Kilburn shook his head in disgust. “Ryland got two million in blackmail money out of Byington. Why wasn’t that enough? Why did he have to cause so much heartache and death?”

“He wanted it all.” Cohen rubbed his thumbs against his index fingers. “The money and the fame and adulation of having helped create a wonder drug. Plus, with his SeptoMed stock options and bonuses, he stood to make tens of millions off the success of Oraloxin.”

Lopez nodded. “And he figured his reputation would’ve been destroyed if the FDA rejected Oraloxin and published the chimp findings.” She put down her fork. “Besides, he knew people would soon figure out who was behind the blackmail if he was the only one to walk away from a drug development failure with money in his pocket.”

Kilburn turned to Cohen. “So they found Martineau’s body, huh?”

“Yes, just this morning. At the bottom of the Schuylkill River with a bullet through his forehead and cement blocks tied to his feet. Took them two days.”

“Can’t say I liked what I saw of Martineau,” Lopez said, “but he ended up getting a bum rap. Ryland killed him and nearly got away with vilifying him forever.”

“Martineau conspired to hide a potentially lethal side effect from the rest of the company and the world.” Kilburn thought of Mallek and Singh with sadness. “People a lot more innocent than him ended up paying just as heavy a price.”

Cohen glanced from Kilburn to Lopez. “What happens to MRGAS now?”

“I don’t know if it’s going anywhere,” Lopez sighed. “There are still new cases in Seattle and Portland. And it continues to spread—although much more slowly—in the Bay Area.”

“Lina’s right,” Kilburn sighed. “We’ve yet to successfully eradicate any bacterial infection. I think MRGAS will be around for a long time.”

Cohen took another sip of wine. “Meaning, so will Oraloxin.”

“Until something safer comes along,” Kilburn said.

Lopez reached over and touched Cohen on the back of his good hand. “Seth, the irony is that Oraloxin isn’t that bad a drug after all,” she said. “The only two patients, out of thousands, who developed the bone marrow complication both recovered as soon as the drug was stopped.”

Cohen frowned. “So Ryland had a point?”

“He’s a self-serving sociopath,” Lopez snorted. “But some of his arguments weren’t too far off. With people’s inadvertent and shortsighted help, nature will keep producing resistant bacteria. And to some degree, we’ve handcuffed the researchers who are trying to find new cures.”

Kilburn lifted the bottle out of the ice bucket and drained the rest of the wine into the three glasses on the table. “This might sound strange for an infectious-disease specialist to say, but I wouldn’t mind if I didn’t hear the words ‘bacterial resistance’ or ‘antibiotics’ again anytime soon.”

“How about ‘pandemic flu’?” Lopez asked with a mischievous smile.