by R. J. Blain
“How much do you make doing this sort of work?”
“A decent amount. I’m comfortable. I’d say an average year for me is two hundred thou. I’d make more than that if I were to play nice with your mate’s pack, but I won’t do that unless you want to, so don’t you worry about it.”
No matter what she said, I would worry about it. “What now?”
“I get you inside, you rest, and I start doing research on these assholes who tried to kill you. I’ll also submit an anonymous tipoff regarding the location of the bodies, and I’ll continue the ruse a little slip of a vic had been dragged off. I’ll make sure they understand your pa was a vic rather than accomplice. It won’t take them long to figure out, considering the age of the bodies.”
“One can hope. My pa hadn’t been dead that long.”
Amelia took me inside the RV, which was sparsely decorated, sported a television and two couches, and had enough room for somebody to live comfortably. It amazed me how elegant a home on wheels could be. “This is a lot nicer than I thought RVs could be,” I admitted.
“It helps I bought a good one. Sit down and don’t worry about any blood. I don’t care about a few stains, and if I really need to get it reupholstered, I don’t care. I can afford it.”
I sat down, careful to keep from banging the gunshot wound. I longed for painkillers, but I’d have to take the non-prescription crap and clench my teeth while I healed. “No painkillers,” I warned her.
She stared at me as though I’d grown a second or third head. “That has to hurt like hell. Why don’t you want painkillers?”
“Morphine is basically the only thing I can take without becoming a homicidal asshole out for blood, and morphine turns me into a monster, too, but at least I’m not a bad monster on it. Just a happy one prone to mood swings. Mostly.”
“In good news, I have morphine. In bad news, it’s illegal, and I bought it off the black market.”
I stared at her. “So?”
She smiled. “I see you’re not going to have any problems with going rogue.”
“I figured my days as a law-abiding citizen were over approximately five minutes after I walked out the door knowing they were going to try to put me back on active duty.” I shrugged, a mistake considering the number of holes Amelia had plugged in her effort to keep me alive. “Just give me enough morphine I can’t remember my name for a while.”
Maybe that would help.
Three
I would prefer to believe I am a being completely lacking in emotion.
For two weeks, Amelia gave me enough morphine to knock out a horse, and I appreciated the respite from trying to cope with the ruins of my life. The time didn’t help as much as I would have liked, but I could live with the lessened pain on all fronts rather than being overwhelmed by everything I’d lost.
I made killing those who’d tried to kill me my last mission in life, and I refused to think about what would happen beyond that. Perhaps I’d find a different purpose, perhaps I wouldn’t.
It didn’t matter.
For the moment, I had a goal, and I would make that be enough.
I began the slow, tedious climb out of the drugged fog with a cup of coffee. “I don’t know how you did it, but thank you for preventing any infections.”
“Antibiotics,” Amelia informed me, and she pointed at her refrigerator, which hosted the medications she needed to keep chilled. “The nice thing about the black market is it’s possible to get just about anything. The bad part about the black market? I think I got the drugs cheaper than I would have at the damned pharmacy.”
“Seriously? Wait, that’s a bad thing?”
“Sure, for those who like keeping things legal. It turns out when the black market buys their drugs from other countries that don’t overcharge for it, they can undercut the regular market and still make a fortune. I’m not going to complain. I got your morphine for at least twenty times less than I would have paid if I were to be some law-abiding citizen.”
“Twenty times?” I blurted.
“Well, even more than that. Around here, it’s something like sixty dollars per milligram. I got yours for seventy-five cents per milligram.”
My mouth dropped open. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“And now you know why the illegal drug trade will never go away.”
I scratched my head. “I mean, logically, I’m aware, but it never occurred to me to really do a comparative per milligram. I used to get involved only when things got violent.”
“Well, now you know. The black market I purchase from is clean—as in, the drugs are never contaminated. They source it from good markets in Asia and Europe, so they’re safe for use unlike a lot of the street stuff, which often has additives to make them more addictive. I paid a little extra for the best stuff I could get. If I’d gone cheap, I could have gotten it for fifty cents a milligram. Your antibiotics were a little more expensive, as I wanted the best I could get my hands on. But even then, a little more expensive means eighty cents a milligram.”
Jesus. “No wonder people work the drug angle. You could make a fortune while saving people a lot of money.”
“As I said, now you know why the illegal drug trade is never going away. How are you feeling?”
“Not bad.”
“Emotionally?”
“I would prefer to believe I am a being completely lacking in emotion at this period of time.” I remembered not to shrug. “Right now, I only care about revenge. After that, I’ll sort it out.”
“Whatever keeps you going, Karma. While you’ve been recovering, I have been doing some groundwork. At this point in time, you’re flagged as missing and either kidnapped or dead. The pack has been unable to confirm you are dead, but there is a notation that your mate has rejected or shown no interest in women and is not showing evidence of the grief expected from a lost mate, so they’re working the kidnapped angle. They’re assuming critical injuries, so they’re trying to push as hard as possible.”
“How nice of them.”
