Too Young to Die

by Michael Anderle

  “Blackmail?”

  His mother wavered, then shrugged dismissively. “They doctored photos of him to make it seem like he was having an affair. And, yes, I know they did because I remember that day—I was the one who was with him. He liked to think it wouldn’t be complicated when he got to the senate and that he’d always know what to do, but he’s finding out it’s…not that easy.”

  Justin nodded.

  “He’s worried about you,” Mary said quietly. “He flies out on the red-eye for his sessions and comes back at night. Every night, he’s here and he comes to see you.”

  He looked away and a lump formed in his throat. “Can we…talk about something else?”

  “Of course.” She reached for his hand. “How are you?”

  “Not that, either.” He gave a watery laugh and remembered something. “Where’s Tina? Why isn’t she here with me?” When he saw the look on his mother’s face, he had to take a moment to process it. It wasn’t sadness, he realized. It was anger.

  It was fury, in fact.

  “Tina,” his mother said, “is fine.”

  “Oh, thank God.” He pressed a hand over his heart.

  “Thank God?” His mother’s voice rose. “She crashed that car at ninety miles per hour. You’ve been in a coma for weeks now, Justin, while she walked away with scratches. And you say thank God?”

  “I don’t want her dead,” Justin said. He frowned at her. “It isn’t like you to want someone hurt either.”

  “I never had someone crash a car with my son in it before,” Mary said fiercely. She squeezed his fingers. “It isn’t fair. She’s the one who messed up and you’re the one to pay the price—and, Justin, it’s my fault, too. I made you go on that date. If I’d let you stay home like you wanted to that night, you’d be safe now.” She pressed a hand over her mouth.

  “Mom—”

  “No, no. Don’t you comfort me. You’re the one who’s hurt. I came to comfort you.” She forced herself to smile.

  “Mom.” He took her hands. “Don’t blame yourself and don’t blame Tina. It was an accident. A puppy ran into the road and she didn’t want to hit it. This was an accident. It isn’t worth hating her over and it isn’t like you to do that.”

  She sighed and nodded but didn’t meet his gaze.

  “Mom.” The word came out before he knew he was speaking. “Will I be okay?”

  The way her gaze snapped to his face, he knew she didn’t know. On some level, that was comforting—he’d been afraid, he realized, that she was there because she knew he would never get better.

  “There’s progress,” she told him. “Your brain function is improving. They say it’s sustained, not merely a fluke.”

  “Okay.” He nodded, dizzy with relief.

  “Oh, I’ve missed you.” His mother wrapped him in her arms. “I’ve missed you so much, Justin.”

  “I’ve missed you,” he whispered in return. He slid his arms around her back and squeezed until his arms closed on nothing. His mother’s face shimmered in the air, blurred out of focus into pixels, and vanished.

  For a long moment, he stood and stared at the space where she’d been.

  “That’s yer mother?” Lyle said from behind him. “She’s not the witch, is she?”

  Justin laughed. He needed to laugh right now and he was absurdly grateful for the dwarf’s presence. “She’s not the witch,” he said. “She’s, ah…you know, it’s one of those long stories that aren’t as good as the Buttercup one. But if you want, I can tell you all about Luke Skywalker.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Her arms closed around thin air and Justin disappeared like a ghost. Mary opened her mouth to scream as everything around her faded into deep blue studded with stars, then disappeared entirely.

  “Justin! DuBois!”

  Cold air rushed over her and hands touched her forehead and wrists. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was a flood of light. DuBois and Nick removed the patches from her head, their faces strained and pale.

  “What happened?” Mary demanded. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine,” the young engineer said tightly.

  “Well, am I fine? My pulse wasn’t rising, I wasn’t panicked—”

  “It wasn’t that.” Nick glanced over her shoulder.

  “What, then?” She looked at DuBois, who now stood with his shoulders hunched. He didn’t meet her gaze as she slid off the table. “Well? So help me, but if you tell me again that I can’t see Justin because—”

  “Mrs. Williams.” Amber’s voice was impressively level. Far too level, in fact. “We were instructed to pull you out of the game.”

