Cutting Edge by Allison Brennan

didn’t simply hang up. “Rich, I don’t have time for this now. I have a class to prepare for. Call me—”
    “ — outside Butcher-Payne along with the fire department and the FBI.”
    Every muscle in his body tightened as if they were being squeezed by a thousand small vises.
    In a voice far calmer than he felt, he said, “I told you the arson fires are off-limits. I’m not involved, I don’t know who is, and the FBI is wasting taxpayer resources by hounding me. But what else is new, right?”
    “Right,” Rich laughed, his voice dripping with falseness. “Except this is much bigger.” All fake humor was gone.
    Against his better judgment he asked, “How?”
    “Murder.”
    His stomach dropped as if he were on a roller coaster, and he leaned back into his chair.
    “Someone was hurt?” he finally asked.
    “Someone is dead. Caught inside. I don’t have the details, but I have confirmed with the sheriff — Lance Sanger, a friend of yours, right? — that there is definitely one dead body in all that destruction.”
    “Who?” Leif was whispering. He cleared his throat. “Do the police know who?”
    “Not officially.”
    Rich was quiet. Damn that man, he wanted to play. He didn’t know how good Leif was at these games.
    “What do you want from me?”
    “A quote.”
    “On what? Shit, Rich, I’m not involved. The fact that the FBI keeps dragging my name and the college through the mud because they don’t have enough evidence or intelligence to do their job is inexcusable. They’re looking at a lawsuit, and you know it.”
    “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I got squat from the feds. It’s your friend the sheriff who has it out for your neck.”
    Lance. He should have known. Lance never understood how Leif had grown up, educated himself, become a better person than he’d been before. Lance was a thug, a cop; he played by society’s corrupt rules. Harboring a fantasy that Leif was still the same Boy Scout who raped the earth and killed innocent creatures for sport.
    “What do you want?” Leif asked slowly.
    “Two years ago, you led a protest against Butcher-Payne for their research into gene therapy, which spurred Butcher-Payne into funding a media campaign to discredit you and your claims—”
    “Hold it. You’ve already gotten it wrong. I didn’t lead the protest, I participated in it. And Butcher-Payne has not even begun to discredit my facts relating to Frankenstein’s monster — namely, genetic engineering.”
    “I’m sure they’d disagree. They certainly aren’t at a loss for funding, picking up huge private and public grants.”
    Rich knew how to stick in the knife.
    The reporter continued. “So there’s no love lost between you and Butcher-Payne. Their research lab was destroyed. Do you have a comment?”
    Leif crafted his response. “Human life is as precious as animal life. It is tragic that someone died at Butcher-Payne, but I hope that the other people behind the company realize that their research is just as criminal as the actions of whoever set the fire in the first place.” He paused, then asked, “Who died in the fire?”
    “It hasn’t been released, pending notification of next of kin—”
    “I understand.”
    “Jonah Payne.”
    “They’re certain?”
    “Oh yeah, they just want to tell his son first, then it’ll be all over the news.”
    There was no love lost between Leif and Jonah Payne. They’d battled for years about biotechnology in academic journals, mainstream newspapers, and even on national cable news. But Leif didn’t want him dead. He didn’t want anyone to die.
    “An accident?”
    “They’re not saying.”
    “Of course not. Look, I have to go.”
    “Don’t—”
    Leif hung up on the reporter and sat at his desk, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows, but not seeing the trees or morning sky.
    Jonah Payne had died in the fire. That Leif was innocent didn’t matter, for his innocence wasn’t pure. He knew too much. He’d known for