The Promise (The 'Burg #5)(162)

I looked to Heath, gave him big eyes, got up, and moved out of his office.

As I passed Tandy on the way to my own office, I said, “Give it five minutes and come in. We’ll go down to the coffee cart to get a latte.”

Her eyes were on me. They moved to Heath’s office, came back to me, and she nodded.

I walked into my office, checked my cell on my desk to see if I had any missed calls, and when I saw I didn’t, I faked working for five minutes until Tandy came to my door and asked somewhat loudly, “Hey, wanna hit the coffee cart?”

I grinned at her, grabbed my wallet out of my purse, and got out of my chair. I rifled through my inbox and grabbed a random file, hoping I looked like I wasn’t grabbing a random file.

I looked to Tandy. “Get your notebook and your phone, would you?”

Her head gave a slight jerk before she went to her desk and did as I requested.

We were standing alone in the elevator bay when she asked through the side of her mouth, “What was that with Heath?”

“Don’t worry about Heath, honey. We’ll talk in the lobby.”

She looked fully at me, but she was still whispering when she asked, “Am I in trouble?”

This clearly stated she’d done something to be in trouble for, and since her work was stellar, I knew why she was worried about being in trouble.

“We’ll talk in the lobby,” I repeated, but I did it gently, hoping to assuage her fears.

We got to the lobby and got our lattes. When we were sitting in a comfortable waiting section that was far from the cart and not close to the reception desk, I knew I hadn’t assuaged her fears because, by the time we sat down, she looked about ready to cry.

Shit.

“Tandy, do you know Peter Furlock?” I asked.

That got me pale face number two of the morning and her voice was a squeak when she answered. “Yes.” She leaned toward me and rushed on, “But, Frankie—”

I cut her off. “Is he checking to see if the Tenrix documents Bierman gave Lloyd were amended?”

“He already knows that,” she whispered, looking terrified. “He found the backup files and downloaded them before Mr. Bierman got someone to get to them and replace them with the tampered files.”

Oh man. They were a lot further than I would have imagined.

Which must be why Peter Furlock had been targeted.

“You got his number?” I asked, and she nodded. “Call him, right now. Make sure he’s at his desk.”

Her eyes got huge and she asked back, “Why?”

“Just do it, honey.”

She set her latte aside, gave her attention to her phone, and put it to her ear. I sipped my latte, leafed through the file on my knee I didn’t see, and listened to her connect with Furlock, as well as give a lame excuse why she was calling, totally no good at cloak and dagger.

I looked back to her when she disconnected and told me. “He’s there.”

I nodded. “So the files on the server that people can see are the tampered ones?”

It was her turn to nod.

“And the other ones have disappeared, outside what Furlock has.”

“Yes, Frankie.”

“Did you take this to Lloyd?”

“Not yet,” she said. “We wanna make sure all our ducks are in a row.”

All their ducks.

Shit.

“What ducks?” I pressed.

She drew in breath, grabbed her latte, and took a sip, trying to look cool and casual doing it—and failing—then she looked back to me.

“Okay, Frankie, there’s a lot,” she said quietly.

“Tenrix is dangerous,” I stated, also quietly.

She nodded again. “In five percent of test subjects who were on the product for more than three years, serious and irreparable heart conditions formed that could be traced directly back to taking Tenrix.”

Shit, shit, shit.

“How did this get by everybody?” I asked.

“Because Bierman is just the henchman. The mastermind is Barrow.”

I sucked in breath.

Clancy Barrow. CEO of Wyler Pharmaceuticals.

The top of the food chain. The number one shark.

Shit!

I leaned toward Tandy and hissed, “How do you know?”

“Okay, Frankie, okay…” she semi-chanted, then leaned toward me. “My big sis, she went to school with this girl—totally cool—her name is Roxie.”

“Babe, point,” I warned.

“I’m gettin’ to it,” she squeaked. “Roxie moved to Denver a while back. She met this guy, married him. He’s a cop.”

“Okay,” I prompted when she stopped talking.

“But his brother owns this big investigations firm.”

And there it was.

She kept going.

“And we did trials for Tenrix at a research facility in a hospital in Denver.”

“So you called her, she engaged the brother-in-law, and what happened?”

“What happened was, the guy he put on it found out two, Frankie”—she leaned deeper toward me—“two nurses on that trial got in bad car crashes. Bad. One lost her legs. One, such severe head trauma, she can’t work anymore.”

“Whistle-blowers,” I whispered.