Under the Microscope

Feeling the ache of the day in his soul, Max was close enough to see the wariness in Raine’s expression. “It’ll be okay,” he said, knowing it probably wouldn’t be. “We’ll get through this.” Almost without thinking, he took her hands, and squeezed them when he felt the shocky cold of her skin. “I’m here for you.”

I’m here for you, he’d said back at Boston General, giving her reassurance when she’d needed it, when she’d had nobody on her side. She’d leaned on him when she’d needed him, and left when she hadn’t.

A familiar pattern.

He pulled his hands away abruptly and stood. “Come on,” he said gruffly, more mad at himself than her. “The SUV’s outside.”

“What about your truck?” She stood, and the worried questions in her eyes asked about more than just the truck. What’s next? Where do we go from here?

Jessica Andersen

Under the Microscope

MILLS & BOON

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To Sally Hinkle Russell, riding coach and friend.

Thank you for everything.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “hi”!

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Raine Montgomery—When her company’s new drug, Thriller, reportedly kills four women, she must fight to prove that something—or someone—else is responsible before she becomes the next victim.

Maximilian Vasek—A private investigator specializing in medical cases, Max knows the Thriller job will propel him to the next level. But he and Raine have crossed paths before, and he doesn’t trust her one bit.

Tori Campbell—Raine’s assistant has the inside scoop on many things.

William Caine—Max’s business partner encourages him to take the job and get Raine out of his system—one way or another.

Ike—The freelance “information specialist” is everything Raine is not—confident, sexy, self-sufficient…and Max’s former lover.

Jeffrey Wells—Raine’s second-in-command is her most trusted ally.

Cari Summerton—Does the young mother’s death hold the key?

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Prologue

Cari Summerton tucked her tiny daughter into the pink-swathed crib and whispered, “Mama and Daddy have some serious loving planned tonight.”

She pressed a kiss to the sleeping baby’s forehead, and felt a prickly ball of excitement just below her ribs for the first time since she’d gotten pregnant. Cari hummed as she tidied the baby’s room, a saucy va-va-va-voom punctuated with a bump and grind that reminded her that she was twenty-eight, not the eighty-something she’d been feeling lately.

All that was going to change, starting tonight. She was done being depressed. She’d vowed to remember how to be a woman, not just a mother.

The sample packet of pills hidden at the back of her closet was an important first step. Her new hair color—Sassy Strawberry—was the second; a brutal but oh-so-effective bikini wax was third; and the pièce de résistance—a naughty nightie from Victoria’s Secret—was laid out on her bed amid crisp white-and-gold tissue paper.

Jimmy was due home any minute now, and tonight would be about the two of them. Nothing more, nothing less.

Still humming, Cari sashayed to the bedroom, shrugged out of the jeans and sweatshirt she thought of as her mommy uniform, and pulled the naughty nightie out of its tissue. She held it up against her body and watched her reflection in the mirror.

She looked good. She’d had a tummy tuck when the doctors had gone in for the C-section—why not?—and was toying with the idea of new breasts for her birthday. Maybe she wasn’t as tight as she’d been in college, when she and Jim had met over an exploding beaker in chem lab, but she wasn’t bad for a mommy.

Not a mommy, she corrected herself. Tonight was about being a woman. She rubbed her naked thighs together and her reflection smiled a secretive, satisfied moue when she pulled on the nightie. The clock clicked over to 7:35 p.m. as she draped a long silk robe over her shoulders, knowing it showed as much as it covered. Then she ducked into her closet, unearthed the hidden foil packet and pressed out one of the four pink pills the doc had given her to try.

The sweet-coated tablet went down easily, leaving her with a fizzy aftertaste, as if she’d swallowed champagne. Cari’s heart beat a little faster in her chest and her blood tingled beneath her skin, revving her juices, pumping her up, making her ready for her husband. Ready for some loving.

Headlights cruised up the driveway and the automatic garage door opener cranked to life. Jimmy!

Her pulse stuttered as she moved through their single-level home, turning off the lights in the side rooms and dimming the kitchen chandelier to emphasize the elegant tapers she’d lit at a table set for two. Pink fizz raced through her bloodstream when the kitchen doorknob turned.

She struck a pose, feeling feminine. Feeling beautiful.

The door opened and Jimmy took one step inside before he froze and his handsome face went slack with shock. “Cari?”

Power bubbled up, stealing her breath. She shifted so the lace rode up her inner thigh. “Hey, handsome. Wanna party?”

Jimmy’s carry-on hit the tile floor with a thump. Heat kindled in his green eyes and his lips lifted in a youthful smile, one that reminded her of simpler times before mortgages and college funds. He cleared his throat. “I must have made a mistake. I thought this was my house.”

