Page 96 of Sucker For You

She slapped the surface. She splashed herself, their Santa Cruz caricature, and the zebra rug.

“Buttercup—”

No, no, no—and then, equally abruptly:no use.

Be calm.

She exhaled once, twice, against the resurgent heat on her tongue, until she could locate her cool and dispassionate facts.Yes, calm. Then she told Wes, “Brianne wasn’t worried about an escaped octopus surviving to incriminate BioPulse. Not because it couldn’t camouflage. But because the chemical cocktail that reverses the test subjects’ loss of muscle control has a side effect. A neural one.”

“A side—What is it? How can you tell?”

“This California two-spot octopus is a juvenile,” she said.Very, very calm. “Look at her today, though. The patches on her skin. Her sluggish color and pattern changes, and their lack of vibrancy. Her lapse in eating. Her general enervation—the hours she spends inactive in the coral. She’s responsive for only minutes at a time now. To her environment, to her food, to me. These symptoms—they’re markers of cephalopod senescence. It’s similar to human dementia. Shrinkingneurons and slowed nerve-pulse transmission. BioPulse’s Hydromotinzate likelydidstimulate muscle control over her arms after the researchers damaged them, injected her with the drug to gauge her neural recovery, then amputated her limbs and repeated the experiment. But it’s also caused cognitive impairment.”

“Brain damage.”

“The corporation knows this. That’s why her escape is notable, but not an emergency. She. . . s-she’s already dying.”

“Thosefuckers,” in a low voice.

“Yes.” Isabel couldn’t safely say it, but she could agree. “And Chase is still recruiting participants for next year’s clinical trials. BioPulse might not disclose the medication’s cognitive-impairment results in cephalopods to these people—though it should. But the company’s practices are already unethical. . . And if Hydromotinzate works correctly for even a small percentage of patients, it has the potential to be very lucrative.”

“So BioPulse is taking the risk. It wants to test the drug on humans and bring it to market as soon as possible, even if there’s a chance of major side effects? Right.” Swearing under his breath, kicking at the damp footprints he’d left on the carpet, Wes paced the living room. A muscle ticked in his jaw. He scrubbed a hand over his flushed neck. “Do you think he knows? Does Chase know what BioPulse is doing with the octopuses? What’s happening to them in that satellite lab? What could happen to any people who use the drug?”

She didn’t know.

She needed to.

She reached for her phone. “I have to return his calls. Now.”

Hopped up on too much angry adrenaline, Wes had to force himself to stop pacing, to stop torturing the dish towel, to breathe through the tight constriction of muscle in his chest—and to speak without cursing when he asked, “Do you want me to leave while you talk to him?”

While Isabel talked to ChasefuckingMeyer.

But since she needed him to be steady, he could be. Would be.

Anxiety, jealousy?Not helpful.

Anyhow, he wasn’t worried and he definitely wasn’t jealous. The ice in his gut and the burn on his neck? The pain knotted under his ribs?Irrelevant. Isabel wasn’t calling her rich, influential, neurologist ex-fiancé because she regretted her decision to break off her engagement with Chase and to twist off his ring. Wes knew that. He still hated that she needed to contact the fucker at all. Hated that even after everything he’d done to her, Chase had something valuable to offer Isabel that he, Wes, didn’t.

Not the value of a pricey diamond—though there was that, too,God damn it.

Information.

He tried for a smile. This was fine, it was fine, he was fine. “I can go somewhere else, I can—”

“No.” The jerk of her chin was small but decisive.

“You’re sure?”

She nodded. Then she moved with tense, tiny steps to the couch. She sat very upright, resisting the pull of saggy cushions, gravity, and the drag of his own weight settling beside her. Her spine was rigidly straight beneath her pale,motionless ponytail as she dialed Chase’s number on speaker mode and placed her phone atop the coffee table’s vacation binder. Maybe she meant to reach for Wes’s hand, gripping it hard enough to hurt while the line rang. Maybe not.

He didn’t care, because she had.

Calling:Dr. Chase Meyer Jr.

The call shrilled once, twice, vibrating through the bungalow.

No matter how the conversation between Isabel and this asshole doctor went, he’d keep quiet. He promised himself.