Page 5 of Fool’s Gold

“Well, yes. But you’ll be posing as his boyfriend. Your cover identity and IDs are all prepared for you and available at the front desk. It’s the usual deal. Twenty-four seven, live-in coverage—”

“You want me to live with the guy responsible for killing thousands of people?”

Levi wasn’t smiling anymore. He regarded Jack with a cool gaze. “First of all, we’ve established that he wasn’t involved, and he’s trying to right the ship. There are a lot of lives at stake here, between the vaccines and the lifesaving treatments that company provides. If he gets killed, all of that is at risk.

“Second, how many people have you killed again?”

Jack bit down on his tongue for a moment. “Low blow, Levi. You know it’s different.”

“Oh, I know. Orders. Good old Uncle Sam. But we both know you got out because you didn’t trust those orders were always right. So why is it that you get redemption and Matthew Taggart doesn’t?” He turned his screen around. “Your flight leaves at eight.”

Jack knew a dismissal when he heard one. He got up and fled the office. He had enough practice to appear composed as he grabbed the packet with his false identity and documents on his way out. Then he went to the hotel, collected his things, and checked out.

He studied his cover identity at the airport. He would be Jack Vadas, an art history professor currently on sabbatical. He had plenty of time to read up on the art and archaeology of the French Dark Ages between now and whenever he might interact with the public on Taggart’s behalf.

Part of him wanted to half-ass it. Let him get found out, let Taggart meet the business end of a bullet. The guy probably deserved it.

At the same time, Jack was a professional. He could no more throw a job than he could deliberately miss a shot. It was instinctive at this point. He was what he was, and that couldn’t change.

The flight to Atlanta took three hours. He practiced his new persona on the plane, adding a few more stereotypical traits and pretending to be an extrovert. Anyone sitting nearby would only remember a “sweet gay man on his way to see his boyfriend.”

Ken Irvine picked him up at the airport. Irvine had always been a bit of a strange guy. Most of the Delta Force types were, no matter how long they’d been separated.

Pairing off had done him good though. His blue eyes still burned with a creepy kind of intensity, but his grin was easy.

He hoisted Jack’s arsenal with an effortless grace. “Good to have you on board, bro. You’ll be staying with me, Sam, and Kingston until the morning.”

“Why aren’t we all at the target’s place?” Jack kept pace with Irvine easily as they strode to the parking garage.

Irvine rolled his eyes. “Dude’s resisting security. As in, he doesn’t want any security at all. Says it’s ‘bad optics,’ and he doesn’t want to make local law enforcement feel like he thinks they can’t do their jobs. Also, dude lives with his grandma. I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to go busting in on someone’s grandma in the middle of the night. Especially not one of these old Southern ladies, you know? She’s probably got a shotgun hiding on the legs of that walker of hers.”

Jack had to laugh at the image. “You’ve met her?”

“Oh, yeah. She’s a sweet lady. She crocheted me a hat. But she raised Taggart on some farm near Athens, all by herself. She’s not some pushover.”

“Good to know.” Jack put that tidbit away in his file. Most corporate types he’d met had been spawned from other corporate types. If Taggart was different in that respect, he was either more cutthroat than any of them or possibly different in other ways. “What’s the target like?”

Irvine gave it some thought. “Upset. He’s horrified by what the others did. It’s not a stretch to say he wants to make it right, not that anyone could make it right. He’s determined. When they asked him to take over, he had a specific list of demands. They tried to push back, and he pointed out that he was the only one left with bank authorization. And then he smiled.

“So he kind of had them over a barrel, and he knew it.”

Jack settled into the passenger seat of Irvine’s SUV. “Ah. So heisa dick.”

Irvine chuckled. “Nah. Not hardly. His demands were pretty straightforward. He knew he’d never get another job as long as he was linked with Besse, so he wanted a golden parachute. And that seemed reasonable, right? And he gets it whether they adopt his reforms or not. His suggestions are made public, not swept under the rug—so the world knows what he tried to implement, and they know the board refused to make improvements. C-Suite didn’t get paid and no dividends this year, on behalf of the victims. And a fund to be established with twenty percent of net profits every year to be added, to fund medical care for people dealing with long-term aftereffects of the Besse flu. And they took it.”

Jack blinked a few times. “That... seems reasonable actually. Except for the parachute, none of it directly benefits him.”

“Even the parachute is just common sense. Guy’s only in his thirties. If he can’t ever work again, he’s got to make sure he’s taken care of. He’s got a dependent, you know?”

“I guess.”

Jack wasn’t going to argue about that with Irvine. This Taggart guy could probably find a job in fast food or something. He might not be too old to enlist. Surely the Army could pay him enough to take care of Grandma?

It didn’t take them too long at this time of night to get to the suburban townhouse where Irvine, Darrow, and Kingston were staying. It was only a two bedroom, so Jack took the couch, but that was fine. He’d bunked down in worse places.

For example, tomorrow night, he’d be staying in a CEO’s home, as his live-in boyfriend.

Awesome.

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