  Mary turned slowly. She had the feeling she wouldn’t like what she saw and she was right. Two men in suits stood near Amber and Jacob, along with four in bulletproof vests. Jacob was in handcuffs.

  She used the same tone she’d used when she came into the house to find Justin setting his winter coat on fire using one of the stove burners. “What is going on here?”

  “Ma’am, I’m Agent Klein from the Food and Drug Administration.” One of the men stepped forward. “I regret to inform you that there is no FDA approval for this human testing, nor has approval been sought. The lab needs to be shut down.”

  “Shut down—no.” Mary drew herself tall. “No. You can’t do that.” A part of her registered the oddness of the situation because it somehow felt like a few steps had been omitted from the entire process. It didn’t add up, but her brain couldn’t think it through.

  “They can, Mrs. Williams.” Amber shook slightly as she spoke. Her hands were clenched at her sides and wrinkled the sheaf of papers she held in one hand. “We have twenty-four hours to shut the lab down and Jacob is…” She looked at her teammate and swallowed.

  “As the President of PIVOT Technologies, I am legally responsible for what happened here,” Jacob said. He cleared his throat. “As well as ethically responsible, Mrs. Williams. I hope you won’t hold Dr. DuBois, Amber, or Nick responsible for this. I led them to believe we had received FDA approval.”

  Mary realized what he was doing at the same time Amber did. Their jaws dropped.

  “I truly am sorry, Mrs. Williams.” He looked miserable and she decided he didn’t need to fake that, not with jail time looming. “I had seen the research and the early results were so good, I was sure this was a good way to help Justin. But—”

  “That’s enough, Mr. Zachary.” One of the agents stepped in front of him. “Mrs. Williams, our office will be in contact with you. Ms. Garcia, Mr. Ryan, Dr. DuBois—this lab is to be shut down within twenty-four hours. We will send an agent to oversee the process. Mrs. Williams, you will need to arrange for your son’s transfer to an approved medical facility.” He gave the team a cold look before he gestured to Jacob. “Mr. Zachary, come with us, please.”

  The officials left and the young engineers watched their friend go with horrified faces. When they were alone, Amber turned and Mary stepped forward, her chin trembling.

  “You let them take him? You’re letting them do this?”

  Amber held the pieces of paper out. “They have the authority, it seems. The FDA has blanket authority over all drug trials except in very specific instances.”

  “This is the only thing that’s keeping Justin alive!” Her voice was raw. She turned away, a hand over her mouth. “If they take him off this, he’ll be locked in, he’ll be alone—” She broke off and stared at the wall. “We knew the risks. All of us knew the risks. And they’ll haul Jacob up for it and you’ll let them?”

  “No.” The young woman’s voice was firm. “Believe me, we will find a way out of this for Jacob. We have legal representation and Nick is calling them now. They’ll meet him at the police station, and he knows not to say anything until a lawyer is present. Beyond that…” She faltered for a moment before her voice strengthened. “Beyond that, I’m not sure what to do, but we’ll think of something. Keeping Justin on this treatment is the best way to allow him to heal.
The first problem—aside from the fact that the FDA might have overstepped—is the time limit the so-called official documentation stipulates. What we need to find is…somewhere to take him where they let us keep doing this on the sly?” She shook her head. “But the agents will check when he’s installed.”

  Mary watched her and her anger drained slowly. “You’ll be arrested, too.”

  Amber gave her a sharp look. “Only if we get caught,” she said simply.

  “There are good odds of that,” she insisted. She wanted so badly to agree and send Justin to another facility and make the FDA find them again—anything for a few more days. Every second they delayed was another second in which Justin might wake up. At the same time, she knew what they were risking, and the mother in her didn’t want the other woman to spend her life in jail for this. She looked at Nick and Amber. “You two may face jail time if you help us now. You know that.”

