Jessica Andersen - Prescription - Makeover

“Don’t be flattered,” he countered. “I don’t like working with people who don’t know how to be part of a team.”

“Right. Which is why you went to your meeting at the Coach House without backup.”

“And I definitely,” he said through gritted teeth, “don’t think you’re cute.”

He could think of a number of words to describe her, none of which were anywhere close to being as innocuous as cute.

“Big surprise,” she said drily. “No doubt you like women who wear frilly dresses and lipstick.” There was a pause, then a slight edge in her voice when she said, “I don’t suppose you sent me…no. Never mind.”

William’s instincts quivered to life. “What?”

“I said never mind.” She paused and her voice went hollow. “Oh, God. Berryville’s dead.” She said something else, but William was already hanging up the phone and heading for her office at a run.

He found her working three computers at once. On the leftmost screen his snapshots from the Coach House were matched against DMV photos of the three men. On the right she’d pulled up a series of records for Dr. Paul Berryville, including his supposedly classified FDA background check. But it was the center screen that commanded William’s attention with a photograph of smoldering wreckage and the headline Eight top scientists killed in Catskills crash.

Ike didn’t turn to look at him, but her body was tense beneath the black leather biker jacket she wore because they still had the heat turned off. Her voice held dull horror when she said, “A charter jet flying a bunch of scientists to a private retreat lost power and crashed in upstate New York last night. The men we saw yesterday are dead, along with three other prominent scientists and their drivers. Odin wasn’t taking any chances that they’d lead us to him.”

“Christ.” William let out a breath, sickened by the realization that the leader of The Nine had killed his own people to make sure they wouldn’t talk. Worse, given that Grosskill had ignored the evidence after Forsythe’s arrest, there was little chance the FBI would believe that the mythical leader of an imaginary group of scientific bogeymen was responsible for a charter plane crash.

“He killed his own people,” Ike repeated, voice shaking.

“I’d like to believe this means the end of The Nine,” William said after a long moment. “But I’m afraid I’m not that optimistic.”

Ike nodded. “He’ll recruit and rebuild The Nine, maybe even stronger than before.” She clicked on one photograph after the other, erasing the men from her screens. When she was done, all she had left was a blank monitor, which seemed to sum up their investigation. They had suspicions but no official backup, bodies but no suspects.

“You got any ideas?” William asked her, their personal differences seeming less important all of a sudden.

“Maybe. Yes, I think so.” She hit three computer keys in quick succession, bringing up a new screen on the middle monitor. “I found Lukas Kupfer and the press conference they were talking about. Kupfer is a PhD at the Markham Institute near UMass Amherst. His lab is working on a treatment for a disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and they’ve got a big announcement planned for this Friday. Something about a new gene therapy protocol for Duchenne.”

William stared at Kupfer’s file photo, which showed a bespectacled fortysomething man whose face held both laugh lines and sadness. “They said Odin was going to handle it personally. That means we need to get someone inside Kupfer’s lab, pronto.”

Ike tapped a few keys and brought up the Markham Institute’s collaborators list. She indicated a pair of names. “I know these two from Boston General. If I get Zach Cage involved, we could put together a decent cover story, maybe invent a visiting scientist at BoGen who wants to get a look at Kupfer’s research. He’d probably buy it.”

William grimaced and shook his head. “Unfortunately I don’t know enough science to pull off a cover story in an academic lab.”

“Maybe not,” Ike said. She glanced up at him. “But I do.”

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