Dr. Jasmine Contee stabbed her computer keyboard with an index finger to slap an X into the last box on the final page of the electronic report, which her boss, Dr. Walter Weinberger, claimed he needed in the next five minutes. Removing her from the field and chaining her to a desk in a windowless cubicle for the past two weeks was clearly Weinberger’s idea of punishment for her outburst at the Division of Scientific Investigators’ meeting earlier that month. She opened DSI’s internal E-mail, attached the finished document with a single sentence of explanation to Weinberger and hit send just as her cell phone vibrated, the sound amplified by her desktop.

She snagged it and checked the caller ID. It read Dr. Henry Hommel, the professor who had been her Ph.D. thesis advisor a decade ago and who still remained a close friend. He was down from Manhattan all week attending a conference practically around the corner from her at DSI’s headquarters in D.C. Jasmine brightened. “Hi, Henry. Please don’t say you’re cancelling dinner tonight. I need something to look forward to so I can get through this mountain of mundane paperwork with my sanity intact.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied, but he sounded distracted.

“So, what’s up?”

Henry spoke slowly as though choosing his words with care. “Were you aware that a committee was convened to discuss recommending the methadone patch in the treatment of heroine addiction?”

Her pulse quickened. “No. Exactly what level of committee are we talking about?”

“According to the conference grapevine, the committee was handpicked by none other than your boss, Weinberger. Their recommendation goes straight to the FDA.”

“Whoa. No way.” Not without me, she thought.

“They meet at DSI, today,” he said. “Probably in your department.”

Heat rushed up her neck and flushed her face.

“It gets worse.” Henry said, sounding far too composed for this outrage.

“Worse? How is that possible?” She realized she was nearly shouting. Although Henry was sixty-seven years old, there was nothing wrong with his hearing. “Weinberger snowed me,” she fumed more quietly through gritted teeth. “His punishment for my disagreeing with him in front of his colleagues wasn’t to lock me in this cubicle and bury me in reports that any college graduate could handle. Oh, no. He just let me think that. Now I see his real plan was to hold this meeting right under my nose without my input or knowledge.”

Henry remained unruffled, but his Texan accent was thicker than she had heard it in awhile. A sure sign he was stressed. “I believe that you and I were purposefully excluded from the committee.”

“But why?” she asked. “That doesn’t make sense.” Weinberger might be petty and yeah, he apparently desired revenge, but he was no idiot. He wouldn’t cut off his nose to spite his face. No one was more qualified to block that recommendation than she or Henry, and Weinberger knew it. “Unless…”

“Didn’t I just say it gets worse?” Henry said as if reading her mind.

“Tell me it’s not true.”

Henry didn’t answer.

“Seriously?” She groaned. “They want that committee to recommend the patch? Treat heroine addicts with long-term methadone? I can’t believe–”

Henry interrupted. “Weinberger appointed Moncrieff to head the committee.”

Jasmine ground her teeth. Her grip on her phone tightened so much her hand ached.

“Now listen, Jasmine,” Henry said. “Don’t do anything rash. Just find out where the meeting is being held and I’ll join you there. I’m fixing to catch a ride over to DSI as soon as I hang up the phone. There’s no reason for you to commit professional suicide at this vulnerable stage in your career. Let me take the heat. All right? Jasmine?”

She wasn’t listening. A memory played like a video in her mind. A young man naked and thrashing in a twisted sheet on a mattress in a methadone clinic, the bottom sheet stained with sweat. His arms and legs were riddled with track marks. His black skin was ashy. His ribs were prominent. His mind was as wasted as his body. Jasmine pressed the heel of her hand into her forehead, trying to dispel the image. No way she would let that committee vote to recommend FDA approval for a methadone patch. It wasn’t going to happen. Not on her watch.

Without replying to Henry, she ended the call, pocketed the phone. She stared at the empty espresso cup sitting on her desk for a moment without really seeing it. All at once the cup came into focus, and she snatched it up. She strode down the hall toward the conference room where she and her colleagues had stashed the espresso machine they’d all chipped in for last winter. If the committee was holding a meeting in her department, that was the most likely place for it. If not, then the empty cup would hide her intentions and buy her time to find them.

Jasmine reached the conference room. A typed sign was tacked to the closed door: Private meeting. Do not disturb. Before she had formed a clear plan, Jasmine yanked the door open. “Hold on just a minute,” she announced a little too forcefully.

The heads of the six committee members, who were seated around a cherry wood table too big for the limited space and littered with notepads, binders and laptop computers, swiveled as one in her direction. The expressions on their faces changed from mild surprise to irritation. Jasmine noted only one female scientist at the table, an unfamiliar woman in her fifties with red hair fading to grey caught in a chignon. She wore an ill-fitting suit jacket. The woman briefly took in Jasmine’s cinnamon skin color, the espresso cup clutched in her hand, and then returned her attention to the scientist standing at the foot of the table near a large video screen. He was pointing at an ascending red line on a graph of heroine abuse in America over the past decade. Jasmine immediately recognized him: Dr. Charles Moncrieff.

Moncrieff apparently recognized Jasmine, too, because he narrowed his eyes and thinned his lips. “To what do we owe this displeasure, Dr. Contee?” His upper lip curled as if merely saying her name was distasteful. “You are aware that this is a closed door session, and that makes you an unwanted trespasser.” It wasn’t a question.

