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“You know about the Potomac Bank robbery,” she said. “Tommy was investigating the robbery as well, because he believed it was connected to Chase’s murder.”
“Indirectly, it is. But—well, let me lay it out for you. Once you see it, it’s obvious, but it’s complicated. It took me a while to accept it.” He paused, sipped more coffee. “I’ve done a lot of things for my clients that I’m not proud of, but I’ve never crossed the line. Rode it damn hard. Immorality, however, is not a crime. Paying a consenting adult to abort their kid is not a crime. Paying a mistress to leave town is not a crime. Paying an employee an ample severance package if they accept a gag order, not a crime.”
Immoral and unethical, but probably not against the law, Regan figured. Didn’t make it right, and her respect for her ex fell. She’d known he’d done things he didn’t like. But where do you draw the line between personal ethics and professional? Just because something is legal doesn’t mean you should do it.
Grant continued. “Franklin crossed a lot of lines. I knew, I turned my back. Franklin was my best friend, practically family. I didn’t realize how far he’d gone. When Tom came to me with Peter Grey’s confirmation about Brock Marsh, I started looking. Madeline helped me because she understands our accounting system. We found files hidden deep in the system. Nothing overt—if someone found them, they wouldn’t know what any of it meant, but she and I did. They were coded, but Tom was working on figuring out the key. But then I started to think about what was going on in the weeks before Chase was killed. I had a lot of cases then, but most were straightforward contract law. Except...”
He fidgeted with his mug. Grant was working through things in his head, but she was losing patience. Time was not on their side here.
“The week before Chase was killed I had a list of questions related to two NDAs. In hindsight, I should have seen it, shouldn’t have asked...”
He cleared his throat and said, “Several years ago, we took on BioRise Pharmaceuticals as a client.”
Regan remembered. They were a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company with labs in four countries and a DOD contract. Grant’s firm had to hire additional staff in order to take on such a large company as clients. The company had their own lawyers, but hired an outside firm as well—Archer Warwick.
And they were still clients. She’d seen James Seidel this week. In hindsight, she realized that Grant had been nervous around him. Suspicious?
BioRise.She’d also asked Grey about them. He hadn’t directly answered. Who was Peter Grey and why was he still alive if he had so much information about a company that ordered hits on people?
“Franklin was the primary,” Grant said, “but I also worked with them because my specialty is contract law. I handled contracts and NDAs for their employees, Franklin took care of legal settlements and disclosures in their drug trials, working with their in-house counsel. It was lucrative. God, was there so much money involved. If we dropped every other client, we’d still have been flush.”
He stopped talking, looked beyond her. She had to keep him focused and on track. She prompted, “And?”
“Eighteen months ago, there was a particular drug trial that went real bad, real fast. It was supposedly a mistake, and two employees were blamed and terminated. These two threatened to sue because they claimed they hadn’t made the mistake—that it was the product itself, which is how Franklin became involved. The NDAs are ironclad—even if it was the product, they weren’t allowed to speak. Even if they quit or were fired, they couldn’t talk aboutanythingrelated to BioRise or their drug trials. BioRise would have tied them up in court for years to come. It would have cost them millions to defend themselves against the NDA violation. They may have won—but they didn’t have the money to take it on. Who does? And few lawyers are going to work something like this pro bono, especially against a company the size and scope of BioRise. BioRise would bury them financially, destroy them personally, they have no scruples.”
Neither did Grant, Regan thought, though she didn’t say it.
Regan had always been frustrated at the system where the government or big business could essentially sue citizens into compliance. It didn’t matter if the individual was on the right side of the law, they rarely had the time and resources to fight back.
“One of the two employees in question died in a car accident, and the second took an obscenely large severance package. The case went away.” Grant snapped his fingers. “Disappeared, poof.
“But I started asking questions. The medical trial was on teenagers, and according to a statement by the two employees that I was privy to, three of the 210 test subjects died almost immediately after taking the test drug. The families were paid large sums of money—and signed NDAs. The official clinical paperwork indicated that the three subjects received the placebo—a sugar pill—and thus the trial drug wasn’t responsible. But the results were falsified; I saw the original paperwork. They buried it.”
“The employees could have turned whistleblower,” she said. “Gone to the DOJ.”
He laughed. Actually laughed at her, and she bristled.
“It happens. I’ve protected whistleblowers before.”
“Yes, it happens,” he said snidely. “But when there is this much money at stake? If it got out, just the rumor, it would have jeopardized a major,multibillion-dollar contract for BioRise. If anyone hinted at being a whistleblower, the company would have destroyed them. If you destroy someone’s reputation, no one believes them. The whisper campaign becomes truth, accusations become truth, social media spreads the new truth, and people are destroyed. I’ve seen it happen, Regan, more than once.”
“Okay,” she relented. He might be right.
“I was curious, but I wasn’t looking to be a whistleblower. I was trying to understand the process so that we could develop contracts and legal protections for our client. But my questions made BioRise nervous. I didn’t know at the time—I swear I didn’t. If I had, if I thought they were capable of...any of this, I would have come to you, Regan. And after Chase was killed, I didn’t eventhinkabout BioRise or anything I was working on. I couldn’t think about any of it because... I couldn’t get it out of my head. The blood.”
He let out a small cry, from deep in his throat, closed his eyes.
Quietly, she asked, “Did Franklin know?”
He didn’t answer her question, instead said, “They thought I was going to expose them. I wasn’t. I didn’t even really know what I knew, and when Chase was killed...nothing else mattered. I blamed you. And I guess they left me alone because I wasn’t asking questions anymore.”
“Until Tommy.”
He didn’t respond to her statement. “You read the letter,” he said softly. “I treated you like shit. I really thought it was your job.Yourthreat. Not me and mine. I wish they had killed me. I would do anything to bring Chase back.”
“I know,” she said. She reached for his hand across the table. He clasped hers as if he was a drowning man, so tight it hurt, but she didn’t let go.
Grant was suffering as much as she had. And she would never wish what she suffered on anyone.
