Page 37 of Tango

“The PA? My appointment was at 3:30. This would have been a little bit later, let’s say twenty minutes.”

“Before four. The bot found it. They dispatched cars and an ambulance to Tifton Manor for an attempted kidnapping. You don’t know her, right?”

“Ms. Tifton?”

“Amanda,” Chanti clarified.

“I don’t know her. I mean, I know Lionel. He’s been in my life forever—since I was born. But I don’t remember seeing Mrs. Harcourt since about the time when Mom moved on with her life, heading out to sea. So I was very little. I’m sorry this happened to her. But I’m not devastated like I would be if it was someone I cared about.”

“Make the connection for me. If Amanda’s not someone you care about, why has this got you so upset?” Chanti asked.

“I’m trying to figure it out myself.”

“Does that tie into the security guard calling you her name and then seeing the portrait?”

“It wouldn’t, except for that bizarre conversation I had with the executives where they kept asking me about off-label prescription use of my formula after it worked its way through the FDA.”

“That’s not right. They can’t use your formula for off-label anything. You told them what happened to the offspring if either the male or female parent was exposed to the formula. No one can take that formula without proper medical hoop jumping. That and the cancer risk.”

“Exactly.” Piper closed her eyes. “And here’s my fear,” she whispered. “I might be culpable of something horrific.”

“Unimaginable that you would be. You?” Chanti asked with enough conviction that Piper almost believed her.

“When I go and talk to Lionel and the executives, those people studied business—stocks and bonds, and hiding money from taxes. And they know what the best pastry is to eat in Paris. They study things. They’re not unintelligent people. But they don’t know about science.”

“Okay.”

“So when I use scientific words,” Piper took a breath; her whole body felt electrified, “they can’t follow what I’m saying. I try to figure out how I would explain my work to a five-year-old. Today, I even said it out loud. In essence, I said, ‘This is a stick-figure drawing of the picture. I'm giving you just the barest pieces of information, so your brain can put this together.’”

“Understood. You dummied down your information and used very elementary words in explaining your science.”

“I might have dummied it down too much, Chanti. They might have been hearing what they wanted to hear.”

“What would they possibly want to hear about your formula other than that you figured it out, and they could start saving lives?” Chanti asked.

“Couple things. One, we have to remember their mindset is youth through chemistry, right? So they develop formulations that people will slather on their skin that are supposed to rejuvenate them, right? And then, look at my dad. Back in the day, when Lionel was giving Dad the basement lab space and funding for his work, Lionel asked Dad to work with them on the side, developing formulas that might make Alabaster stand out.”

“Sounds like it was mutually beneficial.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.” Piper leaned forward to put her forehead on the cool surface of her metal desk. “Does Lionel see my lab as a producer of—”

“Oh shit,” Chanti said. “I’m starting to see the picture you have in your head.”

“I explained to the executives that in people with Runker-Bailey Syndrome, the formula would move the clock back twenty years, so that their timeline lined back up with everyone else’s.”

“And they, possibly, thought this was the fountain of youth, but the fountain was a syringe? Their golden cow?”

“I can’t jump to the golden cow—I think you mean golden goose. What I can say is that the security guard thought Amanda and I looked alike. I know I haven’t been keeping myself up a lot lately, but I also don’t think that I could pass as a sixty-year-old woman. That’s thought number one. And here’s thought two—they go side by side,” Piper said. “The formulation on a lab slide, under a microscope, shows the cell function of organs—including the skin tissue and muscle tissue—is restored by about twenty years in the mouse population that has been genetically modified to have the Runker-Bailey Syndrome.”

“Did the mice look demonstrably, visually younger?” Chanti asked.

“Hard to tell about age from looking at mice. But, yes, it did look like the mice were rejuvenating and going back to a younger point in their timeline.”

“Right, so if Lionel heard that, and he and his wife wanted to turn back time by twenty years—”

“That might be why they’re in the islands.”

“Bimini?” Chanti chuckled.