He comes up with several... none especially good

Watching Tiffany down drink after drink wasn't especially encouraging. Rick hadn't realized, until that moment, exactly how much he'd come to depend on the McKinney Police Department's investigation and its competent (and sexy) lead detective. He'd thought he was cynical enough but events had clearly overtaken him. Corporate ownership of the Texas government was even more complete than he'd imagined.

"So," Tiffany said, her voice slurring from the alcohol. "What are you going to do next?"

"We could sue," Nicki suggested. "Even if you can't arrest anyone, you could get a civil case."

Tiffany laughed. "What damage? You're the daughter. He'd say he gave you bio-DNA to help you stay healthy."

"But he turned me into a child."

"Says who? Can you prove it?"

It was a good point. Even if Rick had documented Nicki's status, her dad could simply argue that Rick hand Nicki had concocted the scheme.

"What if you get that other girl?"

"Misty Storm?" he asked. "We have no reason to believe she has any complaints. She has a good job and apparently she likes sleeping with your dad."

"Gross."

Said the girl who'd also been sleeping with Dan. "The way I see it, the Texas legislature has tort reformed lawsuits out of usefulness anyway. I can talk to Eliza and see if I'm wrong but I'm not hopeful. What about McKinney P.D. Any hope someone there will go after bio-DNA to get them back for what they did to you?" He addressed that question to Tiffany.

She laughed. "They're probably all fighting over who gets my office. Nobody is going to risk their job to back me up. I was the bitch queen anyway, as far as most of them were concerned."

"Okay. Maybe we could publicize the bio-DNA formula. Let everyone know how to make it so their monopoly would be broken."

"Can you do that?" Kat had been sitting patiently listening to the conversation but now she was fully involved. Which made sense since part of her deal in backing him up was to get access to bio-DNA. If he'd been able to give it to her without all this trouble, he'd definitely been stringing her along."

"I don't know how yet," he admitted, "but I still have friends in the company. We might be able to get one of them to sneak us the formula."

"Theft," Tiffany announced. "You'd go to jail."

Which might be worth it if it took bio-DNA down but he wasn't sure it would. The FDA and Drug Enforcement Agency would be all over anyone trying to make bio-DNA on a commercial scale and he just didn't see a lot of high school chemistry labs turning out produce.

"We have to do something," Nicki argued. "All you guys are doing is shooting down every idea I have."

"Fair," he admitted. He didn't bother arguing that half the ideas had been his or that he'd shot her ideas down because they didn't work.

"I have an idea," Tiffany announced.

"What's that?" Nicki demanded.

"I want to fuck Rick."

It was the best idea any of them had come up with lately but Rick wasn't sure how it was going to help with the bio-DNA problem.

"That's a great idea," he said.