by Naomi West
“I'm really just worried about Abby,” she admitted. “I'm a small fry, and nothing bad would ever happen to me. But if some big scandal hit while she is the CEO? God, that'd just be awful!”
He waved it off. “I wouldn't worry about that reporter, especially not with some story that might affect Abby. She's a tough woman, right? And, besides, she's new to the position. Whatever's going on, or whatever allegations there are, how could she be tied up in it? And, besides, Abby's a good person. She'd never do something that got her bad press, would she?”
Jackie laughed and drank down the last of her wine, before proffering her glass for a refill. Zed obliged.
“Yeah,” she said, as the dark red liquid swilled into the large wineglass. “You're probably right. I'm just worried something bad might happen, that's all.”
Zed glanced at the time on the living room clock. Those two hours were coming up. And, if Jackie was telling the truth, it was even more important now that he get hold of those files.
“Worried about the time?” Jackie asked, as she followed her eyes to the clock, laughing a little as she took another sip. “She's probably just hit traffic, that's all.”
He grinned, showing her his teeth. He wasn't just worried about the time for himself. He was worried about it for Jackie, too.
Chapter Seventeen
Zed
Who was he kidding? He wasn't going to kill Jackie. Even with all his psycho tendencies in the last week or so, there was no way he was going to kill a woman whose worst crime was happening to work at a corporation that sold bad pills to soldiers and cops. She didn't know, just like Abby hadn’t known. And, hell, she just took messages for the CEO.
Sure, he'd killed before. He'd dropped bombs, bunker busters, and cluster munitions during war. But that had been during war, against enemy combatants, or at least people he was told were valid targets.
As he looked across the coffee table at Jackie, watching her innocently drinking her wine and twirling a lock of hair with her finger, he realized there was no way he could follow through on his threat to Abby.
The time ticked along, and the two-hour mark drew closer.
Maybe she was bringing the cops with her. Maybe she was working on a plan where they could surround the house before he could get out, or where they'd just burst in. Maybe, after all his time fighting the system and finally being within reach of the evidence he needed, everything was about to come tumbling down around his head.
“You okay?” Jackie asked, reaching forward to grab the bottle herself and pour the last bit into her glass. “You look kind of spooked, Zed.”
Of course, he was spooked. This could be it. This could be the moment Abby had been waiting for, before she closed the trap on his miserable ass. “Nah,” he replied with a grin, “I'm perfect. Though, I think I might have to run to the grocery store. We're running low on a few things, and I wanted to get in before the rush.”
“Grocery store, huh?” Jackie asked, before she downed the last of the wine. “Yeah, totally. Let's go! We can pick up another bottle or three while we're there!”
No, that wasn't going to work. He needed to leave here on his own. Otherwise, he'd probably just make matters worse by dragging Jackie along with him. “Uh, I really probably shouldn't be having much more to drink. I'll pick up one of the same bottles we had, though.”
“Really?” Jackie asked, as he started to get up from his chair. “You're going to abandon me?”
He made his way to the front door, no keys or anything else in hand. His only plan was to get out the front door and head out of the neighborhood on foot. A vagabond. Maybe he could move on foot through the surrounding neighborhood and avoid any kind of police contact.
Just as his hand touched the handle of the front door, a thought flashed into his mind. He'd left his pistol in the nightstand. Shit! He immediately headed back that way.
He rounded the corner and turned to head back to the bedroom just as the automatic garage door kicked on, sending its weird rumble through the house.
Was that her? Was that Abby, returned with the information he so desperately needed? He stopped in his tracks and listened.
“Zed?” Jackie asked. “Thought you were leaving?”
Out in the garage, a car door opened and closed, then the door in the mudroom opened and shut. “Zed?” Abby called. “Zed, are you here?”
His heart nearly sang in relief at the sound of her voice, unaccompanied by cops, SWAT, or flash-bang grenades. “Abby?” he called back.
He met her in the kitchen, her eyes nearly as frantic as he'd felt just a few short moments before. She dropped her briefcase on the floor and looked at him in a near panic. She crossed the kitchen to him and grabbed his arms. “Zed, thank God you didn't do anything stupid,” she said. “We've got a problem.”
A few minutes later, the trio were gathered in Abby's home office. The clothing was up off the floor, and the furniture had been placed back where it belonged, but Zed swore he could still smell the evidence of their little tryst the night before. If Jackie sensed it, though, he couldn't tell.
“Mark has been running this whole thing,” Abby said after a moment. “He’s been pushing the drug through approval, bribing federal inspectors—the works. This thing is deep, and might involve the top levels of the company, all the way up to the board.”
“Up to the board?” Jackie asked, a shocked look on her face. “You can't be serious.”
