Chapter 1

      Dr. Paul Reilly stood in front of his business-class seat, waiting anxiously to disembark the airplane. He’d been traveling for some thirty-plus hours, having started with an Air France flight from Accra, Ghana, to Paris, France, and ending with a Delta flight into Chicago. He was past the point of exhaustion and all he wanted was to be on firm ground, and home.

      The cell phone in his hand began to beep and vibrate, an influx of incoming messages finally getting through after he’d taken the device out of airplane mode. He stole a quick glance at the lengthy list to determine the urgency of his responding, or not, and then he dropped the unit into the inner breast pocket of his blazer.

      The line out of the aircraft began to move slowly. When he spied his first opportunity to make an exit, Paul stepped into the aisle. He reached for his carry-on bag out of the upper storage compartment and pushed forward, beating a woman who was whining about the heat and a couple with four unruly kids out the door. He moved swiftly down the Jetway to the terminal, exhaling a sigh of relief as he shifted out of the crowd toward the baggage reclaim area.

      As he waited for the airlines to engage the luggage carousel, he pulled his cell back into his hands and dialed one of the first numbers in his call list. His brother Oliver answered on the second ring.

      “Where are you?” Oliver questioned, a hint of stress in his tone.

      Paul took a deep breath. “The airport. I just landed.”

      “Did you get my text message?”

      “I got a few dozen. I haven’t had an opportunity to read any of them since I left Ghana.”

      “I sent you the lab results for those tissue samples you gave me. I haven’t had a chance to start testing the drug samples yet.”

      “And?”

      “And, something is definitely not right. But you have a bigger problem.”

      “What’s that?”

      “The samples have disappeared. All of them. The tissue samples and the drug products.”

      “What do you mean, disappeared?”

      “I mean someone took them and now they’re gone.”

      “But you have the results?”

      “No. You have the only results. I emailed them to you first thing, before I even looked at them. Once I did read them, I needed to do some additional testing, but before that could happen it all vanished. Including the original first round of test results!”

      “So, they got both shipments?”

      “Both? You sent more than one shipment of samples?”

      “Yeah. I mailed one to your office and I mailed the other to the house in Windsor, since I knew you had plans to be there.”

      “The Windsor shipment might be waiting for me, as long as no one knew you were sending it there.”

      Paul