Blood Victory

When he sees Scott lingering, Cole waves him away. “Thank you, Mr. Durham. But move along now. Plausible deniability and all that.”

“That’s supposed to apply to the person in charge,” he says with a smile. But he’s gone in a few seconds, and suddenly the three of them are alone for the first time ever.

Nobody says anything for a bit. Cole knows exactly where Noah’s been, and he’s looking for evidence of his time there in his expression. There isn’t any.

“Soon it will just be the three of us,” Julia finally says, “and I’ll be the one who’s outnumbered.”

“Well,” Cole says, “I thought the whole point of moving in this direction was that we were the ones with common ground.”

“Which is?” she asks.

“None of us wants Charlotte in a lab.”

“Charley,” Noah says.

“Excuse me?” Julia asks.

“She actually likes it,” he says. “She likes being called Charley.”

Cole’s tempted to ask Noah when Charley had the chance to mention it to him, then realizes it must be something she told him back in Arizona.

“I’ll make a note of that,” Julia says, as if she won’t, probably because it’s a concern for people who actually plan on being in Charley’s presence, and Julia doesn’t. Not anytime soon.

“Easy, stallion,” Cole says to Noah. “She hasn’t been your patient for a long time.”

Noah seems to realize the folly of chastising the two of them over details he learned when he was deceiving Charlotte Rowe under an assumed name.

“Apologies,” he says. “I do have a tendency to get . . . committed.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Julia says. “And it manifests as a tendency to do things entirely on your own.”

“Indeed,” he says; then he reaches into his pocket and drops something in the middle of the glass table. A silver Saint Christopher’s medal Stephen Drucker used to wear around his neck.

From the pinched expression on Julia’s face, it’s clear she recognizes it.

“I see,” she says quietly. “I was aware the job was being done, but I wasn’t aware you were doing it yourself.”

“Both jobs,” he says.

This is news to Cole, but not too much of a surprise.

“I was able to go through his phone thanks to Bailey.” Noah forks a bite of crab salad into his mouth and chews carefully. “I learned two things. One, he was absolutely working with Philip. And two, the plan wasn’t to stop us from remote dosing Charley. The plan was to overdose her.”

“To kill her,” Julia says. “Well, then, so they didn’t just want to confine her to a lab.”

Noah nods, takes another bite of food. Of course he can relay this news casually. Killing the men responsible allowed him to purge his ill will toward them.

“And paradron?” Cole asks.

“I think their code name for it was Pay Dirt. I downloaded the texts onto a flash drive. I’m sure they’ll be helpful.”

Pay Dirt . . . paradron. So there it was. Noah was right. Stephen had decided to blow apart The Consortium because he and his scientists had discovered something within the molecular structure of the supercharged cancer strain paradrenaline created, something Cole and his scientists must have missed. For reasons they’d have to uncover, Stephen thought paradron wasn’t just an effective poison; it was something far more significant. Something that could produce benefits to him and Philip more profitable than anything they could harvest from paradrenaline alone or from the mysteries of Charlotte Rowe’s blood. Pay Dirt.

But what was the dirt, and who was going to get paid?

“We have to make a move on his lab,” Cole says.

“Easy, Cole,” Julia says. “Build a surveillance file first like we agreed. Let’s see what Bailey can turn up. I’m at my massive-cover-up threshold for the month.”

The discovery that Noah’s theory was right, that Cole’s hasty surrender of paradron was the cause of so much of their recent troubles, is easier to accept now that Noah’s sitting right next to him, quietly eating lunch. There’s also the simple fact that Julia’s decided not to rake his ass over the coals for it, either.

“A toast,” Julia says, raising her glass. “To whatever it is we are now.”

“An investment opportunity.”

“There’s that,” Julia says, “or Dr. Brains here could make a breakthrough that we could actually reveal to the world without upending it. Something that would give a veneer of legitimacy to the project. Then we could direct funds to it through proper aboveboard channels.”

“You’re talking about making it a project of Graydon Pharmaceuticals?” Cole asks.

“Perhaps, yes,” she says.

“Where does that put you and your stake?”

“I don’t know. I’ve always thought I’d be quite at home on the board of Graydon Pharmaceuticals.”

“I’m not sure that would work, Julia.”

“You don’t want me on your board?”

“I don’t think my mother does, given you had an affair with her husband.”

“Oh, I’ll work on her. It’s a new chapter in both our lives. And there’s one thing that’s more important to your mother than any sense of fairness or justice.”

“Me?”

“I wish I could say differently, but no. Money and connections. And I have plenty of both.”

“Good luck with that charm offensive. You’re on your own.”

“Good to know. I’ll leave you to find the few billionaires in the world who are into developing secret weapons and will also happen to share your great affection for letting Charlotte Rowe enjoy small-town life.”

“Our affection. I was under the impression neither one of us wants to make her a prisoner.”

“That’s correct, but I can’t say I’m a big fan of her town. I had them drive me through when I went to visit friends in Carmel. It’s sort of dreadful, if you ask me.”

“I don’t think anyone in Altamira did,” Cole says.

“Very well, then. I don’t have to live there. She does. That said, allow me to say, even though it was presented as more of an announcement than anything else, I am very happy that Dr. Turlington will be absorbing the paradrenaline studies into his lab. While I was a big fan of Dr. Chen’s demeanor and presentations, her actual progress left a lot to be desired.”

Julia rises to her feet, picks up her purse from where it’s hanging on the back of her wrought-iron chair. “All right, I’ll leave you boys to do whatever it is you two do to each other.”

“We haven’t had the entrée yet,” Cole says.

“Oh, that’s so dear of you, but I’ve got to run. I’m having drinks with a Saudi prince who is a huge fan of my new microdrones.”

“Ask him if he hates serial killers,” Noah says in between chews.

“No, thank you. I’m not jumping into that pool again feetfirst. Even if we do have to get creative with our financing for a while. Goodbye, gentlemen.” She’s at the sliding deck door when she turns as if a thought’s struck her. “And Noah?”