She laughed and crossed to him, the thrill buzzing in her veins. She reached beneath his loosened tie and unfastened the top two buttons so she could touch his dark, springy chest hair. “Let’s not tell your wife, okay?”

His hands closed on her waist, seeming to burn through the layers of cloth to her core. The rasp of lace against skin was exquisite torture, and the feel of his hard body against hers was like coming home to someplace new—familiar and exciting at the same time.

“No,” he said against her mouth, and his breath tasted of spearmint gum. “You’re my wife. My love.”

The words squeezed like a fist around her heart, reminding her that this was Jimmy, the man she’d loved pretty much since the first moment she’d seen him across the chem lab, with his eyebrows singed off. She smiled against his lips as intense, overwhelming love washed through her with the strength of an orgasm. Suddenly, breathing didn’t seem so important.

Then it seemed like the most important thing in the world.

Her throat closed. Her lungs locked. There was utter, unbelievable silence in her ears, in her veins.

Heat turned to pain in an instant. Help! she shrieked in her mind. Help me! She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t scream.

Panicked, she grabbed on to Jimmy. Pain hammered alongside the fear. Why wasn’t her heart beating faster? She couldn’t hear it, couldn’t feel it, couldn’t really feel anything. She crashed to the floor and rolled onto her back, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come.

Help me!

Jimmy scrambled to her side and grabbed her arms. She saw a light flashing on the wall. He’d hit the security system panic button just inside the door.

They’re on their way, she saw him mouth, and then her hearing cut back in and she heard him say, “Hang on, Cari. The paramedics will be here any minute. Just breathe. Nice and easy. Breathe!”

He’d said the same thing when she’d been in labor, but she’d been able to breathe then.

She struggled, head spinning, and managed to suck in half a lungful of air. She expended the precious oxygen on two words. “The pills…”

Then something went boom inside her, and everything drained away. Touch, taste, smell, everything.

The last thing to fade was the distant sound of her baby crying.

Chapter One

“Shhh! Here comes the ad.” Raine Montgomery dug her manicured fingernails into her palms, trying to act boss-like when she really wanted to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

On the other side of the conference table sat Jeffrey Wells, the sandy-blond, baby-faced child prodigy she’d hired fresh out of grad school to help her run the company. Beside him was Tori Campbell, the thin, dark-eyed young mother Raine had hired with no secretarial references whatsoever because she’d seen too much of her old self in the woman’s defeated eyes.

Taking them on had been two of the smartest decisions she’d ever made. Tori kept her organized. Jeff helped bring her visions to life.

The three leaned forward in their chairs and stared at the flat-screen TV she’d set up in the small, richly furnished conference room. As they watched, a mid-afternoon talk show cut to commercials—a household cleaner first, followed by color-enhancing shampoo. Targeted advertising, aimed straight at the prized twenty-five to fifty-something female demographic. When the screen switched from minivans to a rose-hued shot of an attractive couple, Raine swallowed against a churn of anticipation and tugged at the cowl neck of her dark blue cashmere sweater. “This is it!”

She’d seen the short advertisement a dozen times, at various points during its evolution, but watching it broadcast on national TV was different.

It was real.

“More than sixty million women in the U.S. suffer from libido problems,” a sexy female voice said over the images of middle-aged couples holding hands. Kissing. Staring at each other over candlelit meals. The images were all clichés, but the marketing consultants had assured Raine the triteness would trigger warm, fuzzy feelings.

Damned if they weren’t right, she thought, stifling a small sigh that she’d be headed home to an empty apartment after the impending office celebration wound down.

The images grew steamier, though still PG-rated. Then, the woman on the screen turned away from her partner, expression tight.

“Low libido is nothing to be ashamed of,” the voice-over soothed. “Sometimes it’s due to physical reasons. Other times there’s no obvious cause. But this serious condition can undermine our relationships. Our self-confidence.”

A small pink pill rotated on-screen as the voice said, “Now there’s a new option for couples everywhere. Ask your doctor about Thriller today.”

The final shot was one of lovers lying together in postcoital bliss, smiling.

But it wasn’t that image—or the memory of how long it’d been since she’d experienced postcoital anything—that drove a giant lump into Raine’s throat. It wasn’t the sexy, feminine logo the consultants had spent six months polishing. It wasn’t the short list of possible side effects—nothing worse than dizziness and insomnia—or the possible drug interaction warnings—none. It was the tiny words at the bottom of the screen.

A product of Rainey Days, Inc.

Thriller wasn’t something she’d developed for her previous employer, FalcoTechno.

It was all hers.

WHEN THE TV STATION SEGUED back to the talk show, Raine hit the mute button with trembling fingers, sat for a moment and exhaled a long breath.

She’d done it.