“I approve of your use of sarcasm.”
I almost smiled at that. “So, I’m kidnapped or presumed dead. What does that mean for me?”
“It means makeup, maybe some spray tan, a hair cut, and being very careful to mask your injuries when we move. Our next stop is South Carolina, where we’ll camp for a few weeks before moving on to Georgia. I have a lead or two in South Carolina I want to follow regarding this operation. You’re healing a lot slower than a Fenerec would, but given another week, you’ll be able to walk without much of a limp, although you’ll want to be careful about banging any of the gunshot wounds into something, as that would hurt a lot.”
“Understood. What can I do?”
“I picked up a laptop for you, so you can start with reviewing the information I’ve gathered and comparing it to what you know about any related cases. As expected, the bounty for your murder was removed from the system, and there’s no information on if it was paid out or not. The black market operators don’t really care about that, and the specific system the assholes used is less regulated than most. It’s a cesspool, frankly. The Fenerec network is buzzing over this, because wolves are a lot of things, and if one wolf’s mate is attacked or murdered, even with your current status as disputed, it means others may be attacked, too. Nobody is happy with that.”
“That I can believe. Other wolves seem to actually care for their mates.”
Or, at the very least, didn’t reek of other women when heading home after work. I’d seen enough of their culture to recognize they normally kept some distance to prevent that from happening.
One day, maybe I would understand where I’d gone so damned wrong.
Amelia sighed. “I can’t help you with that problem, but someone in that pack is concerned about you, and I’d bet on that being your mate. Really, he’s probably freaking out right now. And blaming himself for having driven you off, especially if you told him you were sick of smelling other women on
him.”
“I did.”
“Well, let’s just say he’s an idiot and move on. Since the assholes who’d put out the hit on you used a pretty shitty network, I was able to bribe the operators to get some information, which is why we’ll be heading to South Carolina and Georgia. I have several addresses, the bank where the funds came from, and a few names. You’ll get to use the names to help track the assholes while I try to dig into the banking situation. The bank issue will be fairly easy. It’s a larger bank, and I have contacts who can be bribed to abuse their access to get more names and addresses. They made a stupid mistake. In that network, you pay off the operators if you want your work to stay secret, else someone—like me—can get intel.”
“Let’s say I wanted to be a dirty agent and make sure of that to get intel. Can it be done?”
“Sure, if you know the ropes and who to talk to and what to say. I can help you with that. It’s bad for business if all the assholes get busted, so if you want to do a hit on somebody who has used the system, you clear it with the ops first. If they don’t want to clear it, there’s usually a good reason for that. That reason may involve their profits, but there you have it. The longer you play by the rules, the more likely you get to catch some of the scum annoying you. I cleared taking out the assholes who wanted to murder you with the ops. I told them I didn’t like when bastards took hits out on women and wanted a piece of the action. It turns out the ops aren’t happy with that group because they’ve failed to pay the full amount of a few bills.”
“Seriously? We’re getting intel on these assholes because they didn’t pay some bills?”
“To the tune of a hundred thou. This group doesn’t sanction or approve bounties before they go live, and they’re one strike from having their access revoked. Basically, they’re revoking access. Permanently. And if I provide some proof I’ve thinned their numbers, I’ll get paid.”
Huh. I regarded the woman with interest. All in all, she seemed like the type of woman Jake would like, assertive enough to do well in law enforcement, pretty enough to warrant a second look at, and fit. Add in that she was the right species, and I lost.
I couldn’t even compare.
That could simplify things for me, too.
She could hold Jake’s attention just walking into the room, and she had ethics. Twisted ones, but they existed. While I finished getting out of my personal version of hell, she could distract Jake long enough to finish what I’d started.
A traitorous part of me wanted to go home, although not to Jake’s home. To mine, the home I’d sold to go to New York, where the only memories I had of Jake there were of annoyance that he kept coming into my space and relief he was there.
His home hadn’t been much of a home for me, although given time, it might’ve been. No, some parts of it had been a home to me, like our stupid master bathroom with the broken lock, as Jake had been an idiot, panicked when I’d slipped and had yelped, and forgot to use the knob before bursting inside to make sure I hadn’t died on him.
Only my pride had been injured, although we hadn’t fixed the door.
Little things like that would make the rest of my life hard.
I forced myself to take slow and steady breaths. “Helping me benefits you all around.”
“It does.”
“Then I won’t feel too badly for inconveniencing you, since you’ll get a good paycheck out of this.”
“That’s a good way to look at it.”
“Shit started going wrong when I became involved with the kidnapping of an infant. It’s called the Greenwich case, as that’s the girl’s last name. I was kidnapped with her, and I busted us out when an opportunity permitted. I’d been partnered with Jake for a few years at that point, but we started going our separate ways because I went to CARD and he went into a different branch of the FBI. After I went into CARD, I got benched. I was told to go rogue for an exercise, so I did, and the FBI ultimately partnered me with Jake again. We took advantage of an exemption to get married.”
I didn’t bother telling her I viewed that as yet another mistake in my life. If my tone didn’t clue her in, that was her problem rather than mine.
