Gregg Hurwitz - Last shot

"Our space between sightings is shrinking. I'd say we're closing him down."

"Yeah? How many stitches has he got?"

"He's losing some blood."

"Do tell."

As Bear flew through stoplights, not bothering to distinguish red from green, Tim described the events since the last time he'd checked in with her, shortly after Walker's sniper attempt at Beacon-Kagan had hit the news channels. Caden Burke's emergence, the shoot-out at Game, Tim's visit to his father-this alone was met with stunned silence-the visit to Morgenstein, the raid on the apartment, Tim's standoff with Walker, the trip to the hospital, and, finally, the failed interface with Dolan.

Not surprisingly, Dray zeroed in on a detail he'd long dismissed as insignificant. "Walker dumped the Camry in the airport parking lot, right?"

"We already checked, Dray. There were no other vehicles stolen out of there around that time."

"He drove away in something."

"He might've taken the bus. A cab."

"Covered in ash and reeking of trash? Maybe he wrote 'fugitive' across his forehead with a Sharpie, too?" Different tone: "No, you can't have a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid. Go back to sleep or I'm gonna put my head in the microwave. Yes, I'll send your daddy in when he gets home." Back to Tim: "Plus, why bother when you're gifted at boosting cars, which he clearly is?"

"So?"

"So check what cars were stolen in the surrounding area that night. He's not gonna swipe a car from the lot claiming he lost the ticket. They ding you for two hundred bucks. He'd have to grab something a block or two away."

The Ram screeched up to Freed's downtown high-rise. The doorman looked startled beneath his wannabe-Manhattan red cap.

Tim said, "The task force is on overload. Will you get on it?"

"Sure. Guerrera has the parking-lot ticket with the time stamped on it?"

"Yes. Thank you. Gotta run."

"Oh, and Timothy? Let's keep tonight's count to those five stitches. In you, I mean."

An elevator operator rode with them up to the penthouse floor. Freed's building was one of the crown jewels of downtown's gentrification, twenty-five floors of luxury living for Japanese businessmen, Europeans who missed real city living, and the occasional East Coast star whose career required a seasonal transplant to within limo range of the studios.

Freed answered the door in a silk kimono-looking robe that managed to be masculine but earned a behind-the-back eyebrow raise from Bear nonetheless. They crossed a marble floor to a granite table suspended from the ceiling by two centered steel cables. His copy of the confidential report had been laid out, page by page, across the surface. Post-its with notes and questions, rendered in blue ink from Freed's Montblanc, lifted from the sheets like feathers. A floating fireplace magically burned logs. Someone rustled beyond the cracked bedroom door, but despite Bear's nosy detour in that direction, the identity-and gender-of Freed's visitor remained concealed. The wall-length window looked down on the rooftop bar and lounge of The Standard hotel. The pool cast a diffuse aqua glow over the scene-monkeys slurping bright name-brand drinks and rolling around on the waterbed cabanas. A projector Supersized Casablanca onto the side of the neighboring building.

Tim nodded at the pages on the table. "Make headway?"

"You could say that. I've got X5-AAT pegged as Xedral's latest model, but I've been trying to figure out what L12-AAT is."

"It was the final model of Lentidra," Tim said, "a viral vector they pulled back after they hit problems during animal trials."

"They pulled it back, all right, but not because of that." Freed looked troubled. He sat at the end of the table and scooted his chair in. "This report is, among other things, a risk assessment. It provides a comparative cost-benefit analysis of both viral vectors." He tapped a graph. "This part shows projected profit margins for Xedral, mapped against those for Lentidra."

Bear said, "Xedral's projected profits are higher."

"Significantly higher. Initially."

"And this chart?" Tim asked.

"The tipping point. For when the risks associated with Xedral outweigh the financial benefits."

"I'm not sure I follow," Tim said. "What are these figures?"

"The effectiveness quotient. It shows Xedral to be eighty-six percent effective."

"Sounds pretty good," Bear said. "So what 'risks' are we talking about here?"

Troubled, Freed jogged his Montblanc so it tapped the table's edge. "Lentidra's effectiveness is at ninety-five."

The guard came out of his chair when Dolan stormed into his father's study. Breathing hard, Dolan threw the report on his father's desk and crossed his arms. The guard, accustomed now to the pretense of discretion, dismissed himself quickly, leaving them alone. Dean held the report in a firm hand, perusing it at arm's length. The cold still hadn't left Dolan's face; he'd sat on the porch for the past forty-five minutes, reading by the faint light cast through the parlor window. Dean set down the report without lifting the top page.

"Well?" Dean said.

"You want to tell me what that is, sir?"

"An accounting scenario."

"That's why you gave me false data for Lentidra," Dolan said. "Not because it was flawed. But because it wasn't."

"Neither vector is one hundred percent."

"I don't see the same fail rate for Lentidra."

Dean's aggravation reached critical mass. "You don't see the same healthy profit margin either."

"Xedral is less effective. But you want it anyway."

"Why do you think that is?"

Dolan's eyes pulled to the framed poster behind Dean. XEDRAL. THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED. THIRTY DAYS AT A TIME. "The boosters. You buried Lentidra because it was too effective. It achieves permanent transgene integration. There's no need for a maintenance shot every month, like Xedral requires. You don't want to cure AAT deficiency. You'd rather maintain a pipeline of sick monthly consumers."

"I don't expect you to comprehend the intricacies." And then, resigned to his disappointment: "You're not your brother."

"No. And I don't share his ethics either. We could have had Lentidra to market months ago. Saved who knows how many lives?"

"There's nothing illegal about what we've decided to do here. We own our research."

"Our research started with a grant from NIH. Taxpayer money."

Dean chuckled. "Do you know what your lab has spent since it opened?"

"A hundred and twelve million."

"Right. Of which your NIH grant was what?"

"Five hundred thousand."

"Correct. Your grant was a drop in the bucket. And you don't care where the rest comes from, do you? You don't bother to keep tabs. It could be from other people's gold teeth, melted down at Auschwitz and stockpiled in Paraguay, right? Ethics! Where do you think your operating capital comes from?"

"Investors."

"Right. Are the money managers bad people? No. Are their investors? No. They're just spoiled rotten. They've come of age in a time when a three percent dividend and four percent appreciation doesn't cut it. When stockholders see any equity that doesn't grow fifteen percent every year as a turd not even worth flushing. For better or worse, you are married to them. Those beady-eyed fund managers. Those rapacious investors. Their money, not mine, is what will turn Vector into a success. So don't you question my ethics until you can truthfully say you give a fuck how I've gotten my hands on that money for you."

"This isn't about money, or funding, or business. It's about putting people at unnecessary risk."

"Don't be such a pessimist, Dolan. These people-terminal patients facing certain death-are being offered an eighty-six percent chance at having their lives saved. If I was sitting in their chair at the roulette table, I'd take that bet. Say our worst-case estimate is right. Fourteen percent of patients have a problem. So what? They were going to die anyway. Of liver failure-a slow, horrible way to go. Until you developed Xedral. It's a godsend."