Genesis Read Free

brought a dead mouse to the bedroom door. “Sort of. You have to understand that the kind of work we do—and the kind of work you’ll be doing—is very sensitive. We gotta be real careful about who we hire, y’know? Now, I know Mr. DellaMonica explained all about the five-year contract and the fact that you’d be living in the Hive, but I’m afraid I gotta go over it all again.”
    Lisa tuned out Acker’s droning as he went through the litany—she knew all this even before she went on the first interview. She and Matt had discussed it thoroughly. Umbrella’s most sensitive work was done in the Hive, their name for the underground complex that served as Umbrella’s primary corporate headquarters. From what Matt had told her, the corporate carelessness—and lack of accountability—that led to Mahmoud’s death was only the tip of Umbrella’s iceberg of unethical, illegal, and immoral activity.
    Contract or no, she had no intention of working for this company for five years. Because she had no intention of allowing it to remain in business that long.
    Unbidden, the image of Fadwa came back. Walkingher back to the car after Mahmoud’s funeral service. Visiting her when she got the settlement check, wondering how anyone could put a price on her husband’s life.
    Mahmoud al-Rashan was one of Lisa’s coworkers at Citibank. He had also been a close friend, always lending a sympathetic ear when she and Nick were having their problems. When Nick started neglecting her after his mother died, Mahmoud was there for her to talk to. When she decided to leave him, Mahmoud and Fadwa offered their couch until she could get her own place, and both helped navigate the real-estate minefield that was apartment-hunting in New York City. And Mahmoud had been great about recommending her for contract work after she went freelance.
    In turn, Lisa had been there to help comfort him when what should have been a simple surgical procedure on an ulcer in his stomach turned into something worse, and the drugs prescribed to alleviate the post-surgical complications served only to exacerbate the problems.
    Mahmoud’s lawyer had urged him to sue, a decision Lisa had supported. However, the hospital was not the only target of the suit. The surgeon who had operated on Mahmoud was employed by a service called RPC—the Reserve Physician Corps—which provided supplemental medical staff for overburdened hospitals. The equipment used in the surgery—which was, according to the expert hired by Mahmoud’s lawyer, substandard—was supplied by Caduceus Medical Supplies, and the baddrugs they prescribed were supplied by Armbruster Pharmaceuticals.
    RPC, Caduceus, and Armbruster were all subsidiaries of the Umbrella Corporation.
    Three things happened between Mahmoud filing the suit and the arrival of the first settlement check:
    First, the al-Rashans found themselves the subject of a brutal IRS tax audit. They came through with a clean financial bill of health from the government—both Mahmoud and Fadwa had always been meticulous with their finances—but the process itself was excruciating, and did nothing to aid Mahmoud’s failing health.
    Then Mahmoud’s gung-ho lawyer abruptly switched from wanting to roast Umbrella on a litigational spit to urging Mahmoud to settle. He never explained the reasons for his change of heart, but they all had their suspicions, especially after all was said and done and he took a very long vacation to Europe.
    Finally, Mahmoud died from post-operative complications.
    The Umbrella Corporation had, for all intents and purposes, murdered Lisa Broward’s friend, and gotten away with it by writing a check to his widow.
    Fadwa was bound by a gag order that was part and parcel of the terms of the settlement. Strictly speaking, Lisa wasn’t bound by it, but all the details she knew were hearsay, and any attempt to reveal the