Page 13 of Savage Beauty

“Alrighty. I agree with you there. How valuable is this research you’re doing? Sounds pretty valuable to me. Are there competitors who might try to nab you?”

“Competitors? No. It’s not… Everyone considers what I’m working on to be a long way from earning out. So much so I had to beg to continue. They gave me another project to oversee. Comparatively, the other project is boring. I’m testing to determine the most effective dosage of rapamycin for anti-aging purposes. There’s a lot of money to be made if you can get the dosage right, but we’re hardly the only ones working on it. Once they discovered that patients taking it to prevent organ rejection were aging slower, it became a field day to every skin care line out there.”

“You don’t sound impressed.”

“Organs or wrinkles? Which is more important to humanity?” One of his thighs presses down on the hospital bed, and the metal grinds under his weight. His muscular thigh is probably the width of both of mine. “Did you play football?”

“Talk about left field. I thought you wanted to focus.”

“I do. But you’re huge.”

“You’re an interesting one, Watson. I never know what you’re going to say.”

“I say what I think. Keep me on track.” I snap my fingers. It’s a technique I learned that helps to sharpen my mind. Bring my brain to heel. “Mr. Viognier. I told him I’d been working on a report when I was abducted. He seemed to think that’s why I was taken.”

“The report you were preparing for peer review?”

I rub the point of my finger between my eyebrows and visualize the report. “When they put me on that other project, it was only natural I’d fear they’d pull funding on the long-term project. It won’t earn out, whereas this other one will be an ATM machine.” It’s a phrase I overheard an investor use once. “I had to do everything I could to preserve funding.”

“For the organ research?”

“I wouldn’t fight for wrinkles.”

“Of course not.”

He gets it.

It all clicks. “That report. The data I found from accessing the databases we subscribe to. Someone must’ve been alerted when I was accessing those external databases.”

“Okay. But if someone feared you would share data, why not just kill you?”

I bite at my thumbnail and pull my finger back, surprised at the length of the nail, but happy it’s clean. Grime had been building up beneath my nails in that filthy compound.

“I don’t know why they wanted me alive. But someone did. I heard the guards warn people more than once they couldn’t hurt me.”

“And in Cambodia, you said you were testing the people?”

“For organ compatibility.” It had to have been. But my research really isn’t related at all to what they had me doing in Cambodia.

“Can you perform transplants?”

“I’m not a surgeon. But, if anyone saw what I was working on, they’d know I was preparing it for peer review.” I clap my hands. “That’s what I need to do. I need to look at that report again and see if this theory has merit. If it does, I’ll spread it far and wide. Then there’d be no need to come after me. Or Sage.” My throat is dry. Parched. “Can you get me some orange juice?”

There’s a pitcher of water by the side of the bed, but I don’t want water. It’s too heavy or…I don’t think I like the taste. I used to, but not now.

“Sure.”

He picks up a phone and places an order for orange juice. This place is nicer than the hospitals back home. There’s even a view of an expansive lawn. When Sage was in the hospital, her view was usually of a parking lot or the side of another building.

“Are you up for food? Want dinner?”

“Tomato soup.” The advice I administered to Sage holds true for me, too. I need my strength to travel. If my immune system is lowered, I might get sick after the flight. Around twenty percent of passengers develop cold symptoms after a commercial flight. I once read that up to eighty percent of travelers have some negative symptoms, ranging from digestive tract issues to flu-like symptoms after vacation travel, but they did not cite the details of the study. This is not vacation. Most definitely not vacation.

If they were after me for that report, wouldn’t they go after others that I worked with too?

“Am I the only one they came after? What about Dr. Kallio? Is she okay?”

“No one else from the laboratory has been reported missing. When your sister called your place of work, they informed her you resigned.”

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