  “That’s now how I’m making my decision,” Amber said.

  Mary sighed.

  The friends exchanged a look.

  “What?” Nick asked.

  “Well,” Mary said and looked around for her purse, “I can’t let you all go to jail for trying to help my son. I’ll call Tad. It’s time to pull all the strings we can.”

  “No,” Tad heard one of his assistants say. “The Senator is not taking interviews about his son at this time.”

  “—official press release from our office forty minutes ago,” another man said.

  A third voice cut over the other two. “—comment on that at this time—”

  Tad cradled his head in his hands and groaned. He had tried to spend this morning getting some reading done. The simple truth was that he hated being away from Justin at all, which meant he needed to make every second count when he was there. With the phones ringing off the hook, however, not only was he unable to focus, his staffers couldn’t get any of their work done either.

  The question from the reporter had set off a furor. Reporters called at every hour of the day and night, his staff had mentioned being tailed to their homes, and deals he’d been in the process of making had begun to fall through.

  Somewhere, he realized bitterly, Metcalfe was sitting back and laughing. He had dared him to do whatever he intended to do, and the man had.

  His phone rang and his blood pressure spiked. He snatched the handset without looking and snapped, “For the last time, there will be no press access until otherwise stated.”

  “Tad, it’s me.” Mary’s voice was tight.

  “Oh, God.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I should have known. I’m so sorry. The phones are going off the hook I’m going to have to shut them off and—”

  “Tad, we don’t have time.”

  “What?” Mary was rarely this brusque. If she was, it meant something bad. “Is Justin okay?”

  “For now.” She tried very hard to stay calm and he could hear it in her voice. “But someone alerted the FDA to the PIVOT lab and we’ve been given twenty-four hours to shut everything down.”

  “What?” Tad lurched out of his seat. A scuffling sound outside followed immediately and one of his aides stood at the door, his earpiece still on.

  “Sir?”

  “I’m…it’s okay.” He held a hand out. “I’ll, uh—it’s okay.”

  The man backed out, his eyes wary, and Tad fought a wave of despair. Working for him was turning into political suicide for these staffers. He wasn’t only ruining his career, he was ruining theirs too. He slumped into his chair and rubbed his forehead.

  “It’s Metcalfe,” he said.

  “Yes,” Mary agreed. “The problem is, everything the FDA is doing is legal—apparently, although there might be a few procedural loopholes we can raise—and one of the PIVOT team has been arrested. Jacob,” she added as if she’d sensed his question.

  “Arrested.” The bottom of his stomach dropped.

  “Tad, that isn’t all.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “The other three seem determined to keep the experiment going.” Her voice began to tremble. “I don’t want to move Justin to a hospital. I can’t bear the thought of him being locked away in the dark again—” She broke off.

  “Mary, listen to me. Justin knows we’re here for him.” His focus zeroed in on his wife. She was three thousand miles away and all he wanted to do was fold her in his arms. “And he’s a fighter. No matter what, it’ll be okay.”

  “Maybe. But what about for them?” Her voice still trembled. “They’re talking about how they want to keep this going because it’s his best chance, and I want them to, Tad. I want it more than anything, but I can’t let four people spend their entire lives in jail because of us. I can’t ask them to do that.”

  Tad looked at his desk, swallowing hard.

  “Is there anything you can do?” Mary whispered. “I don’t know—something you can add to a bill, an exception you can get passed. We’re not asking for anything bad. This project should have FDA clearance. It should have been cleared years ago. It wasn’t blocked because it was dangerous. There has to be an appeal we can put through or—I don’t know.”

  “I think there’s something,” he said. “I’ll, uh—I’ll check it out and get back to you.”

  “Oh, thank God.” She was smiling, he could tell from her voice. “I’ll let you do that. Thank you, love.”

  “Of course.” His lips were numb. “I love you.”

