple, painless, quick, and cost effective. All the things it is not, currently. We have and are developing patented proprietary technology so we can run hundreds of tests on just a couple drops of blood.”
Whoa. That would be truly groundbreaking. Tony instantly decided she wanted to work for this company. To be part of creating something as advanced as what was described in the brochure was an amazing opportunity.
Tony formed her most earnest expression and spoke, holding Heather’s gaze. “That idea fascinates me. I hope you’ll interview me.”
Heather nodded solemnly. “Based on your resume, it looks like you may be someone we’d like to interview. Our CEO, Erica Sanders, still prefers to do them, and she’s very busy, but I am going to recommend she talk to you.”
“That would be great.” Tony shook hands with Heather. “Thanks for your time.”
Tony visited other booths, but she was mostly going through the motions. She was pinning her hopes on Global HemoSolutions—and not just to get her out of the hospital lab.
Three years before, she had worked briefly for a biotech start-up, looking at cancer therapies. It went bust before it could begin clinical trials, but while she was there, it had been one of the most exhilarating experiences of her life. The hospital clinical-lab work appealed to her innate altruism, and the work was predictable. In a world of uncertainty, it was comforting to know if you performed steps in a certain order and in a specific way, you got an expected result. And if you did everything perfectly but didn’t find the expected result, then you had to ferret out the reason, which appealed to Tony as well.
She’d inherited the curiosity and fix-it genes from her engineer dad, Joe. If something was amiss, then she would work on it until she had the answer. Research was similar but required even more patience, along with a sense of curiosity and imagination. Tony reminded herself that she could use all these qualities in the interview with GHS’s CEO, if she could obtain one.
* * *
Tony sat across from Erica Sanders and attempted to make herself appear cool, competent, and in control. It was one level of nervousness to be interviewed for a job she’d convinced herself she had to have, and another when the interviewer was the company CEO and looked like Erica Sanders. Tony reproved herself for noticing the woman’s looks, but they were hard to not notice. Even more compelling, though, was the way Erica talked.
After their introductions and the requisite small talk about how easy a time Tony had finding the company and what it was like to commute from San Francisco by train, Erica sat back, tented her fingers together, and said, “I have a vision where, no matter their age, their socioeconomic background, their gender, you name it, anyone should have access to information about their health. Some of that information can o
nly come from blood tests. You work in a clinical laboratory, so you know how much doctors need and rely on results of such tests.”
Tony nodded and decided to stay silent and hear Erica’s spiel, which it certainly must be. Clearly, she sold her ideas as automatically as she breathed.
Erica paused and looked up at the ceiling. “Right now, what I described in our brochure doesn’t exist. Two companies have monopolies over the blood-testing industry. They don’t innovate. They overcharge the consumers and the insurance companies. And they have to take multiple tubes of blood from people, most of whom hate getting stuck with needles. My sister is one of those people. She practically faints when she has to give blood, and that’s before they stick in the needle.”
Erica stopped and made eye contact with Tony. “We are going to change that paradigm.” Then she paused and let Tony absorb what she’d said.
She continued. “My engineers are working on a device no bigger than an ordinary CPU that can perform hundreds of blood tests on two drops of blood. The assay groups, one of which you’d work in, are readying the assays for our device to perform robotically.”
Tony listened to all this information carefully, but she had no doubts. She knew where she wanted to be and what she wanted to do. “I want to help. I want to help you achieve your goals and think I can. I’ve got the sort of skills you’re looking for, and I understand what you’re trying to do.”
Tony watched Erica’s face. She’d looked serious, rather stern as she spoke, but when Tony responded, she slowly smiled and nodded. She wasn’t just politely listening. Her profound expression said, “I see you get it. You hear what I’m saying.” This felt less like a job interview and more like she was being evaluated for inclusion in a crusade. Did she have the right level of commitment? Did she grasp the significance of what Erica said? Tony hoped so.
“I think you can as well. I read your resume, and though you got your degree at Berkeley, I won’t hold that against you.” Erica looked mock-serious.
“Where did you go to school?” Tony grinned to show she got the joke.
“Stanford, naturally.”
“Well, I won’t hold that against you,” Tony said playfully. Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley famously rivaled each other in sports teams, outstanding students, prestigious research grants, you name it. Tony decided not to correct Erica for calling her alma mater Berkeley, instead of Cal, which was what the alumni called it, unlike the rest of the world. Unkind (or jealous) people called it Beserkley, due to its counter-culture past and lefty present. This name usually referred to the city of Berkeley, but the city and the university were sometimes merged into one. Cal was hard to get into. Maybe not as hard as Stanford, but it was still selective, and Tony was proud of where she’d received her bachelor’s and master’s degree.
Erica continued to scrutinize Tony as she fell silent. Tony waited and kept her eye contact.
“We need special people, Tony. We need the highest level of commitment you can give. There’s no room for doubt. This is going to be hard.”
Tony took a breath, then said, “I understand. I’m prepared to do whatever I have to do to help.”
Erica smiled. “Now that we’re clear about that, when can you start?”
“Excuse me?” Tony was taken aback. She wasn’t sure she’d heard right. They hadn’t not even talked salary, nor had Erica even offered an actual job with a title and a description.
