AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She snorted to herself. Boy, was he in for a shock. They all were. Her discovery constituted an extreme emergency. The approval was based on fake data. There’s no way in hell the FDA would pass Cytoxine if they saw the real data. No way. Which meant she had to stop the whole thing before Damon announced it.Ifhe could fit her in his busy schedule.Prick. She’d never liked the man but had always done her best at her job, not that that would help her. He would throw her under the bus first chance he had. She’d already be gone if it weren’t for her mentor who was close with several board members.
She’d wanted to talk to Damon on the phone but she was worried he wouldn’t believe her and if she sent the data she’d collected by email he could ignore it. But, if she was right there in front of him, showing him the doctored numbers, then he couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t dismiss her out of turn like he’d so often done in the past.Asshole.
He’d forced her to beg for a meeting and then only allotted her a thirty-minute window for tomorrow afternoon at his hotel. Not ideal but she didn’t care. She wanted to be in Geneva on-site at the same hotel in case he could fit her in earlier or in case she managed to track him down today. They were going to need as much time as possible to manage the situation. She might hate the CEO, but she loved her job and believed in the work the company was doing.
Her heart fluttered at the thought of the big announcement. If the FDA made the announcement that Cytoxine had received FDA approval and then NoVoGlobal pulled the drug, the company would be in big trouble. Their reputation as a drug manufacturer would take a big hit they might not come back from. Customers would lose faith in their products. And the thing the board cared about the most, the stock prices, would nosedive in a big way.
Not to mention those who try and jump ship to a new company would have the stink of this hanging over them. Well, she would anyway. Somehow this would be her fault. Damon would lay blame on her although she had nothing to do with it. He’d need a scapegoat and her job title made her the likely target. Chief Medical Officer meant she was ultimately responsible for the data, didn’t it?Sure, if I’d seen the real data.
It didn’t help that Damon wasn’t her biggest fan and he’d only hired her because her mentor, who had sway with the board, demanded she be his successor. It also didn’t hurt that she fulfilled a quota. He was a misogynist as far as she could tell. Oh, he’d never been obvious, but she’d been around enough women-hating men in the corporate world to recognize it when she saw it. She was at serious risk of being the scapegoat. Why hadn’t she known about these bogus records? How could someone get away with falsifying the numbers?Because someone did it before I was given the numbers. That was the only possible explanation. Her stomach rolled.
She’d spent the whole day yesterday going over all the data she’d been given on the drug and had drawn out a timeline. There were no indicators that the drug was killing people. None. So either someone fudged the data from the beginning or, and she thought this more likely, when they increased the dosage the last time, that’s when the research took a turn. That would be the most logical time for things to turn south and it would mean whoever had falsified the data only had to fudge one set of numbers. But how could they do that? The audacity of it made her nerves crawl as if ants were marching on her skin.
The co-pilot came over to her. “I need to review the safety briefing with you.”
She tried not to sigh out loud. If she had to sit through this why couldn’t the good-looking pilot have been the one to deliver it? There was something about this guy that gave her the creeps. Maybe it was his pale, dead eyes, or his demeanor, either way, he set her teeth on edge. She was on edge anyway. Probably not this guy’s fault.
The man went through a lengthy list of safety precautions, even pointing out that there were oxygen tanks behind the last set of seats, in case of unexpected depressurization.Great. Just another thing to worry about. When he finished, she nodded and thanked him. He went back up front and closed the cockpit door behind him.
The airplane began to taxi. Minutes later they were airborne. She stared down at the armrests she was gripping so hard her knuckles were white, and made a concerted effort to relax. Stress was the enemy. That’s what her doctor told her. If she wanted to keep going, she had to reduce her stress. Her blood pressure was higher than it should be for her age and heart problems ran in her family. It was what killed her father. Reduce stress? Was she fucking kidding?
Allegra rolled her shoulders. Maybe the situation wasn’t as bad as she thought. Maybe if they announced to the public that they needed more data before the FDA said anything, the fallout wouldn’t be so bad. The stock might dip slightly and rumors would circulate in the big pharma world, but the bad press would die down in a few months. Then they could quietly scrap the project. There might even be a way to re-purpose the drug, something it was good to treat in smaller doses, if her theory was correct that it was the change in dosage that had started killing patients.
She let out a long breath. Who the hell was she kidding? This was very fucking bad. They would have to scrap the project to insulate themselves from any damage. It would have to be done quietly once Cytoxine dropped from everyone’s minds which was never going to happen with Graham screaming about it from the rooftops.
The flight was smooth and for that, she was eternally grateful. She was in good hands with Captain Larson. Isn’t that what Hank had said? And he did have nice hands. It was one of the things she noticed about people, particularly men. She’d glanced at his hands when they were introduced. Larson had strong hands and she was willing to bet they were used to hard work. A callous or two never hurt. Gotta like a man that knew what to do with his hands. She wanted to mentally award bonus points to herself for noting the lack of a wedding ring. But the lack of a ring really meant nothing.
She went back to staring out the window at the cloudy sky as her mind whirled. She touched the outside of her skirt by the waistband, reassuring herself that the flash drive was still safely in the hidden pocket of her skirt. As long as she had the real data, she could stop things. She’d written everything up yesterday and had saved the file on her laptop but just in case there was a glitch, it helped to have the original documentation. She wanted to save it to the cloud but it was her work account so if she saved something, and they—whoever they were—were looking, they’d see it. Instead, she’d downloaded it to the USB and sent it via personal email to someone she trusted.
