Damned If You Don't by Linda J. Parisi Read Free Book Online Page B

Morgan played this the way it needed to be played.
    You’re a thief. Stay a thief. Act the part.
    “All this time I’ve known I was in trouble, that I’d done something wrong. But to hear someone else say it—” She shivered. “I’m in a whole lot more trouble than I thought.”
    “Not if I have anything to say about it,” he protested.
    She shook her head. “Not your problem, Jack.”
    “You don’t think so? Guess again. I’m up to my neck in this now whether you like it or not. And I don’t feel like giving up just yet. So I need to know the truth.”
    He took a deep breath and asked, “Just what the hell did you do?”
     
    THE SIXTY-FOUR-thousand-dollar question.
    Morgan knew she was just as guilty as BioClin. She’d accepted the job. But someday, the people at BioClin were going to know just what they’d done to her life. Her life.
    Damn bastards.
    There was a murderer lurking out there. Somewhere. And Morgan had no idea what to do about that.
    She knew she would never be safe until the memory stick she carried made its way into reputable hands. The rest, she could only guess at. Which on the one hand made her a suspect, and on the other, a target.
    Morgan needed help. Only one person could do that for her now, her old graduate advisor, Dr. Huan Chuan Lee, the head of Molecular Biology at Emory University in Atlanta. An expert in the field of metabolic research, he’d contributed to research that went on to win a Nobel Prize. His safeguard was that he wasn’t expendable, not without raising some serious questions.
    Morgan needed time—time to find out who was behind the journal entries. She needed Dr. Lee’s reputation and status as a shield. BioClin knew the process didn’t work, and now Dr. Lee would too. They wouldn’t dare go public with anything as long as they knew he had the project in his possession.
    But that would also put him in terrible danger.
    Welcome to the reason she’d been running around the East Coast for the last week. And the reason Jack had been able to track her.
    Damn the man.
    Could he help her buy that time? Could he help her get to Dr. Lee’s in one piece?
    Yes.
    Did she dare trust him further than that?
    No.
    Morgan examined her logic again. Silence in exchange for time.
    God, she still couldn’t believe it.
    What she’d stumbled on—oh hell, even she couldn’t begin to estimate the possibilities. They seemed endless. And the potential profit for BioClin? Astronomical.
    All for a new diet drug.
    She’d been hired to find a solution to the growing problem of obesity in America. All they had to do was come up with a method that worked. Morgan and her team decided to go after the triggers that stimulate metabolism. If the glycolytic rate inside the cell necessary to maintain cellular energy level could be forced to continue in excess, a person would burn more calories than they could take in and ultimately lose weight.
    The problem was that the natural activation pathways were generally unknown. Her team found one. Then all hell broke loose. At the height of promise, just as Morgan was about to prove out their findings, top management leaked their results to the press, creating a flurry of expectation.
    The bastards didn’t wait. Damn them all to hell and back again.
    Morgan shook her head, trying to tame her emotions. Anger warred with fear. BioClin knew she and her team weren’t anywhere close to anything concrete yet. They had a theory. They had a process that worked—in theory. But BioClin also needed money. By letting the proverbial cat out of the bag, BioClin already had investors breaking down their doors. If word got out that they didn’t have the data, they’d be ruined. So the officers of the company were going to do whatever they thought necessary to get their property back.
    Damn them, they jumped the gun. For money. Screw people and their lives. It was all about the bottom line. Morgan would never be able to understand why. Sure, her brain had