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  I lead us both down a deserted hall. We make the first right turn and run nearly headlong into the biggest, hairiest nurse I’ve ever seen. Built like a linebacker, this guy towers above me. And with his thick, smoke-colored beard, he looks like he should be wearing deerskins instead of scrubs.

  “Excuse me,” I say, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. If we look too nervous we’ll attract undue attention, but it’s too late. Nurse Mountain Man takes a stance directly in front of us, effectively blocking the entire hallway.

  “Where are you two heading?” His eyes narrow suspiciously.

  I glance at his name badge and blurt out a greeting. “Hi Carrey.” Carrey? “Actually, I’m a little turned around. We’re supposed to meet our dad in the ER. Our brother’s there with a broken arm.”

  David interrupts, “Fell out of a tree, poor little guy.”

  “But we didn’t get any breakfast, so I thought we’d, you know, get something from the cafeteria. I could have sworn it was this way.”

  “I told you we should have turned left,” says David, rolling his eyes. I play it up, too, letting out an exasperated sigh.

  Carrey glares at us, and then raises his meaty arm, pointing back the way we came. “Cafeteria’s near the front entrance. Take this hall all the way to the end and hang a right.”

  “I knew it,” says David, slapping my shoulder.

  I slap him back. “Knock it off.”

  We continue our feigned sibling bickering all the way back down the hall. Twice I look over my shoulder, but Nurse Mountain Man is not far behind. Finally he disappears down another corridor. We wait a minute before turning back, peering around the corner just in time to see Carrey slip into the men’s room.

  “Come on!” I grab David’s shirt front, urging him to move faster. With his injured leg and crutches, he’s walking at a snail’s pace. “At this rate the press conference will be over before we get there.”

  Luckily it hasn’t even started yet when we arrive. The vast room in which it’s being held is crammed with reporters and cameramen jostling to get closer to Papa who sits behind a narrow table at the front of the room. His clasped hands rest on the royal blue tablecloth. The stress he must be feeling shows on his face. Standing behind him, off to one side, is Jordan, and on the other is a security guard. From the looks of it, it’s going to be a few more minutes before things get rolling. But that still doesn’t leave me much time.

  I feel a gentle push from behind, David urging me forward. Maneuvering my way through the crowd isn’t easy, but finally I reach the table.

  “Papa.” The din in the room is so loud that even though I’m right in front of him, he doesn’t hear me. I shout louder. “Papa!” Finally his eyes connect with mine. He sees me, but he’s not smiling.

  “Mira, what are you doing here?”

  “Papa, I need to talk to you.”

  “This isn’t the time or place, Mira. It will have to wait until later.”

  “No, not later,” I tell him. “Now.”

  I hold up the photograph. The moment he sees it, all the color drains from his face. I can tell he wants to ask where I found it, but he already knows the answer.

  “I can explain,” he says.

  A technician steps up beside him and clips a mic to his lapel, telling him that it will be switched on once the press conference has begun. I wait until he leaves to fiddle with the podium mic before speaking to my father again.

  “I want to know why,” I say, lowering my voice to make sure no one else will overhear. “I need to know why you killed Mama.”

  Papa’s eyes widen, and a thin sheen of perspiration forms on his brow. “What are you talking about, Mira?”

  “You promised me you’d wait. You promised.”

  He stares at me, speechless. The expression in his eyes is not what I expected. I thought he’d be angry or defensive. Instead he seems bewildered—as if he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. But how could he not know?

  A man in a gray business suit steps up to the microphone and announces that the conference will begin shortly. I’m still holding up the picture, and Papa is still staring into the faces of Stark and Jackie Beitner.

  “You knew them both,” I tell him. “You lied.”

  Papa looks away from the photo and out over the crowd before turning back to me. “I can explain—” he tries again.

  “I want to know about my mother—my real mother. I want to know how she died.”

  For a moment, I think Papa is going to answer me. But then someone’s got me by the elbow, a grip so strong I’m sure it will leave a bruise. I’m being pulled away from the table, away from Papa. I look up and see Jordan dragging me through the crowd, his leather-gloved hands digging painfully into my arm through the fabric of my hoodie.

