Last shot

Chapter 68

Dolan had spent the last hour pacing laps around the pool table, his agitation sprouting more hydra heads than he could keep in sight. His momentum finally flung him off the table on a turn, propelling him through the double doors. A security man wordlessly stood his post outside. He shadowed Dolan down the hall like a bodyguard, his finger raised to his ear, seating the transmitter. His orders being updated? After a few paces, Dolan grew uncomfortable. When he glanced back, the guard dropped his gaze as if granting Dolan privacy. On the way down the stairs, it struck Dolan that the man now seemed more like a stalker than a bodyguard. He tried to convince himself that he was manufacturing the guard's tacit menace, transferring his anxiety onto something concrete.

Dolan stopped short when he entered his father's office and found it blanketed with open manila folders, Dean shoving papers through a shredder with uncharacteristic haste. Edwin abided Dean's pointing finger, retrieving and filing with a stiff-backed posture that infused each menial task with elegant rectitude.

Dean paused, then shot an accusatory glare at the guard, as if he were responsible for Dolan's appearance. Dolan made out the label on the report in his father's hands: X4-AAT SAFETY STUDY. Dean lowered it to the blades. A chuffing disintegrated it into snowflakes.

Dolan moistened his lips, looking around in bewilderment.

Dean said briskly, "Nothing untoward is going on here. There are confidential documents that I don't feel comfortable having at the house. Not with the fallout from this afternoon and the investigation that's grinding forward. Your company's been set back enough by recent events." Dean handed off an expurgated folder to Edwin, who promptly returned it to the file cabinet. "Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to."

"Sir, I do want answers. I'm entitled to know what's going on with Xedral. I've given seven years of my life to this."

"And I devoted thirty-five years to building the business that under-wrote the lab in which you were working. So why don't we leave entitlement out of this? Every test tube you've touched since you were six, I bought."

Dolan felt his outrage transmogrify into adolescent defensiveness. "Not at school."

"Right. A multiyear, seven-figure pledge to UCLA's biology department that commenced the day you matriculated. But the test tubes came out of the professor's pocket."

"I got into UCLA on my grades, not your money." Dolan picked up an empty folder, turned it inside out, and dropped it on the floor. "What happened during the Xedral safety studies?"

A disgusted exhale. "Nothing. Huang spoke to you. He told you himself nothing was out of the ordinary."

"You own Huang."

"I own everyone. Including you. Every lab station, every microfuge, every pencil."

Dolan felt beaten down, diminished. "You don't. Not me."

"Oh? Your corporation is behind on its rent, Dolan. Or do you recall that your lease specifies a dollar a year?" Dean scowled at him, a rosy flush rouging his pallid cheeks. "I can have Bernie retroaccount so hard and fast you'll be in debt to Beacon-Kagan until your children's children have children. I will ruin you."

"You're actually thr-"

"I'm saying there is an empire at stake, Dolan. This-" Dean gestured to the loose papers, though there were few left; while they'd been arguing, Edwin had tidied up, even spraying sanitizer on and wiping the wooden surfaces. "This is the mess and sweat of a corporation. You don't want this. You have a sinecure and unlimited funding. Few would complain in your situation. Tinker with your petri dishes and leave the business to us."

"I've always been willing to leave the business to you. Just not the science."

"It's the same thing," Dean said with slow exasperation.

Dolan weaved a bit on his feet. The sanitizer's lemon scent coated his throat, soured his stomach. Dean indicated the guard with a flare of his hand, and the guard came off the wall and positioned himself a few feet behind Dolan.

Dean folded his hands at his stomach, the picture of reason. "Here are your choices: You let me handle what needs to be handled, and you return to a top post at your own company poised to make one of the most significant advances medicine has seen in decades. Or you can be stubborn and obtuse and wind up teaching photosynthesis to snotty seventh-graders at Harvard-Westlake."

Dolan's throat clicked drily when he swallowed.

"Now, if you wouldn't mind going upstairs"-Dean nodded at the guard-"I'd like a bit of privacy in my own office."