Doubt (Caroline Auden Book 1) Read Free

suppressed a smile. Louis’s distaste for technology was legendary. Not only was his computer dark, so was the office lighting system. The only illumination came from an antique floor lamp, its green shade casting a glow on pictures of Massachusetts in the 1800s.
    Louis himself evoked a bygone era. In his glen-checked bow tie and herringbone blazer, he looked like he’d stepped out of one of the pictures on his wall. He wore a gold ring on his right hand, adorned with the pig’s head crest of Harvard’s elite, old-money Porcellian Club.
    “Have a seat.” Louis gestured to the guest chair positioned in front of his heavy walnut desk.
    Sitting down, Caroline clasped her hands in her lap. Her fingers itched for her laptop, but Silvia had warned her that Louis “found it distasteful” to look over a screen to speak to someone.
    “Where’s your legal pad?” Louis asked.
    Caroline just grimaced and shook her head.
    “Always bring paper and a pen to meetings.” Louis offered her a Montblanc from his penholder, then handed her a yellow-lined legal pad from the top drawer of his desk. “It signals you’ve come for more than just idle conversation.”
    Louis spoke with the broad A s and clipped endings of the eastern elite, a species rarely seen west of the Mississippi. Caroline knew his story. He’d moved to Los Angeles fifteen years earlier when Thompson Hale had offered him the helm of his respected firm. Since then, Louis had regularly topped the legal papers’ lists of bet-the-company litigators. Meanwhile, Thompson had taken emeritus status, collecting a share of the firm’s profits while practicing his golf game.
    Now Caroline waited for Louis to make the next move. These early salvos of this first conversation were important. Even though Louis knew her from class, he’d no longer be comparing her to other law students. He’d be comparing her to the talented attorneys at his firm. Although his offer of employment was a vote of confidence, she still needed to earn a spot in their ranks. Even these early niceties were a way of probing her worth. So far, she’d done nothing to impress him.
    She silently vowed to do better.
    “Now that we’ve finished the idle-conversation part of our meeting,” Louis said, a hint of amusement playing across his patrician features, “I’d like to give you your first assignment.”
    “I’m ready.” Caroline waited, borrowed pen poised over borrowed legal pad.
    “I’m putting you on the SuperSoy case. I’m sure you’ve seen it in the news.” He raised his eyebrows again, his expression hopeful.
    Caroline shook her head. She hadn’t heard about the case, and she didn’t want to lie.
    With a pang in her stomach, she noted the flicker of disappointment in Louis’s eyes.
    “ SuperSoy is a major milestone in mass tort litigation,” Louis explained. “It’s the first major case brought against a biotechnology company for injuries caused by a genetically modified organism.”
    Caroline dutifully wrote down the information.
    “The financial stakes are huge. Last year, biotech companies grossed twenty billion from genetically modified seeds. One of the most profitable seeds on the market today is SuperSoy.”
    “So people are suing the manufacturer?” Caroline asked. The issue wasn’t obvious.
    Louis nodded. “The problems first showed up among athletes. Extraordinarily fit people suddenly went into renal failure. Doctors soon began seeing the same phenomenon among babies. Athletes and children. These two populations with nothing in common except general good health were stricken with rapid-onset kidney disease. It didn’t make sense. But then someone realized the common ingredient: soy.” Louis punctuated the conclusion with a jab of his index finger.
    “Let me guess,” Caroline said, “the athletes were drinking soy-based protein shakes, and the kids were drinking soy-based baby formula.”
    “Correct.” Louis nodded. “Many products contain Med-Gen