Page 19 of Fool’s Gold

Jack grinned openly. “It’s an idea, ma’am, but I’m fairly certain the FBI doesn’t have the resources for that.” It was too bad Norah hadn’t been born fifty or sixty years later than she had been. She’d have made a great asset.

The lady in question fixed him with a glower. “Then your replacement can do it. What? You thought I was going to let it slide how much you resent my boy for making better career choices than you? Not likely. Who’s going to protect him from you while you’re supposedly keeping him safe, hm?” She went back to her knitting.

“Something I should be aware of?” Morales glanced between Jack and Norah.

“Nah.” Jack waved it away. “I might have let my class biases out a bit, but that’s in the past. I’m working this job like a damn professional, I promise. Here’s the thing. I know most of the vocal threats have been coming from people who’ve been hurt by the flu.”

“Yeah, no big surprise there. We’ve seen some chatter from the usual anticorporate suspects, too, but nothing too concrete. Why, have you been picking up on anything specific?”

Jack glanced over at Norah. He trusted her not to blab outside of the apartment. She had as much of a vested interest in keeping Matt safe, if not more, as Morales and Jack did. He just didn’t want to overwhelm her with scary details at her age. Then again, she was a tough lady. She could probably handle more than he could.

Morales most likely knew about Kozlov by now, but Jack explained his connection to him just for context. “Even the more prominent anticorporate groups aren’t going to be able to afford his rates. Only governments and corporations are going to manage that—maybe a couple of extremely well-off individuals, but they’re unlikely to resort to murder over something like this.”

Morales squirmed a little. “Well, yeah. They probably won’t kill the interim CEO out of revenge for catching a super flu. There are a couple of other motives that might give them a reason though. Let me make a call. I have a few ideas, but I’ve got a friend who’s a profiler and pursuing a PhD. He’s the expert.”

Jack shrugged. He was more than willing to take Morales’s word, but if Morales wanted to call in the big guns he’d take that too.

Morales disappeared into another room, leaving Jack with Norah. She mostly focused on her knitting or crochet or whatever it was she was doing. They sat in silence for a long moment, and then Norah broke it.

“You think some corporation wants to kill my Matt.”

Jack sighed. “I think they’re the most likely to have hired a guy like Kozlov, yeah. But we’ll figure it out, ma’am. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried, boy. I’ve got shotguns behind half the doors in this house and a handgun in my work bag. All legal, too, so wipe that look off your face. I used to hide people during the heyday of the Klu Klux Klan. I know what I’m doing, and your Russian assassin friends can’t scare me. What I’m saying is you should be looking closer to home.”

Jack stared at her. “Did someone say something to you?”

She scoffed at him. “I figured a CIA spy would be smarter than this. No one notices a little old lady—especially a little old lady from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. I keep my mouth shut. I do my thing. And it doesn’t take long for the men in suits to forget I’m here.”

Her eyes twinkled. “Matt has a lot of big plans for that company, and not everyone on the board is happy about them. That thing with research and development he wants to do? Where he’s going to have the colleges do the research? Yeah, that’s not real popular with some of the men on the board. That company won’t have control over the patents. They just get to manufacture the medicines. He’s got other changes in mind too, but that’s the one that’s got the most people in a spin.” She shook her head.

“That’s... good to know. Is it even legal for him to do that?” Jack already knew Matt was planning on working with the colleges, but he wanted to hear Norah’s take. Matt trusted Norah, where he didn’t trust Jack.

“Sure. He says it takes away the incentive for ‘bad actors’ to do what Besse did with the super flu. Besse will still make money, just notas muchmoney as they have been. And some board members aren’t thrilled that he’s making sure Morehouse School of Medicine is one of the schools involved.” She smirked. “It’s a new Georgia, but some things are hard to root out.”

Jack stared at her. “I know they didn’t come up here and say all this in front of you.”

She laughed. “Lord, no. You know who else people speak freely in front of? The people who clean their houses, work on their cars, take care of their families. My caregiver, Samaira, has a large family. And she’s happy to talk when it involves Matt.”

Jack blinked, and then he laughed. He’d made use of exactly these types of informants back in the bad old days. Why would the rules have changed just because he’d supposedly gone “straight”?

“Thank you, ma’am. You’ve been a huge help.”

“Did I have a choice?” She jerked her head toward Matt’s bedroom. “That’s my baby in there.”

“Yes, it is. And I mean to keep him safe.”

Morales came back, looking much calmer. “So, I spoke to Gomes. He agreed that greed was probably a primary motivator, along with possible class issues. Jack, you were at a board meeting, right? Did anything seem particularly off to you?”

Jack nodded. “I don’t mind saying it was a contentious meeting. Some people seemed to be pretty disapproving of Matt in general, whether for ‘lifestyle’ reasons or dismay over some of the changes he’s putting in. Heinonen, Walmsley, and Salmon were the most vocal, and I’d say Salmon was the most likely to have contacts who could put him in touch with someone like Kozlov.”

“All right. We’ll look into it. In the meantime, I know I don’t have to tell you to stay vigilant. It was bad enough we were dealing with threats on one front. Now, we’ve got them coming from at least two.” He shook his head. “I tell ya, they couldn’t pay me enough to do the job that guy took on. There’s not enough money in the Treasury.”

* * *

The next daydidn’t start out all that much differently from the first. Husniya didn’t greet them with a surprise meeting, which was nice, and Jack was able to spend the morning digging into the backgrounds of the various members of the Besse Pharmaceuticals board of directors.

He didn’t restrict himself to Matt’s three vocal opponents. He was more than aware that the danger could come from someone who preferred to speak with their actions, or rather actions they paid others to take on their behalf.

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