Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
He glanced back at Lydia and held out the documents. “I don’t know where he is. But we may have the ‘why’ of all this right here—”
The loss of consciousness came with no warning. One moment, he was up on his granted-they-were-loose legs. The next, the carpet was coming at him like a rugby player who felt his momma had been insulted.
The last thing Daniel was aware of was the graceful wings of the paperwork as the legal document that transferred ownership of a potentially billion-dollar cancer drug rippled to the floor ahead of him.
Goddamn it, he needed Gus more than ever right now.
And someone had gone and killed his fucking oncologist.
TWO
LYDIA SUSI KNEW that Daniel was going down a split second before the collapse claimed him. Over the last six months, she’d developed a sixth sense about his passing out—or maybe a change in his scent was the tip-off, her wolven nose a barometer for the subtle shifts in his hormones.
With a lunge and a swing of her legs, she vaulted over the half-wall balustrade of the staircase, but she didn’t make it in time. Gravity was quicker than she was, and Daniel’s fragile body landed in a heap on the carpet, his arms flopping when he didn’t even try to brace himself against the impact, his head bouncing in an alarming recoil thanks to the face-first digger.
As she threw herself down beside him, the tile in the kitchen registered out of the corner of her eye. At least he hadn’t been in there when he’d—
“Daniel,” she said hoarsely. “Daniel…”
With gentle hands, she rolled him over, and the way his skull lolled to the side made her send up a plea to her dead grandfather. But like that Finnish specter ever did anything to help? And why hadn’t she thought more about Daniel on the ride over here? She should have known that he didn’t have the strength for that roaring trip, much less for what was waiting for them.
Gathering herself, she tried to calm down. “We just need Gus to have a look at you—”
Except there was no Gus. Anywhere. That was why they’d come.
Fine, someone else, then. Back at C.P. Phalen’s hidden lab. Where a possible cure that Daniel was refusing to try was still waiting for its first patient.
“Daniel, can you hear me?”
As she waited for a response, she pictured the love of her life as she had first seen him, coming into her office at the Wolf Study Project, knocking her off her feet even though she’d been sitting down. Candy, the receptionist, had given her a heads-up, but she hadn’t been prepared: Daniel’s face had imprinted on her brain before his features had even registered, and the sheer size of him, his big shoulders, his strong legs, his muscled arms, had made her aware of her own body from across the room in ways that should have gotten her written up for an HR violation.
“Daniel?”
Six months later, he was a fragile echo of that previous man. He was down fifty pounds, maybe sixty. After chemo, his hair was nothing but a shadow of new, lighter-colored growth on his head. His skin was sallow, and his eyes, which were a logy half-mast at the moment, had sunken into his cheekbones.
“Daniel—”
The door in from the garage flew open, and the woman who burst into the kitchen was another exercise in past-present, compare-contrast: C.P. Phalen, the corporate battle-ax, as Daniel called her, had downshifted from her black suits, stilettos, and precisely waved cap of blond hair, to sweatpants, sneakers, and all kinds of flyaway pinned down by a cheap barrette. She was going by Cathy now—not that Lydia had been able to make the name switch in her head.
Something about the woman screamed authority, even when she was in that fleece she seemed to wear all the time now.
Gus’s fleece.
“Oh, shit,” the woman said as she stopped short. “Is he dead?”
Can we not use that word, Lydia thought.
“No,” she replied in a croak. Not yet.
“Thank God. I’ll call Gus—”
C.P. shoved her hand into a pocket, but as the knee-jerk impulse went no farther—just as Lydia’s hadn’t—those cool blue eyes shot to the bloodstains on the carpet. As all the color in her face drained out, a twitch started to spasm in her left eyebrow.
“He’s not here,” Lydia croaked unnecessarily. “I even checked under the bed.”
As more SUVs pulled up outside, there was a long, tense moment while C.P. blinked fast. Then her expression tightened into a mask of composure and she followed through on taking out her phone.
“I’ll get Lipsitz for him, then,” she said under her breath. “The man’s got a bedside manner like a toaster, but he’s an excellent doctor.”
Not as good as Gus, Lydia thought as she refocused on Daniel. He was still breathing, thank God, and she told herself the fact that his lids were partially open was good. Even though it probably didn’t mean anything.