Page 23 of Fool’s Gold

“You haven’t been on the farm since you were eighteen.” Jack knew he was grousing. “Shouldn’t that ‘up with the chickens’ thing have kind of... oozed out of you by now?”

Norah and Patrice laughed at him. “Not hardly,” the latter hooted. “When you’ve grown up like that from the time you were in diapers, it never truly leaves you. You just keep on waking up that way, like clockwork. You can’t help it.”

“And even if he could, Matt wouldn’t sleep in. He hates the thought of me struggling.” Nora reached over and took Matt’s hand. “After the first time I fell, he moved me right into his condo, even though he was still a young man and I’m sure his social life suffered.”

“It’s hard to have much of a social life when you’re flying all over the place for audits.” Matt’s cheeks reddened, and he looked away. “It wasn’t a big deal, Gram.”

“It was a big deal to me.” She squeezed his hand and beamed at him.

Jack’s heart melted a bit. He didn’t know why Matt’s grandmother had raised him, and he didn’t feel like he needed to know. He’d gotten a bit of a hint the other day, and that was enough. Matt took excellent care of Norah in her old age, and he clearly didn’t do it to make himself look important or special. He seemed to do it out of love, just as Norah had cared for him out of love.

Jack didn’t have that kind of love in his life, not from family or anyone else. Most of the time he didn’t think he needed it. Watching them now made him doubt his easy dismissal.

“It’s great that you have each other.” He didn’t have to fake the soft smile that came from him then. He normally would have. The clients he protected had generally earned their enemies. Granted, he’d gone into this job thinking Matt had earned his too.

“Isn’t it?” Patrice beamed at them both. “I work in a nursing home during the week. No shame in having to go there, and plenty of families stop by to visit their loved ones every day or at least every week. But you also see a lot of people who just don’t have anyone, or at least don’t have anyone close. You have to love to see a family like theirs.”

And who would Jack have, when all was said and done?

The sound of Matt’s ever-present phone interrupted his reverie. He frowned down at his screen and excused himself, retreating to the bedroom to take the call.

Norah snorted. “Business calls during breakfast. It had better be important. He knows better.”

Patrice sipped from her coffee. “Now, he didn’t take calls during meals before this whole thing with that virus blew up.”

Norah nodded with a sad smile. “Yes, I know. He’s trying so hard to clean everything up, but I just don’t think it can be done. It’s the flu. He’s an accountant, not a doctor. And it took a whole team of crooks and murderers to make this flu happen. How can one accountant fix it?”

Jack cleared his throat. “I’m not exactly a medical expert myself, ma’am, but he’s not doing it alone. Not at all. He’s working with a lot of other people around the world to try to fix it. And I don’t know a ton about corporate whatever, but he’s doing a lot to make sure it never happens again.”

“That’s because he’s a good man.” Patrice nodded. “He doesn’t have to know how to develop a whole new medicine or whatever. He just needs to know how to keep the men who do in line. That’s why they put him in charge.”

“And why he needs a guy like him, and the whole Atlanta police department, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI, to keep him safe while he does it.” Norah sighed and looked down at her plate. “Well, these dishes aren’t going to wash themselves.” She started collecting plates.

Jack swooped in. “I’ll take care of that, ma’am. You cooked; you shouldn’t have to clean. Matt will help when he’s done with his call.”

Matt emerged from his room just as Jack finished clearing the table. “We need to head down to the CDC. Dr. Darrow has some news for us.” He blinked at Jack, who was already filling the sink. “We can afford a few minutes to deal with dishes.”

Twenty minutes later, the dishwasher was loaded, the pots and pans clean, and Jack and Matt were on their way to the CDC main campus.

Jack knew who Sam Darrow was, of course. Everyone knew, unless they’d been living under a rock someplace with absolutely no internet connection. Darrow was the CDC epidemiologist who’d discovered the super flu in the first place, and who’d become the spokesperson for the agency when his superiors were killed. After a few public assassination attempts, the media discovered that he was handsome and funny as well as a genius, and he became a sought-after guest on news programs as well as late-night talk shows.

The CDC had no problem with that, seeing as how it put them in a good light.

Jack hadn’t met Dr. Darrow yet, but he knew of him through his Five Star bodyguard turned boyfriend, Ken Irvine. He didn’t mind working on Sunday if he got to hang out a bit with Irvine. He was former Delta Force. Out of everyone Jack knew, he came closest to understanding what it was like to do awful things under orders, only to find out that the ones giving the orders weren’t necessarily the good guys.

Irvine hugged him when they arrived at the CDC, and shook Matt’s hand. Apparently, they’d met not long after Matt took over. Who knew? Matt smiled and asked about Darrow’s brother and about an injury Darrow had sustained during the struggle with the former chief operating officer.

Irvine absolutely glowed. “He’s healing up okay, although I’m not sure he’ll ever be a hundred percent in that arm again. Noah’s doing well, you know how he is. He’s looking into some of the threats against you, by the way. Once that Russian guy turned up, Military Intelligence got more than a little interested.”

Jack followed along as Irvine guided them to a conference room, where Darrow was guarded by Jamal Kingston. The former SEAL was laughing at a joke Darrow had just told him. Jack knew Darrow had been the one telling the joke because his handsome face was screwed up into the best shit-eating grin he’d ever seen.

Matt stepped forward and offered his hand to both Darrow and Kingston. “Dr. Darrow, Mr. Kingston, it’s good to see you both again. I hope everything is going well?”

“A little from column A, a little from column B.” Darrow shrugged. “Please, have a seat. I hate to drag you out on a Sunday morning, but I wanted to give you a heads up before I have to give a briefing about this stuff.”

Jack tensed. If whatever Darrow had to say was going to lead to a public briefing, it was probably bad news. That meant even more threats, even more attacks. Matt was already resisting reasonable safety measures. What would his enemies do next, blow up the apartment building?

“I appreciate that.” Matt sounded sincere and confident.

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