"Ally, given what I know, or don't know, I don't have an entirely good feeling about this. It could be they're hiding something, but I don't have a clue what it is. It's quite possibly connected to that patient who got terminated. And when I tried to raise this with Gerex's attorneys, no less person than Winston Bartlett himself went ballistic."
"What are you saying? That I shouldn't do it?"
"Hey, I can't make that decision for you. But one possibility would be to just play along for a day or two and see if you can't find out a little more about what went wrong with the patient who was dropped."
"Stone, that's maybe a little paranoid. Couldn't a single patient have been dropped for a whole bunch of different reasons?"
"Of course, but it's not that simple. A patient was dropped from the Gerex clinical trials, and there was no official reason given in the data file. It made me curious enough that I had our paper's attorney pass along a question about it to their attorneys. That motivated Winston Bartlett to come personally to threaten me. So why is a guy who runs a huge conglomerate suddenly afraid of one tiny question? Is there some problem, some reaction to the procedure that they're terrified will come to light? Ultimately millions and millions of dollars are at stake. I want the book I'm writing to tell the whole story, not just the part they'll want to have told. That's why God put reporters on earth."
"Shit, Stone, I'm glad you're here. I think I told you on the phone, I had someone I loved very much disappear on me some years ago, and I'm feeling very alone at the moment." She looked him over. "Okay, I'll ask. We're adults. Are you married, divorced, attached, unattached, seeing someone, alone and suicidal, what? I mean, where do things stand here?"
"Where things stand is that I'm very happy that I stumbled into you after all the years. And yeah, I've got a little history. At least I'd like to think so. But nothing is going on at the moment." Then he told her about Joyce, the divorce, Amy. "And what was that you said about having somebody disappear on you?" He studied her, reaching back for the feelings that were still buried. Seeing her was bringing it back. "What did you mean by that? Disappear like a missing person, or disappear as in up and split, or—"
"He was my husband, Steve, and he was a political consultant. He was in a single‑engine Cessna that went down in the rain forest in Belize and I miss him terribly."
"I'm so sorry, Ally. Nothing that's happened to me comes close to that tragedy."
"It gets worse. A few months before that, my dad had an accident with a Browning shotgun that was no accident."