Chapter Forty-Nine
Once Lucinda’s ball cap had helped her cool down, Liv was back on track. She rose from her perch, shook out her numb legs,
and crept around to where Devon was holed up under her makeshift tent.
“Knock, knock,” she said. It sounded stupid. For the thousandth time, she wished she had her badge. Or a chaotic, extroverted
sister who could get the conversation going.
Devon pushed the kimono away from her face, and for a moment, Liv had the impression that she was removing a veil, like a
fortune teller ready to spin stories about the past and future.
“Any joy?” Liv asked, nodding at the papers.
“Not really,” Devon said. “It’s the contract we signed with ADD Inc. a year ago, when we started ramping up production of
CareFree.” She peered more closely at Liv. “You feeling okay?”
“Just a little hot,” Liv said. “The hat’s helping.”
Devon nodded. “Fiona gave me one of her masks. The science on them is questionable, but these blue ones are cooling. You want
to try it?”
Liv glanced down at the alien object by Devon’s side. She pressed it against her face for a few seconds. It wasn’t a discernibly
different temperature, but it did make her cheeks tingle and tighten. She shivered. She put the mask down.
“I’d rather take a look at that contract.”
“Be my guest.”
Liv started flipping the numbered pages. “Any idea why Stefan would bring a canceled vendor contract on this trip?”
“No. But there is one thing I remembered. I think Stefan was the one who recommended this vendor to us in the first place.”
Devon stared at the papers, as if they could speak their secrets aloud. “When Fiona first identified the risk associated with
the datura waste material, she had a disposal vendor she wanted to use, owned by a friend of hers from Seoul. Very pricey.
And complicated. Engaging them would have involved an overhaul of our manufacturing process—maybe a two-year delay. She tried
to convince me to do it, but I wasn’t sure. Then a few weeks later, Babette secured the Regent Group investment, and Stefan
came forward with this company, ADD Inc., that they’d worked with before. ADD came in cheaper, so we went with them.”
Devon shot a glance over to where Fiona was offering PK a sip from her sparkly glass water bottle. “Fiona was pissed.”
“Because her vendor wasn’t chosen?”
“Because of . . . all of it.”
Liv thought about the dates. The ADD contract was signed twelve months ago. A couple months before that would have been fourteen
months ago, when the third focus group went wrong.
“Is that what Justine Long died of? The datura waste material?”
Devon nodded. “At the time, we didn’t know how volatile the waste was. Justine got some on her hand, and she must have touched
her face.”
“What form does the waste material take?”
“It’s a sap-like resin. Highly concentrated scopolamine.”
“Deadly?”
“Yes.”
Liv remembered how the dirt had clung to the blank inside brim of Babette’s hat, and the rash of bumps across the dead woman’s
skin. “Who has access to that waste material now?”
“No one. ADD Inc. has a proprietary machine process to sequester the scopolamine into sealed containers that are removed directly from our labs. There’s no way anyone can get hurt by it anymore.
And even at the time . . . Fiona knew the risks.
She should have been more cautious in the testing environment. ”
“But you still gave her a stake in CareFree to keep her quiet.”
Devon was silent for a long while.
“My sister did what she had to do.”
Liv wiped the back of her neck. The tea tree crystals in the hat had stopped working, their effect likely blunted by the sweat
on her forehead.
“Just to clarify,” Liv said. “The creation of CareFree generates a dangerous byproduct that killed someone. Fiona recommended
an expensive waste management process to deal with it. After Stefan’s firm invested, he suggested a different approach. You
paid Fiona off and went with Stefan’s suggestion, ADD Inc. Then a year later—a few weeks ago—Babette canceled the ADD contract.
Did she sign on with someone new? Or could she have been in conversation with Fiona about reopening the question of how to
process the waste?”
“As far as I know, Babette and Fiona hadn’t talked in months,” Devon said. “Though Fiona did say Babette invited her here.”
Devon looked out to the edge of the river, where a flock of mergansers were diving for fish. “Babette made business decisions
on instinct. She didn’t feel the need to tell us why she fired someone or didn’t renew a contract, and the reasons she did
share rarely made sense. For all I know, she decided ADD had bad vibrational energy, or the owner’s astrological chart was
suspect. She just told me and Charlie she’d canceled it. The implication was that we’d have to figure out a new option.”
“Did you?”
“Charlie sourced some bids, but frankly, we had bigger issues to deal with. This was just another instance of our sister acting
impulsively and expecting us to clean up her mess.”
Liv looked back down at the contract in front of her.
She flipped past lists of chemicals and waste sequestration specifications, hunting for something she could grab on to, something she could understand.
She got to the very last page. White space surrounded two signature blocks: one for the head of ADD Inc.
, and one for the CEO of Babette Botanique.
The black line above ADD Inc. was signed in blue ink, a jagged scribble she couldn’t even begin to guess at.
The signature line for Babette was vacant.
Then she saw it. Under the ADD Inc. signature, also in blue ink: a hand-scrawled date.
This contract was not a year old. It had been prepared just a week ago, days before they’d all met at the lodge to begin this
godforsaken trip.
She narrowed her eyes at the signature page. Stefan had brought this contract with him to the Grand Canyon alongside the papers
for Babette’s leadership transition. Were the two contracts linked? What would make this waste subcontractor so important
to Stefan?
The papers that had struck Liv as dry before now seemed to be pulsating with energy. The heat that had felt so oppressive
just minutes ago now felt like the portal to a breakthrough.
Liv stacked up the papers. “With your sister dead, who signs contracts on behalf of the company?”
“Charlie,” Devon said. “Or if we move forward with the CEO transition as planned, it would be me.”
“Would you reenter a contract with ADD Inc. for CareFree waste management?” Liv asked.
Devon looked puzzled.
“Stefan’s boss—your big investor—if they asked you to reinstate the contract,” Liv said, “would you do it?”
“I’d sign it right now,” Devon said. “Charlie and I deal in outcomes and data, not signals from the universe. And ADD did
nothing wrong. Even if we don’t know why Stefan had this with him, it must have mattered to the Regent Group. If working with
ADD is important to our biggest investor, especially at a precarious time like this, then it’s important to me too.”