Chapter 18 #5
“—you come back to San Francisco. If you stop doing all this.” His laugh and flourish with a chunk of salmon speared on his fork must have been for the other diners again.
She wasn’t returning his smile and she certainly wasn’t laughing.
Maybe his next words were for the others, too. “I miss you, babe. I love you.”
No.
“Why?”
“What?”
Unzipped fly, shuddering bathroom stalls, dangling panties, and stilettos.
“You love me,” she said. “Why?”
The salmon dropped an inch. “I. . . seriously? I can’t believe you’re asking me that, Bella. After I drove all the way to Monterey for you?”
“Why?”
“Come on. Don’t be like this. I can’t believe you’d really—actually. . .” He gave a second laugh, though it was short and his smile was strained. His words trailed off.
“Yes?”
“I—”
She waited. One breath, two. Another jaunty piano riff zinged nearby. But no reassurances from Chase followed. Maybe the words were stuck behind his teeth, struck dumb by their expensively capped gleam. Caught, like a fishbone between molars. A flake of salmon fell from his fork.
All he had was air.
He was wasting it.
She withdrew his engagement ring. She placed it on the table and slid it toward him. “You screwed a caterer at our wedding shower.”
“No.” Now he spoke—and he spoke to her. His smile twisted. He didn’t take the ring. “Stop this, Bella.”
“Stop what?”
“This. Whatever you’re trying to prove here. All right. You’ve made your point.”
“Have I?”
His knuckles whitened around his knife. Tick, went a muscle under his left eye. “Whatever you’re. . . Do you know what you’re risking?”
“Apparently not.” She shrugged. “So tell me. Tell me what I’m risking. Tell me why I’m such a problem for you, Chase.”
Problem, and he didn’t deny it. Not tonight. Not now. Instead, and for once, he gave her what she wanted: honesty.
For once he didn’t pretend.
“Tell you?” Taking a slug of Cabernet, he leaned over the table.
His grin was fixed, hard. “Fine. Look, babe. I’m setting up a private medical practice.
Do you have any idea how expensive that is?
How hard it is to find funders, find the best patients, to network—to make the right connections?
How expensive good parking is, too, and the cost of dinner and a nice bottle of wine?
No, you wouldn’t. You’re just out at the beach every day, but—”
“How much does it cost?”
How much do I cost?
“More than UCSF Medical Center pays me. I can charge double when I go private. Establishing a practice has a big price tag, but with the BioPulse checks coming in? With my endorsements, it’s been going well.
Or—it was.” His empty wine glass thudded down.
“It was, until whatever the hell you did today in Moss Landing that made me a liability. When the CEO heard about charges against the company for wildlife trafficking, charges linked to one of his field researchers—when he heard you’d been involved, and they obviously know about my relationship to you—”
“Yes?”
“—they threatened to pull my financing. Unless I could—”
“Control me.”
“I didn’t say that. But, babe. . .” With a visible effort, Chase abruptly and mechanically softened.
Repulsive. He tried to take her hands, tried to wheedle her into complaisance and compliance with smiling lies, but she’d seen through the cracks in his mask.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. She’d known that already.
No, he didn’t even like her. “Babe, I know you want to do the right thing. Maybe you got confused and you weren’t thinking, but you want to do the right thing for us. ”
Again: right?
She stared back at him, and her lips trembled. Not with anxiety or pain or anger, though. Laughter. What a stupid thing to say! There had never been an us. Bright bubbles surged in her throat.
“No. You want me to do the right thing for you. Because I’m an asset. I’m attractive and captive proof of the efficacy of BioPulse’s medication. I’m valuable marketing material for them. For you, too.”
With her on his arm, Chase had been marketing himself—his status—as much as the BioPulse drugs. Hadn’t he?
“For us! You know you don’t want to—”
“—make waves?” Her laughter foamed higher, hotter. Wes would have laughed with her. He would have made the same joke. “I don’t want to rock the boat? Is that what you think?”
“I—”
“You have no idea what I want, Chase.”
Partly because she’d never told him. Partly because he’d never cared.
He’d been no more concerned with her well-being than BioPulse Pharmaceuticals was with its cephalopods.
Asset, subject, profit.
Her smile was incandescent. “You don’t know, because I never told you. That’s my fault. But I’ll tell you now: I want to do exactly what I’m doing. I want to make waves. To be a problem, when that’s what is needed. I don’t want to stop. I won’t.”
Chase’s fingers contracted around his glass. His voice darkened with warning. “Bella—”
“No.”
Whether he did or didn’t have the influence with BioPulse Pharmaceuticals to abort its cephalopod experiments—and given how fast the company had turned on him, she was evidently more of a problem than he was a benefit—at least the Moss Landing octopuses would soon be safe in the hands of federal agents and MORI staff.
If Wes could prove that the corporation’s satellite location was emptying its waste into the bay, regulators might even shut the facility down.
The cannery would be left to its ghosts and the sea.
Yes, Isabel smiled while she defied Chase.
“Fine. I didn’t want to do this, but you’re forcing my hand.
” Above the guttering candle, Chase’s lips barely moved.
“If you don’t stop, I’ll remove you from the Ceretobicin trial.
I’ll strike you from the roster. No more migraine medication.
Do you want to go back to that? To how things were before? I don’t think so.”
Finally, he was right: she didn’t want to go back.
She didn’t want that life again.
Pain, fear, guilt.
Once, his threat might have scared her. Not now.
Not when her mind and her conscience were clear.
She told him, “You’re right. I don’t want that.
But it doesn’t matter. Because BioPulse doesn’t administer Ceretobicin’s Phase Three clinical trial.
UCSF Medical Center does. I expect the hospital will be interested to hear that you’ve threatened a patient, Dr. Meyer. ”
“No. You wouldn’t—” His voice rose again, cracked.
“You don’t know that. You don’t know me. And you’re making a scene.” She stood. Ring, wine, calm. She moved away from the booth and from him, toward the restaurant’s balcony.
“Don’t walk away from me—”