Page 37 of Fool’s Gold

“I think I can promise you never to do it again. I’ll let you get back to sleep.” Jack hung up as quickly as he could. He didn’t know if he was more embarrassed or demoralized.

Neither would help him in his quest to move forward. He threw the TV on and made sure it was on something inane, like the cooking channel. Here he would see no mention of financial crimes, hit men trying to take out CEOs, or pharmaceutical companies actively trying to screw themselves over.

He let himself fall asleep to the sounds of a very giggly blonde woman trying to explain how to fry an egg.

He woke up when his alarm went off. The TV was still on, playing a commercial for Besse Pharma. He barely made it to the bathroom in time to be sick.

Once there, he cleaned himself up and got dressed. A car service brought him to downtown Denver, where his boss was ready and waiting for him.

Five Star’s offices didn’t look like much from the outside, but they didn’t have to. The building had once been a warehouse, and the front half of the bottom floor housed one of Denver’s many fine brew pubs. Someone visiting for the first time would never believe what the rest of the building housed.

They’d never believe that Levi was half owner of the brew pub either.

Jack let himself in through the back door and climbed the five flights to the top floor. It was early, but Levi was there already, as were a couple of the analysts and admins. The coffee station was in good form. Jack grabbed two cups—black—and headed into Levi’s spacious office.

Levi didn’t look nearly as old as he was. He stood six foot six and was thin as a rail. His hair had long since grown out from its military trim, more like flames than a neat round halo and lighter at the tips than the root. Light-brown skin had gotten darker in the summer sun, somehow, even though he spent almost all of his time in the office.

He gave Jack a tired smile. “So. Job’s done.” He took the cup Jack passed him.

“Yeah.” Jack slumped down into the chair across from his boss. “For whatever it’s worth. Thanks for not being a corporate dick.”

“I mean, technically, I am a CEO.” Levi closed his eyes and breathed deep, drawing something more than just aroma from the steam rising from his coffee.

“Sure. But you’re not the kind of guy who’ll sink his own company and put out a hit on the CEO he hired when sinking the company doesn’t work.” Jack gave a full body shudder. “I don’t mind telling you I’ve seen some shit. I’ve seen genocide. I’ve excavated mass graves before the bodies were even cold. I never thought of myself as squeamish.

“This? This left me cold.”

“Yeah. It was a new one on me. Murder for hire motivated by stock prices is a new one on me too.” Levi pushed a slim paper file away from him, like it could somehow contaminate him through proximity. “I usually try to stay away from the morally repugnant clients. I was hesitant in this case because of what happened with Besse, but those Feds talked me into it. They didn’t trust local law enforcement, and law enforcement didn’t have the capacity to handle protection. In the end, I’m glad we took the case.”

Jack blinked. “You are?”

“Yeah.” Levi leaned back in his seat. “Law enforcement wouldn’t have listened to the client. Matt Taggart had a good grasp of financial crimes and controls before he went to Besse. He was one hundred percent the right person to have in that position at that time to draw out the bad actors. And I’m glad it was you there.”

The best thing about working in the private sector was being allowed to laugh in his boss’s face. “Now I know you’re messing with me. I was compromised before I even met the guy.”

Levi raised an eyebrow and reached for his glasses. “You certainly did have your biases. You weren’t enthusiastic about the assignment. But you did the job, and you had the flexibility to roll with the situation as it changed. Andhehad the flexibility to follow your lead when he needed to. So I’d call it a good pairing.”

Jack had to look away. “We, er. We might have patched up our differences. That’s a different kind of ‘compromised.’?”

Levi snorted. “Yeah. I know about that too.”

Jack let his head fall back and looked at the ceiling. “Of course you do. Did you Lojack me, put a camera implant in my cornea, what?”

“You already know about the tracker in your watch, and you know it’s for your safety, Jack. You recommended the last three upgrades.” One corner of Levi’s mouth twitched, like he was trying to hold back a laugh. “And the whole implant thing might be something your former employers were into, but not me. I can’t even do contact lenses, man. Eyeball horror.”

Jack had been forced to do some pretty repulsive things involving eyeballs back when he worked for the Agency. He tried not to think about them now. He certainly wasn’t about to mention them to the guy who signed his paycheck. “Cool. Good to know.”

“Look, you and Taggart are both consenting adults. Anything that happened, as long as itwasconsensual, is fine. It didn’t compromise your job, and it didn’t endanger the client. Or anyone else. Hell, Kingston, Darrow, and Marshall all wound up married or at least engaged. I’m almost surprised you haven’t.”

Jack shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I’m not that guy.”

“Do you want to be?”

The question jolted into Jack, like a bolt of electricity. “What kind of question is that?”

“Sorry. I just—well, my whole thing is noticing patterns, right? Usually, you’re on the first flight out when a contract is ended. Bad guys are in cuffs; your ass is at the airport. You once stole a helicopter from the New York state troopers because you didn’t want to spend one more minute pretending to be part of the family you were assigned to.”

Jack had to chuckle at the memory. “To be fair, it was the Hamptons. And they were basically piranhas in pearls.”

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