Nobody would ever agree to this. So had the patient been lied to? Or worse, were they being held against their will?

No. That couldn’t possibly have happened … could it?

The whole thing was like falling into a Michael Crichton novel, except it appeared to be actually happening.

Sarah glanced over at the computer screen as she thought through, for the hundredth time, the images she’d looked at—the PET scans, the CAT scans, the MRIs, the results of blood tests, the cardiac imaging.

She could explain none of it. Not the protocol, which violated every ethical standard in medicine, not the patient’s response, which was inexplicable, and certainly not BioMed’s participation in a study that would expose the corporation to probable criminal liability as well as problems with the federal government, the FDA, the AMA, and all kinds of professional groups.

She also could not explain Gerry’s role.

It was clear that this was a protocol run out of BioMed’s Infectious Disease division. On one of the reports, both BioMed’s logo and the IDD’s notation had appeared at the bottom, as if a document template had been used out of habit. Clearly, none of the study’s lead researchers wanted their name anywhere, and they had taken care to remove all other identifiers of the lab. That one had slipped through, however.

And Gerry obviously had gained access to the study at some point. Probably when his security clearance had been increased. But did he participate in the unlawful practices?

The mere idea of that made Sarah want to vomit.

She thought of his boss, Dr. Thomas McCaid. Tom McCaid had been the one who’d hired Gerry, and she’d told that FBI agent that the man had been a lab supervisor—which was true, but there was more to it. McCaid was the only researcher with that ranking who reported directly to the CEO, Dr. Robert Kraiten.

Not that McCaid was reporting to anyone, anymore.

Sarah had never met the fabled Dr. Robert Kraiten in person. Her hiring had been coordinated through her lab supervisor. But she’d seen the man speak, both at company-wide annual meetings, and on the Internet. He had a TED Talk which had been widely circulated throughout BioMed, on the limitless horizons of bioengineering.

“We are still in the dark ages of medicine …” was how he’d opened his speech. After which he’d gone on to point out that things like organ donation with its immune system problems and Draconian chemotherapy protocols for cancer patients were going to be akin to the leeches, tubercular sleeping porches, and lack of sterilization of the past. Fifty years from now, he maintained, replacement parts for the human body were going to be grown in labs, cancer was going to be battled at the molecular level by the immune system, and aging was going to be a matter of choice rather than inevitability.

Sarah could see some of what he was saying. What she hadn’t liked about him was his messianic affect, like he was a self-proclaimed pied piper with all the answers, leading a drop-footed, dumber populace to the promise land of science of which only he was aware.

Then again, the man was worth how much? Having billions could make a megalomaniac out of anybody.

Given that McCaid had been head of the IDD lab, he had to know about this research. And by extrapolation, if McCaid reported directly to Kraiten, then the CEO had to know about this research.

In fact, a strong conclusion could be made that both men had promoted it, one by doing the work and the other by providing the funding and facilities.

Unless she was missing something. But how else could you explain it? Kraiten either had unethical experimentation being conducted in his lab by a rogue researcher with unlimited access to restricted-use MRI machines, PET and CAT scans, and X-rays as well as a blood laboratory and a fucking patient … or Kraiten was paying for the research to occur and keeping a lid on everything.

Even if it meant killing the scientists who were doing the work.

And God … what happened to the patient? Was he even alive anymore? The files were all two years old.

Sarah brought the laptop back into place and reviewed the directory one more time. She knew what she was looking for, knew that the hunt was stupid and fruitless. Knew that she was bound to be disappointed.

And she was.

Nothing from Gerry. No directions as to what to do with all this. No recounting of why he’d lifted all of this data.

Most importantly, no indication of what his role was in the protocol.

The Gerry she knew would never have endangered the life of a patient in the pursuit of scientific knowledge or advancement. He believed in the sanctity of life and had a commitment to the alleviation of suffering. Both were the reasons he’d gotten into medicine.

But this was his Infectious Disease division. And he obviously had not gone to the authorities with any of this—otherwise, all of BioMed would have been shut down.

On that note, the FBI was asking questions about the deaths, not the work.

Or maybe they were probing the corporation and she just didn’t know the depth of what had triggered their investigation.

“What happened to the patient?” she said aloud while she rubbed her aching eyes.