  “Papa!” I call out. “Papa!” But the hum of voices and cameras drowns me out. I try to wrench free from Jordan’s grasp. He takes both my arms in his fists.

  “Stop it, Mira!” he demands, his face right in mine. “Let your father do his job.”

  “I have to talk to him, Jordan!”

  “Not now, Mira.” Jordan pulls me through the crowd toward the door. “We’ll go somewhere quiet and wait until this is over. All right?”

  I don’t respond. I’m straining against his grip, wanting to go back to Papa, but Jordan grabs me tighter and gives me a firm shake. “All right?” he says again. I stop resisting and nod my head.

  We snake our way through the swarm of reporters toward the doors. I spot David through the sea of bodies. He gives me a questioning look, wondering if he should follow us, but I shake my head.

  Jordan and I exit the room, and the doors slam shut behind us. The hall outside is deserted and eerily silent. We walk a few yards to a little alcove near a window; the space is complete with blue upholstered chairs and several potted plants.

  Jordan turns to face me. “Now, tell me what’s going on.”

  The anger I felt just moments ago melts into grief. “It’s Mama,” I tell him. “She’s gone.”

  “I know,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Mira.”

  I’m about to fall apart. I’ve got to hold myself together. There’s too much at stake. I swallow back the emotion and remind myself why I came here in the first place.

  “Papa isn’t who you think he is, Jordan. All those people in there who believe he’s innocent,” I nod toward the conference room doors, “they’re all wrong. Papa is guilty.”

  Jordan’s grip on me tightens, but I keep talking.

  “He killed my mother, Jordan, and I’m pretty sure he’s responsible for at least two other deaths.”

  The muscles in Jordan’s jaw tense up. “What other deaths?” he asks. “You mean the Rawley trials? Gregory Stark was responsible for that. They found no evidence linking your father to him.”

  “They didn’t,” I say, gathering my courage, “but I did.”

  I slip the photo of Papa, Jackie and Stark out from my pocket. Jordan takes one glimpse of it, and his whole demeanor changes. He’s suddenly furious.

  “Put that away!” he growls. He glances nervously up and down the empty hallway. I do as he says and shove the photo back in my pocket. “What the hell are you doing with that?”

  “It’s Jackie Beitner and Gregory Stark.”

  “I know who they are.”

  “Jordan, Papa drugged my mother and then authorized to have her life support terminated. Papa is linked to Stark’s death and Jackie Beitner’s, too. What is going on? I need to face my father and demand he tell me the truth.”

  I try to pull away, but Jordan jerks me back hard. “You’re not going back in there.”

  “Yes, I am. Now let me go.”

  “Think about what you’re doing, Mira! Your father is the face of Rawley Pharmaceutical—of Gaudium. It has already restored thousands of autistic kids to normal function. Teen suicide rates have bottomed out. And there’s the very real possibility of curing Alzheimer’s! Mira, don’t you see? We are on the
verge of changing the world!”

  “But at what cost?” I ask, peering directly into Jordan’s eyes. “Mama, Stark, Jackie Beitner, those women who died—how many lives lost are too many? I have to talk to Papa, Jordan. This has to end.”

  Jordan suddenly squeezes my arms so hard I can feel his fingers against my bone. Seeing him this angry frightens me. “Stop,” I gasp. “You’re hurting me!”

  “Knock it off, Mira!” he shouts, shaking me again. His voice has turned into a cruel hiss. “Nothing is going to stand in our way. Not you, and sure as hell not your dead mother!”

  My dead mother . . .

  When I accused Papa of killing Mama he looked honestly surprised. But when I told Jordan, he said he knew. How could he know and not Papa? Yesterday Jordan was looking through Papa’s papers for something. What if that something was Mama’s Termination of Life Support form?

  “You?” Rage flares up inside me. “You filed the authorization without Papa’s knowledge? You killed her!”