“I am,” Abby said, her voice cool and devoid of emotion. “Look, I've seen the emails, and I even spoke to him. He doesn't want to reexamine any of this. He just views the complaints and legal challenges as a minor inconvenience. The suits and fines are just going to be a small dent in the profit margin for PV, Jackie.”
“What can we do?” Jackie asked.
Zed knew exactly what they could do. With this information, they could burn the whole place to the ground, then sort out the dead. Figuratively, at least. Leaking the information would be far worse than letting the FDA be the one to take action, or individual lawyers. A big reveal was the way to go—something that really grabbed the headlines by the throat and never let go till the corporation was just a bleeding carcass on the ground.
“I don't know,” Abby admitted, shaking her head as she logged into her PC and began to pull up the files. “I don't trust anyone there, anymore. Except you, of course, Jackie.”
“Aw,” Jackie said, clearly a little tipsy. “Thanks, Abbs.”
“Here,” Abby said, ushering them both around, so they could better view her computer screen. “This is what I pulled off the servers.”
Jackie leaned forward and peered at the screen, her eyes squinting as she read through the files. Zed considered doing the same, but what was the point? He'd seen these already before. But, a sense of triumph and comeuppance did settle over him. These, after all, were the files he'd been looking for—the ones on which he'd staked his brother's future.
“Oh my God,” Jackie said, as she leaned forward a little. “This is totally fucked up.” She looked at Abby. “We really did this shit?”
The CEO of Pharma-Vitae nodded solemnly. “That's shareholder dollars at work, right there. That's what they paid for.”
Jackie sighed. “What should we do?” she asked, as she looked at Abby.
Zed loudly cleared his throat loudly enough that both women turned to look at him. “Go to that reporter at the Times. She’s the one who’s been trying to contact you, babe.”
Abby shook her head as she ran her fingers back through her hair, a look of indecision on her face. “I can't do that, Zed,” she said, her voice heavy with resignation. She looked like a trapped animal suddenly. She was a woman stuck between a rock and a hard place. “Mark and his little fucking cronies are lining me up to take the hit on this. I wouldn't be surprised if they are already figuring out what to say at deposition. They are going to pin it all on me. If I go to Kara Singh now, I might end up taking the fall on the whole thing.”
Da
mn it, she was right. There were levels to this that he wasn't seeing, little pieces of the puzzle that someone on the outside, like him, could never possibly grasp. But, that was the thing about some puzzles. When you were trapped inside of them, like Abby was, it was almost impossible to see a way around the issue. The strategy, after all, had been built by someone on the inside, to defeat a person that was also on the inside.
No, the solution to that kind of problem was to go outside the box, to push the envelope on what was acceptable, and abandon what was expected. He narrowed his eyes as he stared at the screen, nodding to her obvious point. What he needed to do was get the word out. If he didn't do that, the woman he loved was going to be caught in the crosshairs.
And there was no way Abby was going to go down for this, especially not after everything she'd done for him. He couldn't let the woman he loved take the fall for him. What kind of man would he be?
# # #
Abby
“I don't know about this,” Jackie murmured, her words slurred a little by the wine. Thankfully, she'd switched to water to try and give her body a little recovery time. “Zed might think you'll be in the clear, but you know how public opinion is. They might just flip on you because your name's up front, Abbs.”
Didn't she know it? Abby chewed on the back of her knuckle, thinking of another way out of this. The problem was, she was in one hell of a trap—one that had been built specifically for her. “I can't see any other way, Jackie,” Abby said, after a long while.
Zed was busy trying to get Kara Singh on the line.
“And what's the deal with that?” Jackie asked, jerking her thumb at Zed. “What's going on here? Why does he have that reporter's phone number?”
Abby sighed and looked away, trying to come up with something she could tell Jackie. She certainly couldn't mention that he'd kidnapped her and held her hostage for the last week. But, she could at least tell her part of it, couldn't she? “Remember how Zed showed up at the office last week?”
“Just before the car accident?” Jackie asked, a perplexed look on her face. “Yeah, right, I remember.”
“Well, he wasn't there for a business meeting. He showed up to bring something to my attention. His brother, Kai, is in prison for a murder he committed while he was taking Dimalerax. He wanted my help with bringing out the truth and with getting some evidence about what Pharma knew about the medication, to see if he could somehow exonerate him.”
“Woah, there,” Jackie said, as she set her glass of water on the table. “Hold up. You've been working with him to get evidence?”
Abby shook her head, then sort of shrugged. “Not up until now, really.”
Zed finally got Kara on the phone right about then. Both women glanced up at him as he said hello to her, then got up to leave the room. They watched him go, then returned to their conversation.
“Look,” Abby said, leaning forward, hands clasped in front of her, “I thought it was kind of bullshit at first. Zed had some pretty wild claims that he was making. But, as I started to dig into the files and look at the paperwork, I realized they're valid. I wanted to stay loyal to Pharma—I really did—and see if I could make the changes the company needed from the inside. Then, all this happened, with Mark and the board being in on the whole thing and trying to scapegoat me.”
