On-screen, an actress whose last big role involved getting devoured by man-eating slugs in a gas station bathroom sits under dramatic lighting that would better serve an interview with a Syrian refugee. The music is like Chopin on laudanum. The actress is describing, in a tone more appropriate to the recounting of a violent sexual assault, how heartburn has taken over her life. How she no longer enjoys food. How eating became a source of constant fear and worry. There’s a shot of her standing outside the window of a New York deli, staring at the sandwiches inside like an orphan watching a happy family enjoy Christmas dinner.

The video is one of several that will post to a website scheduled to launch next week, www.EnjoyFoodAgain.com. While the site will be scrubbed of any obvious clues it’s owned and operated by Graydon Pharmaceuticals, more than half of the visitors who flock to it, the ones sharing the most dramatic stories of heartburn-related trauma, will be those hired by a marketing firm with one explicit goal: to convince the people who end up there by chance that they’re suffering from a completely bullshit condition that was invented by Graydon’s marketing department.

RID. Recurrent Intestinal Disrupt.

Meanwhile, drug reps for the company, most of them so good looking they could model swimwear for a living, have already fanned out to doctor’s offices all over the country, manipulating every FDA loophole possible to present their new drug, Sunatrex, as a revolution in heartburn treatment, even though there’s no evidence to suggest it’s any better than Nexium, which anyone who reads a newspaper knows isn’t much better than Prilosec.

So far the process has unfolded without a hitch, in meetings much like this one, while Cole stares out the sea-facing glass wall, wondering what’s become of his ambitions and his father’s legacy, a legacy that includes inventing a drug that revolutionized the treatment of HIV throughout the world.

He’s killed the sound on his phone, so when the e-mail arrives, it sends a text alert to the lock screen.

Once he’s sure Tucker isn’t watching him, he unlocks it.

He doesn’t recognize the address. There’s a video attached, so he’s about to send it to his junk folder. Then he sees the subject line:

Dream big or die in your sleep.

This parody of one of his father’s favorite, and most obnoxious, personal expressions—Dream big or go home—is an inside joke. A very inside joke. And the man he shares this joke with hasn’t contacted him in almost three years. Reading it now makes his stomach feel like he just swallowed a mouthful of ice in one gulp.

He checks once again to make sure the sound’s off; then he downloads the video.

At first he’s not clear what he’s watching. The contrast between the depressing piano music from the Sunatrex video and the frenzied images on his phone makes him seasick. Dust, tires, the outline of a speeding SUV. Whatever this is, it’s footage taken by a small camera, probably a GoPro, mounted to the front of a motorcycle.

He thinks it’s a motorcycle. Because the other two vehicles in the frame are motorcycles; their combined headlights light the scene with startling clarity.

When the SUV takes out one of them, sending the driver flying over its roof, Cole jumps in his seat. It draws Nora’s attention but not Tucker’s, thank God, and she gives him a sympathetic smile. The SUV careens into open desert. One of the other bikers pursues it ahead of the camera-mounted one. The SUV’s lost to darkness for a few seconds, then the bike’s headlight finds it just as it slams into a giant saguaro, an impact that crushes its nose, dents its hood.

Then the door falls off.

No, that’s not right, he realizes.

The driver-side door seems to float off. Which is impossible. But that’s how it looks. The driver pushed the door directly out from the side of the SUV with one hand, as if it weighed nothing, then dropped it to the rock-strewn dirt.

The guy driving the bike the camera’s mounted to enters the frame, the angle going suddenly still now that he’s parked. He pulls a sawed-off shotgun from his back, while his hulking, blond-haired friend approaches the driver with a pair of plastic flex-cuffs in hand.

The driver is a woman, Cole sees, average-looking, with straw-colored hair and a face made youthful by curves. And even though her face betrays no fear, she is sinking to her knees. Without sound, it’s impossible to tell what the blond guy is shouting at her. But when he grabs her by the hair, Cole sees the woman’s expression for the first time.

She’s not afraid.

