Lethal Dose by Jeff Buick Page B

turn on the stereo and found a Yanni CD on her multidisc system. She filled a diffuser with vanilla scent, lit the tea candle, and lay quietly in the darkness.
    Gordon Buchanan. The name kept drifting back to her. Why would Kenga have his name inside a file she had pilfered from Veritas? And why the Triaxcion file? What was going on? She lay on the couch for three or four songs, then dragged herself vertical and switched off the stereo.
    Six-thirty tomorrow morning was going to come awfully early.

18
    Ian Goett, Jennifer’s immediate supervisor at Veritas, poked his head in her office. “Got a minute?” he asked. The look on his face was serious.
    â€œSure,” Jennifer said, dropping her pen and waving at one of the chairs facing her desk.
    Goett closed the door, moved the stack of computer printouts from the chair to the floor, and sat.“Kenga Bakcsi is dead,” he said.
    Jennifer froze. Kenga was on vacation. How could this be? What were the chances of someone dying while tanning on a beach in the Caribbean? She took a moment to collect her thoughts. “What happened?”
    Goett cleared his throat. “She was on some sort of rain forest tour on Saint Lucia when the vehicle she was in went over a cliff. That’s all we know right now.”
    â€œWhen did it happen?”
    â€œTwo days ago, on August twenty-third. The island authorities contacted her family and they passed along our number. I took the call from the investigator assigned to her case.”
    â€œAnd that’s all they said, just that she went over a cliff?”
    â€œBasically, yes. She was staying in the capital city of Castries and arranged for a driver to show her the island. They were deep in the jungle when he lost control and the cab slid off the road into a deep gorge. She was killed instantly.”
    â€œDriver killed too?” Jennifer asked.
    Goett looked taken aback at the question. “No, he managed to jump out.”
    Jennifer nodded, just a slight motion of her head. Her mind was racing. Kenga had classified information on her home computer; information that dealt with a drug in a totally separate division. She had technical data that would see her fired immediately if the brass at Veritas knew she was poking around in secure computer files. And now she was dead. That thought slammed her mind against a brick wall. She was being paranoid. It was simply her imagination drawing a connection between Kenga’s death and the information on her home computer. Veritas had nothing to do with this tragedy.
    â€œThanks for letting me know, Ian,” she said to her supervisor. “I’ll break it to the staff. Any idea when her body will be back in the States?”
    â€œNot at present. In fact, her entire family still lives in Romania. They may want her body shipped back home for the funeral. I’ll find out and let you know.”
    â€œOkay.”
    She watched Ian Goett leave, and her mind kicked into gear again. Was it really such a stretch to think Veritas could be involved in the woman’s death? Veritas was a multibillion-dollar company that protected its secrets fiercely, as did every pharmaceutical giant. The chemical formulas, like the one on Kenga’s computer, were public knowledge, but the process by which the company produced the drugs was its bread and butter. And that process was also on the computer’s hard drive. A process that Veritas would protect with a vengeance. Hundreds of millions of dollars went into research, and marketing the formula and the process, and it would be natural for a company to protect so valuable an asset. Then she shook her head and said aloud, so she could hear her own voice, “This is crazy thinking. This is your imagination. Companies don’t murder their staff for having classified information on their home computers. Kenga went on a vacation and died when the car she was in went over a cliff.”
    The words sounded hollow in