It had taken her more than three years, but she’d done it. After leaving—okay, abandoning—her position at FalcoTechno and fleeing Boston, she’d scraped together all her money, liquidated her minimal assets, floated a few loans and used the capital to buy a drug nobody else had believed in.

She’d built a company around a dream, and it was starting to look as if that dream was becoming reality.

After three months of free sample distribution to targeted areas, Thriller would go public tomorrow. The presale numbers were already off the charts. The accounting department had even started to use the B word.

Blockbuster.

The experts had said it couldn’t be done. They’d said the female sexual response was too complicated to reproduce in pill form.

Thankfully, all the clinical trials said the experts were wrong. Thriller worked. Women who hadn’t had orgasms in years were lighting up like Christmas trees and calling for more samples with their husbands’ voices in the background, urging them on. Which was a relief, as Raine had worried that men would be threatened by the little pink pills, that they would think Thriller an insult to their manhood.

But instead of saying Our wives don’t need that when they have us, they were saying Give us more.

Thank God. Raine squeezed her eyes shut and wondered if the dizziness was relief that Thriller was finally being released, or fear that the numbers wouldn’t hold. If the sales didn’t take off almost immediately, she’d be left swimming in debt, with a staff that needed to be paid and a slim drug portfolio that contained two flops and three promising compounds that had barely entered phase-two trials.

If Thriller tanked, it would take Rainey Days—and Raine—with it.

A hand touched her shoulder, and Tori’s soft voice said, “The commercial looks fantastic. Congratulations.”

The dark-haired woman slipped out of the room. The human embodiment of the word unobtrusive, Tori wasn’t comfortable with crowds, but she gave great phone and kept Raine’s professional life organized to a tee.

Jeff punched the air in victory. “That rocked!”

Raine grinned at the younger man’s enthusiasm and at the excitement that lit his mid-blue eyes. Something loosened in her chest. “Hopefully it didn’t rock too hard. That’s the ad targeted at our older demographic. The younger targets—music channels and some of the reality shows—will get a version that’s heavier on the sex and the ‘I am woman, hear me come’ message.”

Her face didn’t heat anymore when she said stuff like that. As the Thriller mania had geared up over the past months, she’d grown used to thinking of orgasms as a marketable commodity. Jeff, on the other hand, still blushed.

The faint pink on his pale cheeks made him look younger than his twenty-three years and less worldly than his double degree would suggest. But he manned up, swallowed and nodded. “Good. That’s good. You’re booked on three local radio shows this week, and the Channel Four news is thinking about doing an interview. If we’re lucky, that’ll generate enough buzz to get you picked up by the national media.”

Raine fought the wince. “Yeah, and I already know two of the interview questions, guaranteed. Is there a personal reason you chose to develop a female sex-enhancement drug, and the ever-popular, have you tried it yourself?”

The answers were no and no. She’d developed Thriller because the corresponding male sex-enhancement drug had made its parent company approximately a bazillion dollars, and she hadn’t tried the product herself because, well, it was back to that whole empty-apartment thing.

She didn’t have anything against dating, but she was thirty-five, divorced, childless and focused on building her company. Most of the men she met were either post-midlife crisis and looking for arm candy, or late-thirties and wanted to start a family yesterday. In the absence of someone tall, dark, handsome and not looking to sow his seed at the expense of her career, she’d decided to go with the better off alone theory.

Jeff avoided her eyes and the pink deepened. “I’m sure you’ll come up with some clever answers between now and then.”

“Let’s brainstorm while we party. Everyone’s headed to the New Bridge Tavern, right?” She could hear the muted sounds of celebration out in the main office lobby, where she’d set up another TV so the rest of her employees could watch the launch ad.

Sure, it was 3:00 p.m. on a Monday, but who really cared? They deserved to blow off some steam.

Their lives were about to change. They could bear the chilly winds of winter in New Bridge, Connecticut, long enough to walk around the corner for a party.

Jeff grinned. “That was supposed to be a surprise, boss. We thought—”

Tori burst into the room at a run. She leaned over the conference table and punched a button to activate one of the built-in phones. “You’ve got to hear this.”

Raine grinned. “Another crank call? Something more creative than heavy breathing and fake moans?” Then she got a good look at Tori’s expression and a knot formed in her stomach. “What’s wrong?”

“Listen.” Tori stabbed another button and cranked the speakerphone volume.

After a moment of hissing silence, her recorded voice said, “Rainey Days, Incorporated, this is Tori speaking. How may I help you?”

“Thriller killed my wife.”

The oxygen evaporated from the conference room. Raine couldn’t breathe. She could barely hear over the roaring in her ears.

