Susan Smith - The Timer Game

‘Not just the Center. The manufacturing plants are in the mix, too, but the most significant assets are patents. The deal’s gone hard.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Belikond’s had to put hard money down, and whether the deal closes or not – and it will close, I assure you – the seller gets to keep the deposit.’ He paused. ‘Ten percent of the total purchase price is typical.’

She did the math in her mind and wished she were still drinking. She could use something a lot stronger than papaya juice.

‘And that seller getting to keep the hard money would be you.’

‘And others. Underwriting the Center are drug development companies, a cluster of university research deals, and some investment bankers willing to take huge risks. I’m the director but six others sit on the board, and getting them to agree on anything is like trying to get a bag full of cats to stop fighting. We’ve jumped through hoops the past ninety days – proof of title, physical inspection of the lands, the buildings, improvements – worldwide, Grace, not just here – and due diligence inspection of the IP’s. Intellectual properties. Checking that all the patents have been properly registered, and that there are no existing or potential claim infringements, and then dividing up each investor’s share. Oh, and then the lending bank sends over its own team and we do the dance all over again.’

‘And you’re closing when?’ She was certain he’d told her, she just couldn’t remember. She was on the verge of taking out a second mortgage on her house, just to repair the roof.

‘Delivery of assets, titles, full custody, and control gets turned over at the end of this week. I don’t have to be present, but I have to be on top of it.’

Under the tan, there were dark circles under his eyes.

‘My chunk – minus whatever part the government’s going to chip out for taxes – I want wired to an account in the Caymans. And since nobody but me has that access code, they’re going to electronically link me as the deal closes. I’ll have thirty seconds on my end to enter the access code, releasing my funds into my private account. If I miss that window, my share gets sent to my bank stateside, but for tax reasons, that’s something I’d like to avoid. My share is worth several hundred million dollars.’

The shock must have shown on her face. She looked around the immaculate space, studying his daughter’s photo so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. She wasn’t afraid of money and people who had it, but power tripped her up sometimes, and she could feel herself starting to fall.

‘So. You sell. You leave. Eddie Loud acted alone as a crazy person, God knows how he got my name. Nobody else is after me.’

‘Not exactly. I told you it was complicated. Yesterday, I got this.’

He went to his desk and unlocked the drawer and came back with a postcard. ‘Hand-delivered, left in a manila envelope for me downstairs at Information.’

The postcard was faintly blue in color, on handmade paper stock, with streaks of heavier blue weaving through it. There was no address or postmark. Warren Pendrell’s name had been typed on the message side, with a single typed sentence underneath: He’s coming for you, the Spikeman .

She turned the postcard over. Warren’s picture had been cut and pasted onto the postcard. It was blurred, shot as he stepped through the front door of the Center, a hand shading his eyes.

Imbedded in his chest was a crudely drawn butcher knife, dripping with blood.

‘“He’s coming for you, the Spikeman.” And the butcher knife. It’s the same threat, Grace. The same. One thing science teaches, there are no coincidences.’

‘You’re saying somebody could be after both of us? Who? Why?’

He shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’

‘I could take this in. Get somebody to run tests.’ She and Paul Collins were colleagues, but Marcie had worked next to Grace in the forensic biology lab for five years, and they were friends. The tall, emaciated, jumpy woman would figure out a way to have the postcard tested if Grace asked, even though fibers and documents were not handled in their lab, and the paper wasn’t saturated with biological fluids.

Warren shook his head. ‘The last thing I want is the police involved while I’m negotiating this deal. Businesses run on rumors and innuendo, Grace. The total valuation of the business has been in flux over the period of time we’ve negotiated, and I’m talking a flux that could cost us millions. I don’t want to hand Belikond anything else its team could use.’

‘Marcie’s very discreet.’

‘Grace, I’m serious. I want things quiet and on schedule. I’m telling you this because I want you to protect yourself. Let me rephrase that. I want to protect you. And Katie.’

‘We’re okay.’

‘God, you’re impossible. If you change your mind …’

She nodded. He held out his hand for the postcard and she reluctantly gave it to him. He relocked it in his desk and rang the receptionist.

‘Yes. Cynthia. Please alert Lee Bentley we’re on our way.’

Grace felt a visceral surge of panic and anger. He was doing it again. Broadsiding her.

‘Warren, you should have asked me first.’

‘So you could say no?’

‘I don’t have time.’

‘Make it.’ He reached for her hand.

Warren walked down the brightly lit hallway toward a lab at the far end of the corridor, Grace seething behind him, the images of Lee tumbling one on top of the other.

When Grace had been tapped to work the pediatric side of heart transplants at the Center, she’d immediately come into conflict with a leggy young researcher, Lee Ann Bentley, doing postdoc work on kids.

There had been a whiff of scandal that Lee had falsified lab results before coming to the Center in an effort to prove the effectiveness of a new immune suppressor used on chimps in heart transplants. Two primates had died before anything conclusive could be determined, the bodies conveniently cremated. Lee had been exonerated of any wrongdoing, but it had left Grace feeling there was something creepy buried under all that perfection.

Lee was concentrating on xenografts and xenobiotics, genetically altering animal hearts so that one day, they’d be recognized as human by a transplant recipient. Grace was going another direction completely: chimerism. Mutual cell assimilation. Tricking the body into accepting a new, human heart as if it were its own.

She’d stumbled onto it by accident years before during her internship – that if she first transplanted bone marrow from the donor, the patient’s immune system could be tricked into accepting the donor heart almost as if it were its own. That meant lower doses of immune-suppressant drugs. The patient would still have to be on a rigorous drug program for the rest of his life, but at lower doses. Since the immune-suppressant drugs were so toxic, the lesser the dosage the better.

Later, that groundbreaking research was validated when transplant surgeons in Lyon, France, infused an Australian patient with donor marrow cells before performing a successful hand transplant, and then again when a woman in Paris, infused first with marrow cells from a donor, had a partial face transplant.

But when Grace was trying it, she was among a small group of surgeons and the only one at the Center. She’d been working there only a couple of weeks when she butted heads with Lee over a patient, a six-year-old boy who needed a heart transplant.

Lee talked the parents into putting a genetically altered pig’s heart into his small chest. Grace had passionately argued with her in private beforehand. It was too experimental. Risky. Safer options hadn’t been exhausted yet. Lee had shrugged and smiled, and the smile had been a cold thing.