  In a burst of strength, I wrench my right arm free from Jordan’s grasp. Before I even realize what I’m doing my hand strikes his cheek with all the force and bite of a rattlesnake. The power of the impact causes Jordan to stumble back a step. He releases my other arm, but already it’s too late for me. In less time than it takes for the burn of the slap to radiate across my palm—I know.

  I see…

  Everything.

  Jordan’s psyche is mangled and distorted, like a thousand threads all knotted together. My brain struggles to sort out his thoughts and memories, picking through the most lucid of them. My mind lines most of them up into a somewhat comprehensible pattern.

  From the time Jordan Cummings was six-years-old, he knew he was special. He had a knack for science and chemistry. His father pushed him to go to medical school, but after two years Jordan dropped out to join the Marines. America was embroiled in another war in the Middle East, and he felt obligated to do his part. His father said he was wasting his talent, so after the war Jordan returned to school and barely managed to get a degree. After a failed marriage and a series of dead-end jobs, he asked his old war buddy, Beto Ortiz, for help and was hired on at Rawley Pharmaceutical when it was nothing more than a sprouting drug manufacturer. He was assigned to work in one of the development labs as an assistant to Gregory Stark.

  Meanwhile, Alberto Ortiz quickly rose through the management ranks of the company, but he maintained his friendship with his fellow Marine. They’d make a point to go out for drinks on occasion, and sometimes Stark would even tag along.

  It was on one of these occasions that Stark flapped his tongue a bit more than he should have. In his research, he had isolated a variable that affected the production of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. Those who presented this variable inevitably developed mental illness in one form or another. All of the illnesses, he proposed, were on the same linear path. In other words, depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s were all symptoms of the same basic problem, just differing degrees of it. The cure, he insisted, was to be found not in treating the symptoms, but in repairing the neural damage. And that could be achieved through injections of a new isotope he’d engineered in the lab.

  It all sounded fantastic, and the three men congratulated each other and downed their beers. In a few years, a decade at most, Stark’s discovery would make Rawley the world’s leading medical research company and would make all of them very, very rich.

  But then something happened that sent their world into a tail spin. Alberto had an affair with a member of the secretarial staff, which was not unusual for him. Only this time, he claimed to love the girl. There was only one problem; Jackie Beitner suffered from Bipolar disorder. One day she’d be pleasant, fun and affectionate, the next she’d explode like an atomic bomb, cursing and breaking things. Then she’d apologize in tears. Life was an emotional roller coaster, but Alberto loved her just the same. He convinced Stark to try out his new therapy on her. Stark hadn’t even reported his findings to the company yet, but after a great deal of coaxing on Alberto’s part, Stark agreed. After only a couple of weeks, Jackie showed marked improvement in her condition. Jordan and Stark decided to try it out on a few more test subjects without Alberto’s or the corporation’s knowledge. Unapproved trials were unconventional, but once they had collected proof of the isotope’s success, they would be hailed as geniuses.

  The first few months went well, but then, one by one, the test subjects developed complications: seizures, memory loss and headaches. They were all diagnosed with grade four Glioblastoma. The tumors were embedded so deep inside the brain tissue they were deemed inoperable. Jackie Beitner was no exception.

  To make matters worse, Jackie announced to Alberto that she was pregnant.

  During that last month of the pregnancy, Stark and Jordan watched helplessly as each test subject died. When Jackie finally gave birth, the child was adopted by Alberto and his wife, who had no idea of the child’s true identity. Jackie died shortly after.

  Two days after Jackie’s death, Gregory Stark broke. He had agreed to help her, thought he could make a difference, but now he found himself responsible for at least a half-dozen deaths. They’d all signed affidavits swearing them to secrecy. The treatments were administered under the table at no cost to them. None were ever aware of the others, or of the connection between their illness and the treatments, and none ever broke their silence. But it was too much for Stark. He would go to the authorities and turn himself in. He would do the right thing.

