No, he was giving her a chance to back out.
He disagreed with the Houston people. She could get more chemo if she wanted; they could push it a little farther with the conventional drugs. Sure, sooner or later her body was going to fail by inches and then feet with as much chemo exposure as she’d had—but when you were staring down the barrel of a funeral anyway, what did you care?
And maybe he was getting cold feet.
Glancing at his watch, he noted the time. Maybe she was getting cold feet.
With a grim curse, he thought about the guard who had been killed. How was she feeling about the fact that her lover had lost his life in the line of duty on her front lawn—
As his phone rang, he took it out of his lab coat and answered like he was back in residency—no checking the screen, no preamble.
“St. Claire.”
There was a pause, and then a clicking sound. “Hello?” he demanded.
Just as he took the thing away from his ear to hang up, a tinny voice emanated from the unit. “Augustus Reginald St. Claire Jr., resident of Plattsburgh, New York. Aged thirty-two years, nine months, five days, four hours, and—”
“Who the fuck is this?”
The male voice was ever so slightly distorted, like it was being run through an electronic synthesizer. “—some change. Stanford University undergrad at the age of twenty. Stanford Medical graduate four years later. Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. Fellowship in oncology completed there five years later. Hired by Merck to focus on research in immunotherapy—”
“Where did you get this number?” He switched ears. “Who the—”
“But dropped off the public radar a mere two months later, never to be heard from on the national stage again. Parents, deceased. No living siblings. Estranged from other family, due to the embezzlement of Augustus Reginald St. Claire Sr.—”
“Fuck you.” Gus sank down into his thighs like he was about to fight the fucker. “You get my father’s name out your mouth—”
“Allergic to sesame seeds. Lactose intolerant. Favorite color… LA Lakers gold.”
As his eyes shot to the framed Kobe shirt over his desk, Gus tightened his hold on the phone. “You finished showing off? Or do you want to tell me my favorite movie.”
“ ‘Today we don’t fight for one life. We fight for all of them.’ ”
As a feeling of foreboding came over him, Gus heard himself say, “You’re going to have to do more than quote T’Challa to me if you want to—”
“You saw the movie when it came out. In the Framingham AMC theaters. Across from Target. You were alone.”
When Gus’s knees gave out and he smacked down into his chair, he half expected the sonofabitch on the phone to ask him if his ass hurt.
“I recite your rather impressive résumé back to you,” the voice said, “as well as give you a sense of the depth of our research, to provide you with context for our sincerity and our thoroughness.”
“Tell me who you are and what you want. So I can tell you to go to hell and we can end this bullshit—”
“I am very familiar with your research under Phalen. I’ll leave you to guess why. I want you to be aware that your drug compound, while innovative and certainly promising, is still speculative. No clinical trials.” There was a pause, like whoever it was expected him to give an update to the contrary if things had changed. “I have five patients prescreened and ready to go. I have monitoring facilities that make Phalen’s lab look like a high school chemistry room.”
“So this is a job offer?”
“Yes, it is. Come work for me, and I’ll give you the time and space you need to create whatever you want. And before you tell me you’re happy where you are, you know things are changing. You know she’s going to sell Vita-12b, and no matter what she told you, the money is the most important thing to her. Not you, not the principles. It’s the money.”
Gus rolled his eyes. “And let me guess. You’re a paragon of morality, who’s just doing background checks as a hobby?”
Besides, this fucker on the phone had no idea that C.P. Phalen had a biological imperative that made profit totally irrelevant. You couldn’t spend money from the grave. For all the facts the caller spouted, he’d missed the big reality—
“Phalen’s going bankrupt.” The chuckle of satisfaction coming over the connection was downright nasty. “I’m assuming she hasn’t told you or anyone else that? I wouldn’t, if I were her. But ask yourself, why, if Vita-12b is such a promising innovation, is she selling it right from under herself. I’ll tell you why. She cashed out of all her positions, sank everything into that lab you’re working in, and has been burning through her equity at twice the rate that is sustainable. You’re not in finance, but you’ve balanced a checkbook. At the end of the day, in spite of all the creative accounting, it’s simple math.”
Gus put his head in his hand, but kept his voice level. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do. She’s selling your work, your research, your vision, right out from under you. I have a copy of your employment contract with her.” There was a pause, like the man was waiting for that to sink in. “You think you have equity, but there’s an out clause I’ll bet you didn’t pay any attention to. If she sells the company, there’s no assumption clause. You’re at the mercy of the acquirer. They don’t have to give you anything or honor her terms. They don’t have to even hire you.”
In the back of his mind, he heard C.P. promising she’d take care of him.
“Assuming that is true”—and Gus had no idea; he wasn’t a lawyer and all he’d cared about was the work, not the benefits—“why wouldn’t whoever buys Vita want me.”
“Because they’ll already have what you made. They won’t need you. They’ll have purchased the data, the research, and the formulation. Me? I want you. I’ll give you whatever runway you need to keep innovating, not just on this project, but anything else you want to do.”
Gus rubbed his face. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“In good time, my friend. That will come in good time. Think it over. You’re in business with someone who’s already cheated you. She knew her financial exposure when she hired you, and you signed a contract that cuts you out of any sale. Your deal with her is null and void if she takes the third-party route and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it—hell, you can’t even list this research on your résumé because then you’re going to have to explain under what circumstances you conducted your experiments. And even if you tell me you’re a Good Samaritan and are just in it for the science, then I’m going to remind you you’re doing the business of your convictions with a double-crossing swindler who has no principles. Not even when it comes to her key man.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” How many times had he said that? “You have no fucking clue.”
“Well, what a relief for you then, right?” That chuckle came back over the connection. “I’ll be calling you back in a matter of hours, Augustus. You’ve got a lot to think about.”