“You do know what Vita is, right? It’s a radical new approach to immunotherapy for certain cancers. Have you read Anderson’s annual report? Been to one of their events? They’re not a diabetes center, you realize.”
“Your Vita is untested. You haven’t had it in a single patient’s vein.”
“Yes, I have. And the trial results are exactly what we expected.”
Gunnar blinked, another one of his subtle tells. “Well, then you have a problem. How will a place like Anderson explain that you’ve gone into testing on human subjects. And if the results were good, why aren’t they in your materials.”
“They’re proprietary.”
“Like the formulation and molecular structure, right?” He whipped his hand through the air like he was erasing text he didn’t like. “Anderson won’t pay what I will. And they aren’t going to want the complication you represent.”
“And what complication is that? If it’s operating under the radar of the FDA, you’re in my sandbox, too, so don’t get all judgmental on me.”
“My labs are all very well-known—”
“Tuttle. Pennsylvania.” C.P. smiled coldly as the man’s face froze. “Yes, I know what’s under that cornfield. So if your next tactic is blackmail? You muscle me, I’ll just expose you as well, and we all know how you don’t like the attention on your company.” When he opened his mouth, she put her palm up. “And I know one more thing about the way you operate. What happened to those two vice presidents of yours? Suicide? Really? I’ll bet if those cold cases got a couple of tips, particularly if the information turned up on the internet, the trails would get real warm, real quick. Have you seen Don’t Fuck with Cats on Netflix? Amateurs can be even more dogged than the pros.”
“Don’t threaten me,” he said in a nasty tone.
C.P. planted her hands on the glossy table, and leaned into her arms. “Don’t fuck with me.”
The silence crackled between them, and she almost smiled. She was quite certain that if he could have, he’d have sent her right out one of the windows, and she took a deep breath of the hatred-stained air.
Straightening, she walked down the length of the table, not breaking eye contact. As she approached where he was sitting, Rhobes swiveled in her direction.
“I’m your only buyer, Catherine.”
C.P. didn’t pause. “No, you’re not. And don’t get up. I’ll let myself out—”
“You’re going to regret this.”
She paused at the conference room door. After a moment, she looked back at him. He was still in that chair, but he’d sat back again and recrossed his legs, knee to knee. In fact, Gunnar Rhobes was looking so superior, he might as well have been standing up and looming over her.
“No, I’m not going to regret anything,” she said. “You’ve got your first rule wrong, you see. The number one thing to keep in mind at the negotiation table is don’t try to force the hand of someone who has nothing to lose.”
Those eyes darkened. “So you’ve declared war, have you.”
“We’re both capitalists. Did you think this was a tea party?” She nodded at him and opened the way out. “Enjoy your day, Rhobes. None of us know how many we have left—which is the point of my research.”
As she walked off, she got lost in thoughts of strategy, but they were interrupted by a drumbeat that made no sense—until a pair of suits came pounding down the hallway. The men didn’t look at her, and as they shot by her, she glanced over her shoulder. With their jackets open, the flapping made it seem like they had pin-striped capes.
Lawyers as superheroes. What kind of DC Universe was that? And there was satisfaction in knowing that something was going wrong in Rhobes’s world.
When she got out to reception, C.P. went to the elevator and called down for her car on her cell. Just as she hung up, the doors opened, and she caught sight of her reflection in the mirrored panels as she stepped in. Her blond hair was in a perfect swoop off to the side, and her face was unlined thanks to regular Botox between the eyebrows. Her uniform of professional garb was elegant as always, and her tall stilettos added to her height.
She was just as she wanted to appear. Imposing and in control.
The image had been honed after she’d gotten out of graduate school and started working at Merck. Her hair was actually ash blond, a color that was not even brunette but a gloomy rain cloud gray, and without the bleaching, it was thin and had little body. Before she’d gotten Lasix, she’d needed heavy-lensed glasses, and a modest breast enhancement had given her flat chest some cleavage. She’d also voice-coached herself by watching Diane Sawyer broadcasts, mimicking that trademark low push of smooth syllables—and actually, Ms. Sawyer had been where she’d gotten the shade of blond from, too. Her first attempts had been out of a box and brassy as a doorknob.
And now here she was, a creation of her own drive, a culmination of personal evolution… proof that you could, in fact, be anything you wanted to be if you just worked hard enough.
Her father had been a plumber. Her mother had been a homemaker.
She had been an only child and relatively normal until she developed a Wilms’ tumor at age four. That was what started her journey into big pharma—
Ding!
The soft chiming broke into her reminiscing, and for a split second, she couldn’t think of what it meant or where she was. When the elevator doors parted, she shook herself to attention and disembarked into the gray-and-black marble lobby.
Her heels made a clipping sound that echoed up into the high ceiling. Ordinarily, she didn’t go around outside of her home or her lab without security, but she had wanted to come into Rhobes’s territory by herself to show she wasn’t intimidated by him.
Besides, he wouldn’t do anything really nasty here. Cameras were everywhere.
Her blond security detail, the one she was fucking, was waiting for her just inside the revolving door, this time in a black suit instead of a military uniform. And as he looked over at her, his eyes made a quick up-and-down that had nothing to do with bodyguarding and everything to do with what he anticipated doing on the return trip to Walters.
Would he have wanted her before the glow-up? she wondered. Without the money?
The answer to that didn’t matter to her any more than he did.
With a strong arm, he opened the static exit to the side of the rotating one, and as soon as she was through, another man in a black suit opened the rear of the SUV they’d rented from a local security company. As she crossed the concrete sidewalk, she imagined the small-town girl who was underneath the gloss schlubbing it to the vehicle. C.P. was proof that destiny was engineered, not a passive reception of some star-given series of calamities.
“Where to, boss,” the driver asked as her door was shut and the two security men got in the front seat. “You said change of plan?”
She looked out her tinted window, at Pharmatech’s giant glass penis of a skyscraper. “The airport.”
“No meeting at Anderson, then?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m rescheduling that. I’ve got work to do back in Walters.”
Settling back against the plush leather seat, she got out her laptop. Her hands trembled as she composed the email to Gus, forcing her to delete and start over one out of every five words. Good thing it wasn’t a long communiqué.