  With a heavy sigh, he set the phone down and stared at the wall. His heart was racing now and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

  There was, of course, something he could do to make this stop. He could do one simple thing and all these problems would go away.

  He could cave.

  When he’d first come to Washington, his purpose had been to challenge lobbyists like Metcalfe. In his fantasies, he would stand tall and lead the way, the news would leak that they had tried to put pressure on him, and he would be hailed as a hero. Following his example, dozens of other senators would come forward. Slowly, the tide would turn away from the lobbyists, and senators would begin to represent their constituents’ best interests again.

  It hadn’t gone that way.

  Tad had spun a pencil in his fingers and now, he held it so tightly that it creaked. He put it down hastily before he broke it. Somehow, he needed to find a solution. Surely there was a way out of this.

  Except there wasn’t. What had Metcalfe said? Oh, right—you’re not the first senator who’s come here determined to fight us. They had won every other time, why not now?

  “Sir?” Eddie had returned and held a note out. “A courier arrived with this.”

  “Is it laced with something?” he asked bitterly. When he saw the look on the young man’s face, he regretted the joke. “Sorry, Eddie. I’m very sure it’s not laced with anything. Thank you for bringing it in. Also…shut the phones down. Re-record the answering service with the message the legal team advised. You all need a rest.”

  “Sir.” He nodded and handed him the letter before he withdrew.

  Ted’s name was written on the front of the letter in a scrawl that looked like a doctor’s handwriting. There was no postmark. He sighed as he opened it to reveal a single sheet of paper with two lines of text. The first was a phone number and the second read, in handwritten letters, I can help.

  He looked at the letter. This was Metcalfe. It could only be Metcalfe.

  Well, hell, he needed to speak to the man anyway. He snatched the phone, dialed the number, and sat on the table while it rang.

  “Diatek Industries,” a female voice said. “Office of Anna Price. How can I help you?”

  Startled, he made no response.

  “Hello?” the woman said cautiously.

  “Ah, hello.” He cleared his throat. “I received a letter that asked me to call. My name is Tad Williams.”

  “Ah, Senator.” The woman’s tone brightened. “Ms. Price is expecting your call. I’ll put you through, one moment.”

&n
bsp; “I—” He stopped when hold music began. Holding the phone between his shoulder and his ear, he slid into his chair and typed Diatek Industries into his browser’s search bar. The computer was still thinking when the hold music stopped and a new voice spoke.

  “Hello, Senator.”

  “Hello.” He leaned in his chair. “You are…Anna Price, your secretary said?”

  “Yes. I’d like to speak to you.” This woman was brisk. “However, not over the phone. Can you meet?”

  “I…yes.”

  “If you leave now, there will be a flight for you out of the private terminal,” Anna said promptly.

  “To where, exactly?”

  “New York City. I’ll see you soon, Senator.”

  She hung up and Tad stared at the handset as he put it in its cradle. His mind warred with rampant thoughts of rage, suspicion, desperation, and fear. Diatek Industries? He’d never heard of them, and the odds were beyond good that this was another player with Metcalfe’s objectives. There was no way in hell he would have ever considered taking a flight like this to only God knew what waited on the other side. Then again, he’d never been quite this desperate before.

  On the other hand, he had a certain grim desire not to work with Metcalfe and those he represented and he was intrigued that the CEO of Diatek—the website had loaded now—had spoken to him directly, not hired a sleazeball to conduct negotiations or turn the screws.

  He pushed the negative emotions aside, stood decisively, and retrieved his briefcase and coat before he stepped into the main office.

  “I’ll need you to cancel all my meetings for the rest of the day,” he told the aides. “I’m flying to New York. Eddie, could you call me a car? Sylvia, I’d like you to research Diatek Industries. Find me the names of any senators they’ve spoken to recently and any bills they’ve weighed in on one way or another. Forward all of that to my email. I need it before I land.”

  “I…yes.” She nodded.

  “I’ll be back when I can.” He spun on his heel and left before he could say anything he’d regret.