Moncrieff had been Henry’s direct competitor for decades, boisterously misinterpreting his own data while relentlessly denigrating Henry and then Jasmine’s conclusions to whomever would listen. He obsequiously schmoozed the National Institute of Drug Addiction leaders to maintain continuous grant funding and cultivated all the right relationships to garner half a dozen publications in Science and Nature—the top two scientific journals in the world—even though his work lacked the necessary control subjects.

Moncrieff’s hostile expression might have given her pause. However, the fact that the only female scientist in the room had just mistaken Jasmine for an assistant scurrying to fetch her boss a fresh cup of espresso fueled Jasmine’s anger. Racism was bad enough, but blatant sexism from her own gender was intolerable.

“Ah, Dr. Moncrieff,” Jasmine said, “I should have guessed you were on this committee.” She strode to the end of the table opposite Moncrieff to stand between two seated men, neither of whom she recognized.

Moncrieff stiffened and his chin jutted. “Why’s that?”

Jasmine tipped her head as she were deferring to him. “I’m not familiar with anyone else in the room, but I’m well acquainted with your work.” She answered in dulcet tones and was just about make a cutting remark about his latest publication when the man wearing an impressive double breasted suit and an expensive looking tie and sitting directly to the right of Moncrieff half stood. He raised the palm of his hand like a cop holding back traffic, which effectively blocked Jasmine’s view of his face. He held a cell phone to his ear with his other hand.

Moncrieff sputtered over the man’s muted phone conversation. “Well, yes. Of course you know my work. As do they.”  He indicated the others seated around the table. “That’s why I am leading this committee and not you.”

The cell phone in Jasmine’s pocket vibrated.

Moncrieff continued. “And regardless of your opinion—”

The man in the expensive suit snapped shut his phone. “One moment, please, Dr. Moncrieff.” He turned to Jasmine. “Dr. Contee, Dr. Weinberger will see you in his office. Immediately.”

Jasmine froze. Although she’d only met him a couple of times over the past few years, she knew that man. He was Weinberger’s boss.

Two minutes later she was standing in Weinberger’s office, expecting him to be apoplectic. However, when she marched defiantly into the room, he didn’t even rise from where he hunched at his desk positioned in front of a modest-sized window. His suit jacket hung askew on the back of his chair, and the sleeves of his baby blue dress shirt were rolled up. The shirt was rumpled, like maybe he’d slept in it. He waved her into the chair on the side of the desk nearest the door, saying, “Close the door behind you.” Then he bent his head down and appeared to focus all his attention on a paperclip, which he was bending back and forth. When it broke, he tossed the pieces into a trashcan. Sighing heavily, he ran a hand across his face where wrinkles seemed to have developed overnight. His eyes were dull with disappointment and something else. Sadness?

He said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this …”

Jasmine steeled herself. This was it. Weinberger was going to fire her.

“It’s about Saunders,” he said. “Mark Saunders.”

“What? Who? Wait. I’m not following.” She leaned forward. “Why are we talking about Saunders?”

“He was killed in a Metro accident last night. Hit by a train.”

“Oh, my God.” Her hand went to her lips. Instantly, she felt sick to stomach, disoriented. She pressed back in her chair as though putting distance between them might make the news disappear.

“Yeah.” Weinberger let out a blast of air. “I know.”

No wonder Weinberger hadn’t sent her packing the second she waltzed through his door. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “This must be quite a shock for you. You know … knew him better than I did.” She’d run into Saunders at DSI functions, of course, and they would cross paths in the office occasionally. However, they were both active field officers generally working alone and so spent very little time together. She knew Saunders as a good guy, maybe a bit too quiet, but quick with an encouraging word. By the book all the way. Great at his job.

Weinberger ignored her sympathy. “Saunders’ body was strewn across the width of the tracks. He would’ve had to make a flying leap to get that far from the platform.”

Whoa. Too much information. The image of Saunders’ body violently ripped into pieces was so repulsive she immediately blocked it. “What are you saying? You think he committed suicide?” she asked. “I mean, he rarely showed emotion, so I never knew what was going on in his head. But even if he’d been secretly depressed, he’s more the swallow-a-handful-of-pills type. Don’t you think?”

“Then someone gave him a helluva shove,” Weinberger said flatly.

Her jaw dropped. Before she could reply, he added, “But all three witnesses said no one had been near him when the train pulled into the station last night.” Another exasperated blast of air. “I don’t know what to think. The police are still processing the scene.”

“This is awful. I’m—”

“Look, I need you to re-open the case Saunders was working on. Both his laptop and the written report were destroyed in that accident. I’ve got the FDA’s top dogs breathing down my neck on this one.”

She blinked and squared her shoulders. “Of course. Whatever I can do to help. What’s the case?”

“A company in the Caribbean called Wolfe Enterprises adapted deep brain stimulation for treatment in addiction relapse.” She had barely processed that information before Weinberger continued. “Addiction research. Right up your alley. So you’ll have the best shot for making the deadline.”

“When’s that?”

“Eight o’clock Monday morning. Exactly one week from today.”

Was that even possible? She weighed the enormous investigative effort and paperwork burden against the tight time frame and came up short. “Can I get a couple more agents to help?”

“No can do. I already worked that angle. Everyone but you and Saunders have . . . had—whatever— families with kids. They’re all doing the extended Memorial Day Weekend thing.”

Jasmine’s shoulders sagged in disappointment. She wasn’t Weinberger’s first choice. What would it take to restore his confidence in her?

“So you’re off to Saint Thomas on the last flight out of here this afternoon.”

“Yeah, sure.” She tried for enthusiasm. After all, this was her chance to redeem herself. Possibly something even bigger was a stake, although she had investigated other companies’ claims that they had cured drug addiction. So far no one had come close.