“I want you to come work with me. You’re exactly what I’m looking for. You’d be a perfect fit for the R and D group, and when we’re ready to test patients, you could transfer to the clinical side if you wanted to.”
“Um. Great. I accept. I need to give two weeks’ notice at St Francis.”
They shook hands and Tony left, floating on a pink cloud, not remembering until later, when she was on the Caltrain headed back to the City, that she’d forgotten to ask about salary. It didn’t matter. It would probably be adequate. Money was definitely not the point of working for GHS. Changing the world was. Changing the world with Erica Sanders would be worth whatever salary she’d receive.
She called her dad, Joe, to tell him the good news.
“Congrats, honey. I’m proud of you. Your mother would be too, if she knew.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Dad. I’m starting in two weeks. Talk to you later.”
* * *
Sheila Garrison had been a junior partner in her father Roy’s venture capital investment firm for two and a half years. After finishing her MBA at Stanford, she went to work at a Wall Street investment bank as an analyst. Roy had wanted her to start working with him right away, but she needed some time on her own. She loved her dad, but he could be a little much to deal with.
“You’ll be back,” he’d predicted when she left for New York. And he was right. She did return to the Bay Area. Sheila loved spreadsheets and numbers, but she missed working with people. She returned to Menlo Park and joined her father’s company, and he had the grace not to say “I told you so” explicitly, though his grin said it.
Sheila dove into screening CEO applicants to receive Pacific Partners funding. She had some early modest successes and only one real failure. One of her software companies had imploded, leaving Pacific Partners in the hole for a half a million bucks. Sheila was chagrined, but Roy took it in stride. “If you can’t cope with failure, you’re not going to make it in this business.” Sheila moped for a few days, but she eventually accepted that some bad choices were inevitable. She had begun the study of Buddhism, which helped her cope with her disappointment as much as her dad’s philosophical response to her judgment error had.
Sheila sat at her desk reviewing her calendar and her email, and she heard Roy say, “Knock-knock.” She looked up, and he stood in the doorway of her office grinning.
He didn’t wait for her response but strode in and flopped into one of her guest chairs. He was headed toward seventy-five in a few months, but his youthful enthusiasm made him look much younger. He worked at keeping fit, and though she’d gotten him to stop dyeing his hair and let it go gray, he had the well-kept looks of a prosperous West Coast businessman, which was what he was.
“What’s up?” Sheila asked, noting his demeanor. The Cheshire-cat grin and his leg draped over the arm of the chair and rocking said he was going to tell her something. He had a paper-bound document under his arm.
“Glad you asked. I was at a cocktail party last week and ran into Gary Frenzel. He told me about a new company.”
Sheila nodded. Networking was the way it was done in Silicon Valley. Who you knew and who they knew.
“It’s called Global HemoSolutions. I don’t know what the heck that means, except they do blood testing and Gary’s high on them. He talked to their CEO, and get this. She’s a woman.”
“Wow. That’s something,” Sheila said. “Did Gary invest?’
“Yup, he did, and he thinks we ought to get in, like now. They’re starting series 2.”
Roy meant that the company had done one round of investing and were looking for more money. Their firm, Pacific Partners, usually participated in Series 2 investments.” Pacific Partners wouldn’t invest at the beginning but would jump in a little further along in a company’s growth arc. If you were an early investor and the start-up went bad, you were screwed, naturally. The CEO tended to know the first investors, who would be okay with losing their money.
Investors in later funding series, say Series 3 to Series 5, would further dilute the return on investment: ROI. They simply received a smaller piece of the profits because more people were involved. It was simple arithmetic: the later you joined the party, the lower the profits.
“What do you know about their business? What did Gary tell you?” Sheila asked.
Roy sighed. “I’m not sure I understand it, but Gary seemed to think it has enormous potential. He said, ‘Erica looked me in the eye and told me this would revolutionize medicine, and gosh, I believed her.’”
Ro
y rolled his eyes and then became serious.” I want you to read their prospectus and tell me what you think.” He handed it to her, winked, and left her office.
Sheila understood that he wanted to move forward, at least with vetting this company and probably investing in it. Roy, an optimist, was always genuinely enthusiastic about their prospective companies, but he was also a realist. He’d had his share of success, but enough failures to make him humble and cautious, and she trusted his opinion. His track record of picking investments was strong, and since the late seventies he’d built Pacific Partners into a respected company. Their investors re-upped their contributions regularly and always wanted to know about the “next big thing.” Sheila’s experience as an analyst for an investment bank had allowed her father to hire her and make her a junior partner without any push-back from the other partners. He needed her expertise to evaluate the start-ups they considered funding.
Sheila brewed a cup of green tea and then took off her jacket and rolled up her shirt sleeves. She liked both the literal act itself and the symbolism of the act. Get to work, girl. Her study of Buddhism had taught her how to focus mindfully. Her jacket-doffing and sleeve-rolling signaled her to put her whole focus on the task at hand.
Global HemoSolutions’ prospectus was a thick, handsome document featuring a glossy cover and bold, blue 36-point typeface for the title, as well as a graphic-designer color palette. Erica Sanders, the name of the CEO, was prominent on the second page under the introduction, and her photo looked professional.
The name of the company was rather grand, but start-up entrepreneurs had a license for grandiosity. They didn’t get anywhere by thinking small, and being modest certainly didn’t convince companies like her dad’s to give them big bucks.
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