“Which one of you instigated the marriage?”
“Unfortunately, me.”
“I see. He was probably taking his time. Once a male Fenerec decides something, they play the long game. I get you have no real reason to believe me, but don’t give up on him yet. Or if you do give up on him, understand he will be relentless in trying to patch things up with you as soon as he figures out how he’s made a mess of things. Fenerec don’t quit.”
“It’s a little too late for that. This isn’t the first problem we’ve had.”
“And it won’t be the last. I mean, I don’t need to be a psychologist to see you need a professional working with you. The way I see it, you probably need a few years off from FBI work and a good shrink to get you into a place where you can handle the work you do. And that’s not belittling you in any fashion. It’s just being honest. Nobody heals from trauma overnight.”
That much I understood. “I don’t even know if I want to do the work anymore, either.”
Amelia snorted. “That’s a problem I can’t help you with. What I can help you with is getting some payback, and I get a nice paycheck at the same time for doing it. All in all, it’s a win for me. All I ask from you is you don’t tell anyone what I am or where to find me.”
“That seems fair. If you tell people, that’s not my problem, though. And if they smell you on me, that’s also not my problem. I’ll just say you smelled weird and leave it at that if they ask. And then I’ll just say I don’t trust my nose, so I wasn’t sure what I was smelling.”
“And with the problems you’re dealing with associated with scents, nobody will even think to check if you’re lying. And if they think you’re lying, just tell them to fuck off. That seems your speed. Good. That works. If they figure it out, that’s my problem.”
Well, telling people to fuck off hadn’t been my default, but moving forward, it would be. “I won’t tell them about your truck, your RV, or how you move around,” I said. “Or anything that might help them.”
If they thought I’d actually cooperate, especially how I’d been railroaded and essentially abandoned by everybody, they would get an unpleasant surprise.
“I can work with that. So, the Greenwich case. What do you think the goal is?”
“Something dealing with the military’s activities as far as I know. That’s the only connection we found. I can’t remember the details—and the details I had were speculation, but the girl’s father had connections, and he was the target of the kidnapping. They were planning on killing us both because he didn’t cooperate.”
“Whatever he’s working on, he must have felt was important enough to risk his daughter’s life over.”
“Probably weapons and tech. Specifically, security software for weapon systems.” I struggled to remember anything else of importance from the case. “There was a boy, Jacob, who ran away linked to the Greenwich case. Last name of Henry. It’s possible one of his relatives was related to the case, as I got a hit on one of the kidnappers while going through a family album during the search for Jacob.”
“It never fails to amaze me how deep the rabbit holes often go. But accessing the security software for weapon systems is a damned good motivation, especially for a terrorist group and similar. So, we assume they’re terrorists.”
“Well, they shot us in London on the streets. It’s not a stretch.”
“That is a good way to terrorize people, yes.” Amelia wrinkled her nose. “I can’t say I’ve tangoed with terrorists before, so this is new territory for me. That said, will I enjoy my work? Yes, I will. To the point of excess.”
“Does it make me a bad person if I’m inclined to share your opinion? Is there a sliding scale of how bad of a person it makes me? Because honestly, I wouldn’t mind adding to the bodies.”
“You have a good reas
on to feel that way. Does this make us good people? Not precisely. But I wouldn’t say we’re bad people. We’re working for the better good in creative fashions.”
“When I go to prison, I’m using that line,” I informed her.
“The goal is to avoid going to prison, Karma.”
I considered that. “With my luck? I’m going to prison. If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all. I don’t have luck. I have catastrophes and disasters.”
“Normally, I would argue with someone when they say that, but I don’t like lying.” Amelia sighed. “It should get better. Eventually. Eventually just might take a while.”
“So, what do we do in the meantime? What’s our plan for South Carolina?”
“We’ll head to the campground, I’ll make use of some of my contacts, acquire a target list, and take names. If the names prove to be associated with this outfit, we commit some crimes. Premeditated murder is at the top of the list, although we’ll have to fit in some breaking and entering, assault and battery, and some other goodies while we’re going about our business. I’m hoping for some good old arson and mishandling of dangerous substances while we’re at it.”
“Mishandling of dangerous substances?”
“Explosives, to be specific.”
My eyes widened. “You want to use explosives?”
“I want their careers as terrorists and murderers to end with a bang.”
I spent all of thirty seconds thinking about that. “Can I press the button?”
Amelia snickered. “Sure, Karma. You can press the button.”
“I’ve always wanted to press the button when they had demonstrations during training, but for some reason, we were never allowed to. It’s like they expect the actual professionals to handle any explosives while in the field.” It wasn’t much, but it was something to look forward to. “How can I help?”
“I have a list of names from the black market operators of people associated with those who put the hit out. As they dislike when they aren’t paid, they were particularly helpful with this, as they listed how they were associated. We’ll have to decide how far to take it, but the ops don’t care. They’ve been taken for more money than they’re happy with, and if we can solve that little problem for them, they’ll look the other way.”