As she closed her lids and leaned back again, from out of nowhere, a memory of her hanging up the phone in her teenage bedroom came to mind, and she saw everything so clearly: the messy floral bedspread she’d been sitting on and her Smashing Pumpkins posters across the walls and the blue jeans draped on the back of her desk chair.

Bobby something or another. She couldn’t remember what his last name had been and didn’t that seem odd, given the momentous bomb he’d dropped on her.

Total devastation: He’d told her he was taking someone else to senior prom forty-eight hours before the dance. And not just anyone, either. He was escorting her good friend, Sara, a.k.a., No-“h”, because Sarah had been with the “h”. Talk about your sniper invites. Bobby had been relatively new to school, having arrived the year before as a junior when his dad took a job with the metro government. Sara and Sarah, on the other hand, had known each other since kindergarten.

That phone conversation had been quick, the kind of thing that he’d rushed through because he felt bad, but his mind was made up.

It wasn’t like Sarah didn’t get it. No-“h” was a knockout, or had been ever since her body had gotten its curves on the summer before. She was also funny and friendly, the kind of girl you looked forward to sitting next to at lunch because there was always going to be a good laugh.

She was not a mean girl. But this was a surprise.

Sarah would have thought, even if Bobby had had the bright idea, that there would have been a no-way from No-“h.”

Her prom dress had been hanging off her closet door, and she could recall how she’d looked over at it and started to cry. Her dad had taken her shopping two weeks before in what had been yet another in a whole line up of awkward I-wish-Mom-were-here kind of interactions. Like when Sarah had gotten her period for the first time. Or when she’d wanted to start shaving her legs. Or how about worrying whether she could get pregnant after she hooked up with Bobby for the first time, even though they hadn’t gone all the way.

The dress had been form-fitting and a deep red. Her father had approved of neither, but she’d wanted to come out as a woman for the first time.

No more girl stuff. No pastels. No frills. No big bows.

As she’d stared at the gown, she’d thought about how every night after she turned the light off, she looked at it and smiled, imagining all kinds of prom moments with Bobby, him in a tuxedo, her enshrined in red, the pair of them grown-ups at a big blowout. Dancing together. Making out. Maybe sealing the deal in what would be, for her at least, the first time.

Now? She could still go, sure. But the prom was just two days away and everyone was paired up.

And then there was the joy of realizing that they’d all gone in on the limo, eight couples, including No-“h”.

Who apparently had broken up with her boyfriend.

As the trickle-downs to the phone call played out—including the cringer that maybe Bobby had liked Sara all along and he’d just been waiting for the break-up to happen and the corollary sting that Sara should have called but probably wouldn’t—all Sarah had wanted was her mom.

Sometimes, you needed to bear your soul’s pain to somebody who had walked a mile in your sparkly high heels.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love her father. But he was a resource for other things.

The yearning for her mom, so familiar, so mournful, so ultimately going-nowhere, had just added to her crushing despair.

Sarah felt shadows of that now.

There were questions she needed to ask. Fears she wanted allayed. Choices to discuss. And not just with anyone. With Gerry.

She needed to talk to him about this. Ask him what he knew and what he had done. Demand to know whether he was the good man she had believed him to be or someone else entirely.

But he was gone, and there was nowhere to go with any of it.

She was alone with a baseless yearning, once again.

After so many years of being in this isolated spot, you’d think she’d be used to it.

Some destinations were ever new territory, however, no matter how well you knew their town squares.

No, it wasn’t Siberia.

But as Murhder re-formed at the outer fringe of a forest, the winter landscape before him seemed both cruel and pervasive. The snowdrifts across the meadow’s open acreage were like waves upon a restless arctic sea, the top layer carved into drifts by relentless cold winds. What trees there were seemed tortured by the cold, their bare branches like claws retracted in pain, their trunks starved and ragged. Overhead, a thick cloud cover suggested another blizzard’s battering was coming, the weather seeming to hate the earth.

About three hundred yards away, on the far side of the bare field, the shack cowering in the midst of a grove of stubby pines was not the cozy haven of a postcard. There was no wisp of cheery smoke rising from its tilted chimney, no glow of candlelight and warmth in its paltry windows, no strong refuge against the gales, given its frayed siding.

Maybe this was the wrong address.

Maybe V was mistaken—