He’s so riveted by what happens next, he forgets he’s not alone. The stuttering groan that comes from him when the big biker gets a hole blown through his chest draws the attention of everyone in the conference room. Only then does he realize the video’s held him in such thrall he’s risen from his seat and turned his back on all of them.

They’ve stopped the commercial, and their expressions range from puzzled to annoyed.

“I need to step out for a minute, folks,” he hears himself say.

There’s a grumbled objection from Tucker, an envious expression from Nora, and silence from the three lawyers, whose names he’s already forgotten. His head of marketing is refilling his coffee from the station in the corner. Cole doesn’t notice their reactions as he strides out of the room, then down the hall toward his office.

His employees part before him. Maybe it’s the expression on his face, or maybe it’s that he’s their boss. By then he’s read the line of text above the video, the one he missed in his rush to open the file, and his heart has started hammering.

New trial going well. When can we discuss the preliminary results? —D

12

The last time Charlotte saw Kayla LeBlanc in person, her hair was a shiny bob, as corporate looking as the pantsuits she always wore to the office and to court. Now she sports a classic high bun with a twist, and while it’s clear she’s tried to dress casual, her jeans look like they cost more than Charlotte earns in six months.

Maybe she’s been springing for pricier duds ever since the California Association of Black Lawyers named her lawyer of the year. Whatever the reason, she looks way more out of place in this so-called safe house than Charlotte does. Charlotte finds that comforting. It’s a sign neither of them really belongs here, which is a sign they won’t have to stay for very long.

They sit across from each other at the tiny kitchen table. They got there just before dawn after ditching Jason’s car at the Amazon fulfillment center, and even though she hasn’t slept and is subsisting on instant coffee, the only thing in the safe house’s kitchen cabinet, Charlotte doesn’t feel remotely tired.

Outside, peeling paint and a rusty chain-link fence allow the one-story tract home to blend in with its neighbors. Inside, it’s scrubbed spotless, barely lived in, and studded with clean, anonymous-looking furniture that belongs in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express.

Charlotte’s lost count of how many times she’s told the story.

Each time through, Kayla has stopped her at various intervals to ask prodding, detail-oriented questions, the same way she’d prep one of her own witnesses to testify.

Kayla holds Charlotte’s upturned right hand in both of hers, studying the light bruising along her wrist. A result of the car accident, Charlotte’s sure. But maybe it came from her fight with Jason.

“How many days ago did you get this?” Kayla asks.

“It’s a few hours old,” Charlotte answers. “And it looked ten times worse right before I met you.”

Kayla goes rigid. Looks up from Charlotte’s hand with an expression that combines fear and disbelief.

“You don’t believe me,” Charlotte finally says.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“What would you say?”

“I definitely think you were drugged.”

“So you think I hallucinated everything?”

“Part of it, maybe. I mean, the bikers . . . there’s nothing on the news about an explosion.”

“It’s only been a few hours. Almost no one drives that road. That’s why I lived out there. There’s no regular truck traffic; the mine’s been closed for years. There’s no reason anyone would find it right away.”

“So you think the guy with the shotgun called for backup before they drove you off the road, and that’s who came from the direction of the mine. And that’s who this Dylan character met up with before . . . boom.”

“Something like that. Yeah.”

“Describe the explosion again.”

“I don’t . . . I’m not an explosives expert, but it wasn’t messy, if that makes sense. Whatever it was, I think Dylan set it. It wasn’t the result of a gunfight. It happened too quickly for that. The other thing, though. It was the way he said it . . .”

“Said what?”

“‘I need to take care of these guys.’ Like it was nothing. Outlaw bikers. Riding straight for him. Hopped-up on God knows what. And he’s cool as ice. He said he’d take care of Jason, too.”

“And what do we think that means?”

“Well, he killed all those bikers for getting in the way of his plan. How’s he going to treat someone who’s no longer useful to him? Someone he manipulated into doing his bidding?”

“You’re sure he was out there when you called him? I mean, how do you know he was right where those bikers drove you off the road?”

“I could hear the second group through the phone. They were driving toward him. They must have been going to check on their hideout, and he was there.”

“So he follows you, he watches what happens with these guys who drove you off the road, and then he just . . . stays out there?”