Pharminex, she typed.
Her cell phone buzzed.
She looked down, her heart fluttering. But it was Warren.
“Hey, Warren.” She picked up before the first ring had ended.
“Got a surprise for you,” he said. “Can you come to my office?”
Ellie did not like surprises.
The walk to the newsroom was a quick-cut mental montage of possibilities, not one of them good. Warren had nothing she wanted or needed, nothing helpful or valuable. His phony affable tone made her even more apprehensive.
When Ellie arrived at his open door, she stopped, and was certain the bafflement showed on her face before she got it under control. Warren was not alone. A woman sat on his tweedy couch. Ellie saw a pink-sweatered back and shiny black pumps.
Warren pointed to the woman with the TV remote he held. “Ellie? Meet your new assistant.”
The woman stood and turned to face Ellie with a nervous-looking smile. “I know, right?” Meg said. “Crazy surprising.”
CHAPTER 5
NORA
“What are you wearing?”
Nora laughed out loud at the ridiculous question, hearing Guy’s voice teasing through the Bluetooth speakers. Even sitting alone in the front seat of the Mercury sedan P-X had issued her, with a thousand miles between them, that voice sent chills through her, as if she were some breathless heroine in a romance novel.
“Don’t laugh, Nora. Let me guess,” Guy pleaded. “I’m in bed now too, looking out at palm trees and red rocks and blue sky. But I’d rather picture you in black satin sheets … wearing that pale green thing, the one that matches your eyes. I’m watching you sleep, and you don’t know it. And that thin strap falls from your shoulder, and I see that perfect mole in the curve of your neck and—”
“You are so ridiculous.” Nora pretended to be annoyed and knew she’d failed. But she had to interrupt, had to make him stop. She had to go to work. They’d never been in her bed or anyone’s bed, not together. Not yet. She smiled, imagining it. He was silly. She didn’t have black satin sheets or a “green thing.” Or a mole.
“What time is it there, anyway, like six a.m.?” she asked, checking the clock on the dashboard. “You’re still dreaming.” It was all a juggle right now. Her life, and her responsibilities and now this relationship. But he seemed like a good guy; that’s what had drawn her to him in the first place.
“Guy?” she’d repeated, after he introduced himself at a neighborhood bar called Seaboard. “Just … generic Guy?” She’d been wary, of course, but she couldn’t work every minute of every day and night, and her staid redbrick apartment was surrounded by a selection of neighborhood restaurants. Nora had chosen a middle-of-the-spectrum place, and “Seaboard” sounded authentically Bostonian. She’d sat at a bar facing a picture window, nursed an Irish coffee and watched the snow fall onto Beacon Street.
He’d laughed at her lame joke. “Named after my father,” he’d told her. “A regular guy.”
She deserved it, and clinked her ceramic mug with his beer glass. “Nora.”
“Like neither a borrower nor a lender?” he’d replied.
Testing her, apparently. But messing with the wrong girl. “To thine own self be true,” she’d declaimed. She’d done Hamlet, even played Ophelia. And knew how she felt. She turned on a hint of a drawl. Nora would have a drawl, just a touch. “Do you follow Polonius’ suggestions, Guy? To thine own self be true?”
“Well, well,” he’d said. “Want to try Double Jeopardy, where the scores can really change?”
Silly bar talk, and she’d gone home alone. But he’d called. Apparently she’d passed the test. And he had too. He was all there on Google, Guy MacInnis, not too-too much detail, but enough, and all fine.
“Then tell me,” he persisted now. She realized she was watching the car’s metal speaker as he talked, as if he were in the car, or could see her. “I’m out here raising money for the cause of the week, and I need some … distraction. Or send a photo, Nora. Do. I want to see you.”
“Go back to sleep, you.” She checked the time on the dashboard again, happy he couldn’t see her do that. It might work out well that Guy was gone so much. Sad that she had to think of it that way. “I’ve got to—”
“I’m sending you a photo,” he insisted. “A special photo. But don’t show anyone. I’m trusting you.”
“Call me later.” She was so into her new accent that it came out like layta. She wished he would send a photo, wished she could look at him whenever she wanted, his cheekbones and almost too long hair, the way he held his shoulders and smelled like … She took a deep breath as if to name it and couldn’t. Something rich and warm and enticing. She wished the world were different, wished she could simply be herself for once. “I have to go.”
“Good luck,” he said. “Knock ’em dead.”
“I will,” she said. And that part was true. She heard the click from hundreds of miles away, and he was gone.
The car seemed emptier without him, and the world too. He filled a space in her life, somehow, an emptiness she wasn’t ready to admit she had.
And now, showtime. Nora smoothed an eyebrow in the rearview mirror, adjusted her dark green cashmere muffler, rearranged a lock of hair. It was pale auburn, maybe risky and noticeable, but she mentally patted herself on the back for having the courage to try a new color.
She clicked open the detail bag on the front seat beside her, the clunky Pharminex-issued block of leather and brass with a shiny oval for engraved initials. She’d left hers blank. Inside, paperwork, clipboard, a few medical journal articles printed out and stapled together. A stack of yellow stickies, imprinted with the navy-blue Pharminex logo.
If a doctor took the stickies, and maybe a pen or two, it meant he or she would take the next tiny gift. There was no big-time bribery going on, no phony conventions or lavish golf weekends or free-flowing booze. No assumption that a female pharma rep was also selling herself. No more quid pro quo. The feds and a raft of indictments had made sure of that, and all to the good. Because doctors wouldn’t expect those seductive inducements, it made her life easier.
Pharminex had only one goal. To make sure doctors prescribed the drugs researched, produced and offered by Pharminex. Prescribed as many and as often as they could.
Dr. McGinty was next.
She closed the car door behind her, clicked the lock. The Boston sky above her was painfully blue, perfect and cloudlessly unreal, and the wind from the harbor fluttered her coat and swirled through her hair.
CHAPTER 6
ELLIE
At least she didn’t have to work with Meg every day, Ellie thought, as she approached the front door of her apartment building. She’d spent today researching, on her own, and now imagined the slew of potential complications having a coworker as a neighbor would inevitably present.
As a roving assistant producer, Meg wouldn’t be underfoot at Channel 11 all the time. But here at the apartment? The woman had seemed almost clingy the night they’d met, prying and needy, but again—Ellie grimaced as she dug for her key, trying to separate which emotions were real and which were unfair. It had been late, and they were both tired.