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Vivian
Vivian shut the apartment door behind her and looked around at the men lounging on the furniture. “Failed again, I see.”
“You can see that, can you?” Ben asked. “From just walking in the door?”
“You’re all here, aren’t you? Holding your ice packs, again.” Vivian looked at the guy on the floor. “Who are you?”
“I’m Boz. I’m a friend of Mike’s.”
Vivian walked over to Boz and lifted the ice pack. “The dog got you? No teeth marks. Looks like the motocross armor saved you.”
“It hurts like hell,” Wade said, and lifted his pant leg.
Vivian looked down at the bruising, then shifted her attention to the swelling on his arm.
“Got you twice, did she?” Vivian asked, hanging her purse on the hook by the door. “You’re all over social media. Who threw my boss in the damned river? I need my job until we finish our project.” She walked to the recliner. “Get out, Benny.”
Ben lifted himself up and moved to the floor.
Vivian aimed her scowl at Jay.
“She jumped,” Jay said. “I don’t care what it looked like on video. Boz says she put herself on the other side of the rail, and he nearly killed himself trying to hold her up.”
She turned to Boz as she slid off her shoes.
“Swear on my grandma’s grave. I wasn’t trying to hurt her. I was told we were taking her somewhere to sit quiet until after the weekend, so she couldn’t report her badge going missing. I tried my best. But I needed someone to help me get her back over the rail.”
“We got the purse, though,” Ben said.
“Yeah?” Vivian pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “And?”
“The badge was there. We got it over to Jay.”
Vivian unfolded, sitting upright; bubbles like champagne tickled through her system.
“I searched the lab, all the places you said to look, Viv. There was nothing there. Empty.
“Impossible. Piper wouldn’t allow the supply to be zero.”
“Amanda was in town, and she flew on out again,” Jay said.
“Was she in the lab?” Vivian asked. “Did she take the formula?”
“I didn’t look because why in the hell would it matter if Amanda has the formula or not? She’s halfway around the world by now.”
“We can’t wait for Piper to make more,” Vivian said. “There’s Yuri’s deadline coming up.”
“That’s what we were talking about when you came in. You know that old saying: why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free.”
Vivian glowered.
“Why take a bottle of milk when we could take the cow and keep milking it?” Jay asked. “Why a million when we could have a billion?”
Vivian could hardly breathe. Why, in fact, not? “You got the written formula?”
“Her badge should have worked on the computer. But there’s a new opening screen that requires a password,” Jay said. “That’s not how things have worked up until now.”
Vivian lifted her chin, thinking. “It’s possible that she’s guarding the data now that she’s ready to go to the FDA.”