  Jordan argued with Stark. If word of this got out it would mean tens of millions of dollars in lawsuits against Rawley Pharmaceutical. Not only would they lose their jobs, they would go to prison. Stark didn’t care. The guilt clawed at him from the inside out. Frantic, Jordan’s mind raced with all the possible outcomes his confession could have—none were good.

  It was easy slipping the pills into Stark’s drink, and later that night his car rolled eight times before coming to rest at the bottom of a steep embankment, crushed like a soda can. In the morning, Jordan got a call from Alberto telling him the news of Stark’s tragic death. Alberto believed it was a suicide—couldn’t blame him, after all. Losing both Stark and Jackie so close together, Alberto considered doing the same. But now he had Jackie’s little girl to watch over. She gave him a reason to live.

  After Stark’s death, Jordan was promoted to his position. Eventually, Stark’s original formula was granted approval. In time, Rawley perfected the therapy and christened it Gaudium. The company went on to international fame and fortune with their cures. Alberto decided to go into politics, asking Jordan to help him. Jordan proved to be instrumental in navigating the political arena. Everything was going well until the investigation went public. Now Alberto and Jordan’s futures were both at stake.

  When Mama started talking about Jackie the night of the fundraiser, Jordan feared she had put two and two together. With Papa’s gubernatorial race in full swing, a divorce would prove fatal. On the other hand, public sympathy for a devoted husband and father might sway public opinion in his favor.

  That night, in my parents’ room, Jordan slipped some of Mama’s Trazodone and insulin into his pocket. He put a few pills into Mama’s drink and injected her with insulin, the combination that resulted in her coma. But a new complication arose when I became suspicious.

  When I tracked down the Beitners, Jordan knew things were about to go terribly wrong. I claimed that when I touched people, I could read their minds. He’d never bought into it before. He thought I must have mental issues, like my birth mother. But now Jordan wasn’t so sure. What if it was true? If I could read Mama’s mind, and if Mama had any knowledge of Papa’s affair with Jackie Beitner, then it would only be a matter of time before I connected Jackie to Jordan as well.

  The answer was to get rid of Mama—and me.

  Here, Jordan’s mind again becomes distorted and twisted, like someone has taken a roll of movie film and scrunched it up into a giant knot of
images. It’s as if he isn’t exactly sure what he’s thinking and feeling. I see nothing but rage and a tenacious appetite for control. Is this what being crazy—truly crazy—looks like from the inside out?

  My eyes lock on Jordan’s, dark and menacing. The images and emotions are turbulent, difficult to decipher, but in that fraction of an instant I know one thing for certain.

  I have to run.

  I spin away from Jordan and take off running down the hall.

  “Mira!” Jordan shouts, his rapid footsteps echoing behind me on the tile floor. “Mira, come back here!”

  I have to find someone, anyone, and tell them—what? That the future governor’s best friend is some sort of mad scientist hell bent on doing everything he can to get what he wants—even if it means killing innocent people? Who would believe it? I can hardly believe it myself.

  The most obvious place for me to go is back into the conference room, but Jordan’s right behind me. If I stop now he’ll reach me before I can get my hand around the doorknob. I’ll call David’s cell—Crap! My pockets are empty. I’ve left my stupid cell at home as usual.

  I run down the corridor toward the main section of the hospital. When I turn a corner at full speed, I suddenly collide with a woman coming from the opposite direction. In a pale green pantsuit and heels, she looks as surprised to see me as I am to see her.

  “Dr. Walsh?”

  “Mira!”

  “What are you doing here, Dr. Walsh?”

  She hesitates. “I’m meeting a friend for breakfast at the cafeteria.” The smile she offers is pleasant, but she averts her gaze. “I heard on the news that your father’s holding a press conference. Has it started yet?”

  “No. I mean, yes, but I need to get help—”

  “Help? Why?”

  “There’s a man chasing me—I need to call security!”

  Dr. Walsh takes me by the shoulders and looks at me with patronizing concern. “You know, Mira, I’m glad I bumped into you. I was planning to call you later, you know, to make sure you’re all right. When I heard about your mother, I was naturally worried—”