After a long pause, Tori’s voice said, “I’m sorry to hear about your wife, sir, but—”

“Cari… She had a sample packet.” The man swallowed loudly, and the sound echoed on the tense air. “The doctors say she had a heart attack. She was only twenty-eight. We have a baby….”

More hissing silence.

“Oh, God. Oh, no. Nonononono—” Heart pounding, Raine looked around to see who was saying that and realized it was her. She clamped her lips together and fought the nausea. Fought the panic.

Think. She had to think.

She was in charge.

On the recording, Tori’s voice said, “Will you hold, please? I’m going to connect you to—”

There was a click, and the line went dead. After a long moment, Tori moved to punch off the speakerphone. “I called back, but nobody picked up. Caller ID says it’s registered to James and Cari Summerton in Houghton, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philly. He must’ve used Google to find the company and gotten the main number rather than the help line….” She trailed off. “Do you think it could be a prank?”

Raine didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know what to do. She could barely feel her body—everything was numb besides her brain, which pounded that same panicked litany of no-no-no-no.

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be.

Fear for her company bubbled up alongside basic human horror. A woman was dead. A mother.

Panic brushed at the edges of her soul, trying to take over everything, but she beat it back. She wasn’t the weak woman she’d once been, ready to crumble and let someone else take over and fix things. She couldn’t be.

She was the boss now.

She placed her palms flat on the conference table and pressed until the numbness receded and she could feel the wood grain beneath her fingertips. “Cancel the party. We have work to do.”

THAT NIGHT, RAINE SLEPT a couple of hours stretched out on the couch in her office, waiting for new information. She had to have new information because what little they had didn’t make an iota of sense.

Thriller hadn’t killed Cari Summerton. It couldn’t have.

The fast-track clinical trials had shown that it was safe for human use. The toxicities were so minor as to be nonexistent. The drug researchers hadn’t noted anything unexpected—certainly nothing had suggested a connection between Thriller and heart attacks. There had to be another explanation for the woman’s death.

But what, exactly?

Coincidence? Fraud? Something else? As the cold winter dawn broke outside her office window, her mind buzzed with the possibilities, each of which seemed equally unlikely, but none more unlikely—at least to her—than the thought that her drug was a killer.

Please, God, let there be another explanation.

By ten that morning, as Raine downed her third cup of coffee, changed into the spare power suit she kept in the office closet and headed for a council of war, she wasn’t any closer to an answer. She just hoped to hell they found one soon.

Tension hung heavy in the conference room, which was crammed with nearly half of Raine’s forty-person staff. She sat at the head of the table and gestured for Jeff to begin with the first report. “What have we got on the caller? Is James Summerton for real?”

A sleepless night was etched in the young man’s earnest face, but he shook his head. “Not much. I’ve confirmed the names and the address, but nobody’s answering the phone. I can’t find an obituary on Cari Summerton in the local paper, but they may not have gotten it organized yet.” He paused. “Sorry. I wish I had more for you.”

So do I, Raine thought, but she didn’t say it aloud because she knew Jeff was already working as hard as he could. They’d each taken a chance on the other—her in hiring a young genius with no managerial experience, him in working for a startup company with only one major product in the pipeline. He was putting his sickly younger brother through college. She was trying to grow up at the age of thirty-five and learn how to take charge of her own life.

They both needed Thriller to succeed.

“Keep looking,” she said. “We need to be absolutely certain this guy is for real before we proceed.” Scam artists had planted severed fingers in fast food before, looking for a quick settlement. It was possible that Summerton was looking to cash in on an unexpected—or faked—death, figuring the company would pay rather than risk Thriller’s reputation on the eve of its launch.

If that was the case, she’d be tempted to pay, just to keep things quiet. But, if there was a problem with Thriller, they needed to know about it before the drug went on sale. She was trying to do this right, trying to protect the consumer while covering her own butt.

She had already called the Food and Drug Administration—FDA—where she’d filed an unexpected toxicity report that likely wouldn’t get read for a few days or even a week. Then she’d called her distributors, delaying the launch.

She’d said there were problems with the print ads and the commercials, that the hype wasn’t where she needed it to be. “Push it back a week,” she’d said. “We’ll have everything straightened out by then.”

She hoped.

That had taken care of the new prescriptions, but there were thousands of sample packets already in use. Were they safe or not? One possibly fraudulent death report wasn’t sufficient evidence for her to recall the samples, but if another user died and the press got wind that Rainey Days had known about the problem…

Instant media crisis. How could she balance the company’s welfare against the possibility that she might be endangering lives?

Raine pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to fight back the impending headache. She gestured to her head epidemiologist, Red, who was a sharp-faced woman with wild auburn hair, a mercurial temper and a photographic recall for facts and figures. Raine asked, “Did your department find any cardiac problems in the toxicity databases?”