“I need to ask yousomething. Or… I mean… I have a hypothetical situation I need your opinion on.”
Had anyone ever had anactualhypothetical situation?
I knew Dad would see rightthrough me, but I needed advice and I didn’t have anyone else to getit from.
Besides, he needed to know.I couldn’tkeep this from him, not if I wanted the company to come out the other side ofit relatively unscathed.
And I did. He’d worked toohard to have it all snatched away from him now. No matter how much I caredabout the project. No matter how close my heart was to shattering like adropped Ming vase.
“Hypothetical,” Dadrepeated, in a way that meant he understood it wasoff the record, but entirelyreal. “Sure,I’m all ears. You positive you don’t want that coffee?”
I nodded. I needed to getthis out as quickly as I could, before I lost my nerve or forgot half thethings I wanted to say.
“Okay. Let’s hear this brainteaser.”
Where the hell was Isupposed to start?
At the beginning, Isupposed.
“Let’s say you have areasonable suspicion that the results of a research project are being tamperedwith.”
Dad’s expression darkenedstraight away. He tried to hide it, but I’d known him my entire life. It wouldhave been impossible for me not to notice.
All the same, I had to gothrough with this now.
“But you also know that,while they may have been… embellished, the projectishelping thetrial subjects.”
“With you so far.”
“And you know this is beingdone with the ultimate aim of revealing that it’s been done later, to discreditthe study itself and the company running it.”
“Is this, hypothetically,also the company you work for?”
Swallowing, I nodded. I hadn’t expected for asecond that Dad wouldn’t see right through me, but this was still hard.
“It hypothetically is. I don’tknow if it matters, but it’s also hypothetically personally important to you.”
“It matters,” Dad said. “Everythingmatters. It also matters how you know, and if you know who’s doing it.”
“I know because of anotherresearcher, not working on the project. One I trust. He happened toaccidentally get his hands on a file he shouldn’t have seen, and noticed theerrors. He, uh. Might have done some digging of his own after that and theperson who’s doing it… also works for the company, but would gain from a dropin the share price.”
“Right,” Dad said, tapping apen against his lips. I watched his shoulders rise and fall as he took a deepbreath and then let it out in a huff.
“He’s gone a lot fartherthan I expected him to,” he added eventually.
My stomach went cold.
“You knew,” I said, anotherwave of fear and betrayal crashing over me. “Youknew,and that’s why you wantedme to have a bodyguard. You thought he’d… you thought John was going tohurtme.”
“I didn’t know exactly whatwas going on. But between him being increasingly aggressive about companystructure lately and your car being broken into, I was worried.”
“And you didn’t think totellme?” I asked, muchlouder than I meant to. Panic was making my chest tight all over again, just asI thought I’d gotten it under control.
“I didn’t wantyouworrying if itwas nothing. I figured you were rattled enough by the car and the office that abodyguard would make you feel better, and I couldn’t exactly go throwing wildaccusations at a man I’d have every reason to want removed from the company,could I? What if I’d been wrong?”
Hehadbeen wrong.The break-ins had been harrowing, but ultimately harmless. I knew that now.
The real danger was thetampering with the study. I’dknown, in my gut, that the results were too goodto be true. That we couldn’t possibly have found a miracle cure so quickly.