Jackie collapsed into the chair Zed had just vacated and braced her head against a balled-up fist. “What now, then? Do I need to find another job?”
Hell, Abby would probably need to find one soon, too. She’d need a lawyer, too, with the way all this was turning out. She shook her head. “I don't know. But it's not looking good, Jackie. I mean, I certainly can't go back there. I'm a hard-nosed bitch when I need to be, but I refuse to be part of something this unethical. It's just not right to hurt the people we're trying to help, all while we're bleeding them dry for medications that don't even work.”
Her assistant sighed.
“Besides,” Abby continued, “I refuse to go down for something that piece-of-shit Letterman did. He deserves to be hung out to dry for this, not me.”
Both women turned their attention back to Zed as he came back into the room. His face was longer than Secretariat's. More bad news.
“We've got a problem,” he said, his voice sunken low. “Kara won't run the story.”
Chapter Eighteen
Abby
“Pharma-Vitae's been complaining about harassment,” he continued. “Now her editors are telling her to back off, or they'll start pulling ad dollars and getting their industry partners to do the same. Worse than that, they're threatening lawsuits in court if she even makes a peep.”
“So, that's it, then?” Jackie asked, a frown pulling her mouth down at the corners. “More wine anyone?”
No, this wasn't how it was supposed to work. This wasn't the way that things were supposed to go down. They had the evidence, so why couldn't they just get it out? She'd be damned if she was going to be crucified in the court of public opinion on this. “We can go somewhere else,” Abby suggested. “Some other reporter, maybe? I mean, I'm the CEO, and we have the documents. Why can't I just blow the whistle myself?”
Jackie shook her head. “Think some other board would pick you up then? You might get out of this, but you'd never work for another pharmaceutical company in your life, and you know it. Who would hire a manager that's going to go running to the press the moment things look slightly off?”
“Then social media,” Abby suggested. “I could release all the work there and hope some bloggers pick it up?”
“They'll just think you're crazy,” Jackie said. “PV would spin it so hard it'd look like a vinyl record. Besides, it'd still be career suicide, Abbs. You'd be throwing your whole life away. And who would believe you, anyway? Stop being so arrogant!”
Abby sat back in surprise at her assistant's words. They were like a slap in the face. Arrogant? Was she really acting that way? She quickly thought back over her actions for the last week, starting with her board meeting with Mark. She'd thought her position as CEO was the final word, and that Letterman would bend to her will without question. Look where that had gotten her, though.
She'd believed she could just brush Zed away like a crumb from her jacket, a piece of lint that would just disappear with a flick or her finger. Boy, had she been wrong about that one!
She had thought she'd be quickly rescued from his clutches. Instead, here she was, sitting with him and her assistant, having deeper and more confused feelings than she'd ever had for any man.
Finally, she'd believed her spot was so secure at Pharma-Vitae and that they'd brought her in because they desperately needed someone with her talents. She'd convinced herself that she was too invaluable to lose. She was irreplaceable.
Jackie was right. Abby was being an arrogant bitch. And, if she wasn't careful, she'd bring them all down with her.
Her assistant spoke up when Abby didn't say anything for a long moment. “Abbs? I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way.”
Abby shook her head. “You know what?” she asked. “You're right. You're completely right. I have been arrogant about all this, and I'm letting it get in the way of my decision making.”
Her friend smiled hesitantly at first, then more broadly. “I'm glad I didn't hurt your feelings.”
“No,” Abby said, laughing a little, “you did. But sometimes we have to hurt if we want to grow.”
# # #
Zed
Zed walked into the room, his head full of half-cooked, crazy plans. Abby was still his hostage, after all, wasn't she? Maybe he could use that to their advantage in this whole thing. Or not. He didn't know for sure, considering how everything was happening so quickly.
“Jackie?” Zed asked. “Do you mind if we're alone for a little while? We need to figure out our next move, and it'd probably be better if you weren't involved. If we do decide to do something, we don't want it to reflect poorly on you.”
“Yes,” Abby agreed. “It would probably be b
est if you weren't involved from here on out.”
Jackie looked back and forth between the two of them, shocked. “You guys can't just boot me out of the club now!”
Zed held up a hand. “We're not booting you out. We’re just protecting you.”
“Right,” Abby said. “Look, Jackie, I've got money set aside. I can take of myself, but you need this job and a good work history. If you get mixed up in all this, it won't look good for you. Like you said, no one's going to hire a whistle blower CEO. Same goes for a CEO's assistant, don't you think?”
Jackie sighed and looked away, then turned back to her water and finished it. “Fine, I'll go. But, just so you know, it's under protest. And, if you guys are going to completely destroy the company or something, could you at least give me a heads-up?”
