The storage room?” Rogan pushed the top of an encrusted mop away from his face. “This was the best we could do?”
They hadn’t been able to contact the photographer who leased the office next door, so this tiny janitorial storage closet was the only other space for them to camp out near Dr. David Bolt’s office. Given the circumstances, they needed to be close.
“Shh.” She pressed the headphones closer to her ears. It had taken George Langston only a day to strike an agreement with the district attorney’s office. He would come clean about his part in the Equivan drug-testing scheme. He would testify against Bolt. He would also set up a meeting and wear a wire. All he got in exchange was a promise of sentencing consideration. It was a lousy deal, but the man was seriously pissed. What had started as a favor to a friend had turned into an attack on his wife.
She heard George’s voice through her headphones. Rogan nodded to indicate his audio was also working.
“Sue’s gone?” George asked. Sue was the receptionist.
“You were the one who said you didn’t want anyone to see you here. I canceled three sessions for this. What’s with all the James Bond action?”
“My wife. Don’t tell me you didn’t get my messages yesterday. A man followed her out to East Hampton. He tried to kill her.”
“And it sounds like she did a good job defending herself. Shouldn’t you be with her?”
“This has gotten totally out of control.”
“What is your deal, George?”
“It was supposed to be comments on a website. A few words to scare her—to make everything right again. That’s all I agreed to.”
“And I swear, that’s all it’s been.”
It was only that morning when they’d watched George Langston sob in an interrogation room. You have to understand, he said through the tears, it didn’t seem so terrible at first.
It was only one lawsuit. One screwed-up kid, Jason Moffit, had killed himself during a drug trial. A fluke. A statistical anomaly. But Jason Moffit had been taking Equivan, and the parents were telling anyone who would listen that the experimental drug combination had caused their son to inject himself with enough heroin to kill four junkies.
It was the kind of story that would send the drug companies running and accountability boards ordering the research team to start over from scratch—a larger sample size, a longer study, years of delays. Bolt swore that to interrupt the research would hurt an entire generation of kids who desperately needed better treatment options.
Less selflessly, any kind of investigation could destroy Bolt’s career. To get the manufacturers of Equilibrium and Flovan to fund the research, he had practically guaranteed them a successful trial. He had forecast the likely profits once the two drugs were prescribed together. There were documents. Even a PowerPoint presentation. The drug companies would throw him under the bus. Bolt would lose everything.
And so George had agreed to help him. After Bolt assured him Moffit was a statistical anomaly, George helped make the Moffits’ lawsuit go away, complete with a confidentiality clause and no report to the Food and Drug Administration.
Meanwhile, Bolt went about ensuring his study produced the promised results. He started taking a few kids who didn’t meet the criteria for the clinical trial. Despite the protocol of “blind” testing, he placed these kids in the active drug group, overstating their initial clinical symptoms. Because these kids had never been bipolar to begin with, their “results” would show improvement as they continued the medication.
But then Adrienne had seen that tiny little article about the lawsuit in the New York Post after the parents had called a reporter without notifying him. How can you sue David? she’d asked. He and Anne are two of our best friends. As he recounted the conversation in the interrogation room, he nearly choked on his words. “I’ve always been a terrible liar. Ironic, isn’t it? I told her what I’d done. I didn’t want her to think I’d do that to our friends. I compromised everything I believe in, just to help David.”
And then Adrienne started to change. Those unexplained periods at her computer became longer and more frequent. She pulled away from him in bed at night. And then he heard the same rumors as Katherine Whitmire about his wife’s book deal. He snuck into her e-mail and learned the truth: a six-hundred-thousand-dollar advance that she never bothered to mention to him. He had always known on some level that she’d married him not for love but for station and security. That’s why they had a prenup. That’s why he had never wanted her to legally adopt Ramona. He needed to know she couldn’t leave.
Now she had a measure of autonomy, and he was losing her.
Maybe if he hadn’t told his best friend, nothing would have come of it. Book deals fall apart. Women learn to forgive. But then David Bolt came up with a plan. If Adrienne was too afraid to publish the book, she would have to stay with George. And if she stayed with George, there would be no messy divorce where she threatened to reveal what she knew about Equivan.
Like George said, It was supposed to be comments on a website. A few words to scare her—to make everything right again. Now, in Bolt’s office, George was trying to get the man who took it beyond words to admit the true extent of his wrongdoing.
“Drop the act, David. I should have known you were lying when the police said one of those posts came from Julia’s laptop. The girl you’re screwing just happens to kill herself?”
“I told you: Julia was a very disturbed girl.”
“You don’t think I know that? She practically grew up in my home. What kind of man—a psychiatrist, no less—has sex with a teenage girl who’s so obviously troubled? What happened?” Suddenly they heard muffled sounds through the headphones. “Jesus, David, what the fuck!”
“Are you wearing a wire? Are you fucking recording me?”
Ellie had one hand on the closet doorknob, the other on her holstered Glock. This was it.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” George’s voice again. “What do you want? A strip search?”
“Sorry, man. This shit is—it’s, I don’t know what to do. It just wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Ellie let her hand drop from the gun. They had caught a break. Bolt must have stopped with a cursory search, expecting one of those wires strapped to his friend’s chest like in the movies. This particular audio transmitter was hidden in a fountain pen in Langston’s front jacket pocket.
“Don’t ask me to feel sorry for you. What I agreed to about Adrienne was wrong. But sending someone after her? Trying to hurt my child’s mother? That’s not acceptable. Not in any universe.”
“I swear—on Nate and Charlotte’s lives—I did not have anything to do with that.”
“Oh, come on, David. That doesn’t make any sense. You really expect me to believe that Julia killing herself and some murderer coming after my wife is all just a big coincidence?”
Ellie heard the sound of a sliding door, followed by the squeal of a siren and horns blasting below. Someone had opened the terrace door. Did Bolt still suspect a wire? Don’t go out there, she willed. She could barely hear them over the sound of the wind. She could read Rogan’s lips next to her. Idiot.
They made out only bits and pieces. Julia . . . didn’t know what to . . . could tell . . . research . . . nowhere . . . my files . . . threatened.
It was hard to distinguish Bolt’s voice from Langston’s. They’d lost all track of the conversation. As minutes passed, Ellie and Rogan exchanged worried glances.
Their voices were getting louder. Liar . . . family . . . police . . . coming out.
And then they heard Langston’s voice even louder now. “What? No!” There was more whooshing, but it wasn’t the sound of wind anymore. Physical contact with the audio transmitter. A loud crash.
She was moving already, Rogan right behind her. She yelled into her radio. “Go. In the office. Now. Now!”
Eight officers poured from the stairwell at the end of the hallway, but she and Rogan had a forty-yard head start. This is why they’d stayed close.
Bolt’s reception area was empty. They ran straight for his office door. Locked.
Rogan slammed his left shoulder hard and low against it like a linebacker. Nothing. They heard a yell inside.
Another low, hard hit, and the door gave way.
Bolt had backed Langston against the railing. Langston had only one foot in contact with the concrete, his weight beginning to tip over the terrace edge.
“David Bolt,” she yelled. “Police.”
He removed his hands from Langston’s jacket and held them high. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. It was an argument. That’s all. Right, George? Tell them.”
Bolt looked at Langston with a look of hope. It was a hope that came from certainty that weak-willed George Langston would do anything to cover his own ass.
“It’s over, David. It’s over.” Langston checked his blazer pocket for the pen-recorder. “You got all that, right?”