“Or it’s about one of the other devices.”
“What?” I asked. “The pancreas is the only thing that’s either not already on the market, or that’s close to going public.”
“There’s the Alzheimer’s drug.”
“I thought you said it was still years from hitting the market,” Adrienne said.
“It is,” Jacob said. “But we’ve filed the paperwork with the FDA to begin trials.”
“It’s attracted some attention,” I said. “One of the scientists wrote a paper about it that will appear in a scientific journal later this month. The public relations office has gotten some calls about it.”
“Is that a big deal? Would it garner this sort of attention?”
Jacob shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve never had this sort of attention. Besides, why would whoever’s doing this want everyone to believe that the emails are coming from inside the office? That would imply that someone in our employ is untrustworthy.”
“Or it would cause the two of you to turn against each other.” Adrienne glanced at me again. “I think that’s what this is really about. Someone’s trying to cause trouble between the two of you for some reason.”
“Could it be Lynn?” I asked.
Jacob jumped to his feet, anger flashing over his face as he looked at me. “Why would Lynn do such a thing?”
“Because she’s divorcing you, and your half of the business is part of your assets.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve already agreed to give her half my trust fund, that’s why!”
“Shit, Jacob,” I muttered, stepping back a few steps like he’d punched me. “Why would you do that?”
“Because it was the right thing to do.”
I shook my head, wanting to hug him and shake him all at the same time. Jacob’s trust fund was worth millions. Almost eighty million dollars. Giving half of it away to a woman who had her own trust fund from her own rich daddy was insane. But it also showed how deeply scarred by the whole thing Jacob really was.
“I’m sorry,” I said, at a loss for anything else to say.
Jacob brushed past me.
“This is your mess,” he said as he went. “You clean it up.”
He disappeared down the hallway, leaving me alone with Adrienne. She stayed on the couch, staring down at the floor like she was trying to disappear so that we wouldn’t be embarrassed that this family drama had played out in front of her. I went and sat beside her, taking her hand in mine.
“Not what you bargained for, huh?”
“Not really.”
She leaned in to me, resting her head on my shoulder. I slid my arm around her, pulling her closer, wanting to do nothing more than hold her. And she let me. For a moment.
“My dad thinks you’re insane and that you arranged this whole thing to get someone to pay attention to you.”
“Not a great first impression, I guess.”
She giggled. “No.”
“What do you think?”
“I think we’re missing something. I think there’s more to this than we’re seeing.”
I kissed the top of her head. “Me too.”
“But what the hell could it be?”
And that was the question. I had no idea.
Chapter 16
Adrienne
I spent half the night pacing the floor of my living room, an Audrey Hepburn movie playing on the television behind me. I kept rolling the facts through my mind, trying to figure out what was going on. I listed the facts as we knew them one by one:
A reporter called Lucien asking about the artificial pancreas, even though there were only six people, other than those in the patent offices, who knew about it.
He received an email on his office computer that implied bodily harm.
He received another email while in Kemah that implied a threat.
His brother received an email telling him to rein Lucien in.
Those were the facts. But they didn’t seem to add up to anything.
One of the emails mentioned the artificial pancreas. The others didn’t. The others implied that the writer knew Lucien had gone to my dad’s PI firm. At least, that’s what I got out of it. But who could know that? And how? And how did the reporter find out about it?
Maybe that was where I should start. Maybe I needed to go back to the beginning.
But when I looked her up from the phone records Robert had gotten when we first took the case, the address turned out to be a hair salon. I called the number she’d called from, but it was no longer in service.
“Who would want to hurt you?”
Lucien looked up from his computer, his eyes not really focusing on me at first.
“What do you mean?”
I’d been sitting on the couch in his office for more than an hour, flipping through a magazine without actually reading any of the articles. My dad had told me to just keep watching him, that they’d work on the who and the why. But I just couldn’t let it go.
“Who would want to make threats against you? Who would want to distract you from your work or make you angry with Jacob?”
“I don’t know. The only person I could think of is Lynn.”