The closest charter service that featured either Lear or Gulf-stream jets was in Helena. When Gordon Buchanan wanted to get somewhere fast, he didn’t rely on United-he chartered a private jet. He called the company and booked a Lear 31A to fly him to St. Lucia, then called the Twin Pines helicopter pilot at home. He apologized for calling late on Saturday and asking the pilot to work on Sunday, but stressed how important it was that he be in Helena by eight in the morning. His pilot agreed to come in without telling Gordon he would just as soon be flying as sitting in church. It wouldn’t have mattered-Buchanan would have appreciated it anyway.
Sunday, August 28, dawned cool and rain threatened. Both men were a bit early, and at ten minutes before the hour, the chopper lifted off and, after forty minutes of choppy flying, deposited Gordon on the tarmac in Helena. The Lear was waiting, the fee for the two-day trip already preauthorized on Gordon’s Visa card. Once the plane was airborne and en route to Miami, Gordon opened his files on Veritas and withdrew the folder on Jennifer Pearce.
Hers was a thin file, with her being such a recent hire. His investigator had pulled a brief work history covering her time at Marcon, and he started there. She was a brilliant woman, of that there was no doubt. She held a Ph.D. in microbiology and had been instrumental in bringing two midlevel drugs to market before shifting over to head up the Alzheimer’s division. And Gordon knew that Alzheimer’s was an arm of the corporate structure that every pharmaceutical giant looked to for a huge breakthrough drug. A pill to combat Alzheimer’s was a multibillion-dollar pill. And being offered the lead position was definitive proof that Marcon was enamored with its rising star. Yet three years later, that star had somehow tarnished. Nothing in the file indicated why.
But she had moved over to Veritas three months earlier, assuming the same coveted position with the rival company. Gordon glanced out the window at the passing clouds and wondered what tucked-away secrets Jennifer Pearce had brought with her to Veritas. At three-sixty plus bonuses a year, she was too well paid to have come across empty-headed. Gordon suspected Bruce Andrews had made a good choice when he offered her the position. But without knowing Jennifer personally, how could Andrews have been so sure?
And therein lay the problem. Did Bruce Andrews and Jennifer Pearce know each other prior to her starting work at Veritas? If the answer was yes, then chances were good that Pearce was another Andrews toady. If no, then maybe she was someone he could trust. The answer to that question was weighing on him.
He scanned down the page detailing her short tenure at Veritas. She was telling the truth about Kenga Bakcsi working in her department. She was Kenga’s direct boss. His investigator had not been able to ascertain whether their relationship went beyond the office to friends, but Jennifer’s story about tending to Kenga’s cat seemed plausible. In fact, there was nothing about Jennifer Pearce that did not seem plausible. He stared out the window and tried to put himself in her position. She was the new gal on the block in an increasingly alien environment. She suspected her employer might be responsible for the death of one of her staff. How disconcerting must that be? It would scare the crap out of most people, have them running for the door. But Jennifer Pearce did not run. She was doing the same thing he would do: assimilating information. She was making no decisions until all the facts were on the table, then she would make a rational choice. But what were her options? Remain at Veritas, bury her head, and hope the ax didn’t strike her? Unlikely: She wasn’t an ostrich. Involve the police while continuing to work at Veritas? Dangerous; very dangerous. Quit, walk away, and develop a severe case of amnesia? Again, dangerous if someone at Veritas was killing people to keep them quiet. Or search out someone to help her?
Gordon knew he was beginning to believe her. Time to play the devil’s advocate. Someone inside Veritas had been alerted by their legal team that Gordon Buchanan in Butte, Montana, was considering legal action against the company. They recruit a new hire, Jennifer Pearce, to visit Buchanan and find out the validity of his claim. He grinned at the absurdity of it. Jennifer Pearce was a Ph.D. researcher with a proven track record in the pharmaceutical industry, making extremely good money, with no history of being anything except what she claimed to be. She started at almost the same time Billy died, and at that time Veritas had no idea their product was responsible for Billy’s death. And if they were to send someone across the country to visit, the last thing a company spy would do is accuse her employer of killing its employees.
Gordon made his decision. Jennifer Pearce was the real thing.
He had an ally.