Glancing around the airplane, she took it in for the first time. Cream leather seats with beige carpet. Glossy wood panels as an accent. The whole airplane screamed luxury on a level she was not used to. This was above her pay grade under normal circumstances. It didn’t matter that she was the Chief Medical Officer of a big pharmaceutical company, she still flew commercial and in coach most of the time as well.
This was a nice treat, one that had cost her quite a bit. It wasn’t the money, she had plenty saved. Being in her late thirties and single, she’d been saving for years. Her nest egg was larger than she’d even anticipated. No, it was the favor she’d had to call in that made her uneasy. She hated to take advantage of anyone and certainly wouldn’t want to lose a friendship over it.
Sunny Travers had been a good friend back in her L.A. days. They’d met when Allegra used to go to the Jasmine Door hotel bar to relax after work. Sunny had been running the bar. They’d got to chatting and became friends. Allegra had left L.A. for San Francisco and a career in big Pharma. Sunny had stayed and moved up until she was running all the restaurants in the hotel. Allegra stayed in touch periodically and knew that Sunny had moved back to Montana when her grandmother had taken ill.
Now she was running a large spa resort there for Jameson Drake, the same man who owned the hotel chain but more importantly, her partner worked for Hank Patterson and the Brotherhood Protectors. She’d hated to make the call, but last time they spoke Sunny had mentioned that Hank now had guys in Europe and a group of pilots.
Allegra hated asking anyone for help, but the dire situation had made her suck it up. Sunny had come through and put her in touch with Hank who then booked the whole thing for her. She knew she owed Sunny a big favor but she also suspected she owed Hank. That was fair. She just didn’t want to risk getting on a commercial flight. With the weather and the weird flying schedules these days, flying private was the only way to guarantee she’d get to Geneva in time.
At least that was the story she would tell everyone. When she’d been digging around yesterday, she’d discovered that the lead scientist on the study had died of a heart attack. He was in his mid-fifties and by the look of the picture in his personnel file, he wasn’t in great shape so it could have happened, no question. But discovering that one of his assistants died in a car crash about two weeks after the lead guy’s heart attack had set alarm bells clanging. Actually, it had set her heart pounding in her chest like she’d just run a marathon. But the thing that really put her over the edge was that the second assistant had also disappeared. Quit work the day after the other assistant’s car crash and no one has seen him or heard from him since.
The sting in her fingertips told her she was gripping the armrests again in a death grip. That second assistant was either dead or on the run. Alarm bells could not ring any louder. It was a five-alarm fire, or DEFCON five. And that’s what made her decide to take a private jet to Geneva. The thought of being in a crowd of people where anything could happen or anyone could get to her had almost caused a panic attack. She tried to convince herself that she was jumping to conclusions, but every single instinct told her she was right.
She needed to get to Damon. Just another hour and she’d be in Geneva. She’d find a way to get in front of Damon, tell him everything and then she could relax. Or at least she wouldn’t be so terrified.
The cockpit door opened, and the pilot came out. He was tall, taller than she’d imagined with piercing gray eyes. They were the color of the sky out her window. His dark hair was a little on the shaggy side, and it curled around his ears. He was wearing cargo pants and a collared shirt. Not exactly dressing business casual but the way he moved suggested to her that he was a man who knew what he was doing. Confidence filled every movement. She bit back another sigh. She worked with men like him every day. Their egos were always enormous. Although she had to admit, this pilot was very good looking and the way he moved seemed sexy, not overconfident. Maybe he had more of a reason to be confident than most. Under other circumstances, she might even ask him out for a drink.
“We’ll be landing in about forty-five minutes,” he said as he moved passed her to the restroom in the back of the jet. She heard the door close and then lifted her nose. He smelled good, she’d give him that. In fact, he smelled great.
How long had it been since she’d had a boyfriend? She mentally counted. Three years? No, four. He’d been a doctor and smelled like antiseptic if she remembered correctly. Her mother had been yelling at her for years that she was letting life pass her by in her quest to get to the top. She was pushing herself too hard and not stopping to smell the roses. If she died tomorrow, would she regret her choices? Her mother always knew how to ask the hard questions. It was what made her a great scientist and doctor.
Her father, she knew, would be proud of her if he’d been around. He’d died five years earlier and his death had spurred her on, fueled her ambition. Now, however, her mother’s voice was loud in her head. Had she made the right choices? She was Chief Medical Officer which was what she’d wanted. She waited for the warm glow that just thinking about the title used to give her, but it didn’t happen. When did that stop? When had she stopped really enjoying her work? Was it Friday night when she’d found the data? No, she had to admit, the job had lost its sparkle well before that.
Maybe she just needed to get laid. It had been a long while for that as well. No wonder she found the pilot so attractive. She needed to go out on a date or two once all this stuff was settled. Get a life again. No more staying at work until two a.m. All work and no play made her boring.But it also might have saved lives.
She put her head back on the headrest and closed her eyes. Soon, she’d get to Damon, and then she wouldn’t be the only one who knew what was going on. The only one besides the person or persons who’d falsified the data. She needed to figure out who it was because until then, she didn’t feel safe. It was possible they’d already killed two or three people and they were willing to release the drug and kill thousands more. No doubt they wouldn’t hesitate to add her name to the list of those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of science.
CHAPTER4
