Upon reaching her, he pulled her into a tight embrace. She was acutely aware of his designer cologne and the tautness of his chest and arms around her. Again she experienced the confused stirrings that his physical contact always seemed to bring.

Martineau stepped back and appraised her with eyes as blue as his tie. His lips broke into a welcoming smile. “You look wonderful, Ellen. Are you ready?”

Her anxiety dissipated in his confident presence. “As I ever will be, I guess.” She brushed a lock of hair off her forehead.

“Good.” He winked. “Let’s go convince the board. Then lunch maybe, yes?” he said with a trace of the French accent that he seemed to lapse into whenever he was at his most charming.

Martineau turned for the door, but Horton didn’t budge. “Luc, what if they ask about the trials?”

He looked back over his shoulder with an unperturbed shrug. “So, you’ll tell them.”

Horton stiffened. “Tell them?”

“Of course, Ellen.” His smile remained fixed, but the warmth drained from his eyes. “You’ll tell them exactly what you have found in the human trials.”

She felt the pressure welling in her chest again. “But not about the chimps?”

Martineau studied her for a moment without commenting. “Think of your audience, Ellen,” he said evenly. “They are not academics. They don’t care about chimpanzees.”

Horton sensed his irritation; they had covered this ground already. But she couldn’t ward off the rising doubt.

Martineau began to walk toward the door to the boardroom. “They are waiting,” he said without looking back.

She nodded half-heartedly at his back and followed him.

Inside the spacious boardroom, the shades had been drawn across the bank of windows but the soft fluorescent lighting provided almost a daylight feel to the room. On the large white screen against the far wall, the introductory slide of her Power Point presentation awaited.

Horton kept her eyes to the floor until she reached the head of the table where Luc Martineau stood. He beamed at her without a hint of the coolness of moments earlier. She allowed herself a quick scan of the forty or so people collected around the long conference table. The men outnumbered the women by at least two to one. Male or female, they all wore suits. As she had never made a presentation to the board in her eighteen months at SeptoMed, she recognized only a few faces. One of them belonged to SeptoMed’s CEO, Harvey Abram. Sitting upright with bone-straight posture at the far end of the table, the bearded older man inspected her with disturbing intensity. He nodded to her once, but the gesture brought no reassurance. Out of reflex, Horton smoothed her jacket and skirt with another sweep of her sweaty palm. Then she reached for the remote control on the table.