Page 77 of Harrison Hyde and the Runaway Bride

She rolled her eyes. “Windmills, yes, and solar installations, and an EV dealer.” She shook her head slow. “I know. The man’s an idiot.”

“Jimbo Beckett?” he asked. And when she nodded, “And yet you’re working for him. What did he pay you?”

“Plenty, and a house in paradise, but that’s not why I did it. He’s getting John into a clinical trial, Harrison. A promising one, with real hope. And all he asked me to do was not file the patent and bring him the prototypes.”

Even though she was saying it, he was having trouble believing it was true. “A clinical trial isn’t a sure thing. You know that. Who’ll take care of John if it fails, and you’re in prison?”

“Prison? I have a mansion waiting on a tropical island with no extradition.”

“What about the planet? What about our work?”

“What about my sick husband? Doesn’t he deserve this chance?”

“Carrie, the climate?—”

“Oh, comeon.Someone else will do what we did. The science is there. Others are working on it. Luckily for me, Beckett doesn’t believe that.”

“So, I’m just?—”

“You’re one remaining loose end,” she said. “At least according to my crazy benefactor.”

Harrison closed his eyes. “He’s going to kill me.”

“No, he’s not.”

“He killed Solomon,” he said.

“Solomon had a heart attack.” Carrie reached out to turn up the air conditioning. “Though Robert probably caused it. It wasn’t deliberate.”

“It was pretty deliberate when someone killed Robert, though,” Harrison said.

Carrie flinched. Then she nodded. “Beckett found out Robert had fudged the data in a study he was part of, twelve years ago. Blackmailed him into helping. Robert didn’t mean to kill Solomon. But Solomon found out I hadn’t filed the patent and started asking questions. Robert was just supposed to scare him to keep him quiet. He was devastated when Solomon collapsed.”

“But he left him lying there alone, all the same. Didn’t even call for help.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know the details. Just that he came to Beckett, saying he wanted out. Taking your car was supposed to be his final act. Beckett told me he planned to let him go after that.” She lowered her head. “I thought he had, but I overheard one of his muscle-heads talking about how cleverly he’d hidden Robert’s body.”

“In a small-town hospital morgue with only one rarely used drawer?”

She nodded, looking at him. “He dressed as a maintenance worker, rolled poor Robert through the hospital inside a trashcan. Found a body bag in the morgue, zipped him in, then planted him in the empty drawer.

“Why?” Harrison asked. “They had to know he’d be found there.”

“The boss wanted him where he’d be found, but not for a few days,” she said. “Who the hell knows why? Like I said, he’s insane. When I realized he’d killed Robert I understood he must plan to kill you, too. You were the only one left, and you’re too squeaky clean to blackmail and too upright to be bought. I got one of his thugs talking. Beckett has a bunch of good ol’ boys on his payroll who do nothing but… solve problems. He told them whoever killed you would get a million, cash.”

“Then why am I alive? Why am I even in this car right now?”

“Because of me, Harrison.” She looked him right in the eyes. “I convinced him, I think, that there are more projects in theworks than he can’t hope to stop on his own, and that he needs scientists who work in the field to tell him which pose the biggest threats to his precious oil-based lifestyle.”

“That’s stupid, there are hundreds.”

“”Shh!” She shot a quick look forward, toward the driver. He had earbuds in his ears. “Do not tell Jimbo that,” she said. “Listen, this is not a smart man. But he’s got billions and so far, he believes what I tell him. So, when I told him that his notion of sabotaging any renewable project that was getting close could work, he believed me. And when I told him it was a few more projects than I can monitor all by myself, and that I needed your help, he believed me again.”

Harrison closed his eyes and shook his head. “And he’s doing this in the misguided notion that it will preserve his oil business?”

“He’s trying to preserve his way of life,” she said. “He’s a dinosaur looking at an approaching asteroid, and I think it broke him, Harrison. Broke his mind and broke his heart. He thinks he can stop it. He can’t, and he won’t, but he refuses to believe that. So…”

“You’re cashing in.”

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