by KJ Dahlen
Rigger grinned and turned to Inez. “I need to know everything you know about this guy.”
A little while later, Inez was standing by the window looking out into the parking lot.
“Please stand to the side of the window, Inez,” Gypsy called to her. “It isn’t safe.”
Letting out a sigh, she stepped to the side. She could still see outside but at an angle only. She had told Rigger everything she knew about Dino and the men he worked for. Gypsy still sat at a table staring at her and it was beginning to bother her a little.
He kept offering her food but the current situation had taken away whatever appetite she had. Then Patriot began offering her something to eat. When she decided she needed some space, she got up and walked over to the window.
She walked back to the table and sat down.
Gypsy didn’t say anything to her but he did push a glass of orange juice toward her.
Inez rolled her eyes, picked up the glass and began sipping the drink.
“How are you doing?” he finally asked.
Inez nodded. “I’m doing.”
“Patriot thinks you need to start eating.”
Inez shrugged. “I know I do, but it's been so long since I’ve even been hungry.”
Gypsy nodded. “Patriot said if you don’t eat something soon your body will start to shut down.” Leaning forward, he brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “I don’t want to see that happen so please eat something. You can start small but you should eat.”
Inez took another sip of her juice and nodded. “Yeah, I get that. The last four months have been a nightmare. I ate when I could but it wasn’t often enough I know that, then I just got used to not eating at all. I can’t change the past but I can alter my future. Meaning I will try.”
Gunner and Cobra entered the main room and announced, “Grizzly is here and Pappy isn’t far behind. He’ll be here in about half an hour.” He turned to Inez and said, “As much as I’d like to wait for Shay to get here, I think as soon as Pappy arrives you should tell us what the hell is going on here.”
Inez stared at him. “Ok, I guess I don’t have a choice.”
“No you really don’t,” Gunner agreed.
The clubhouse door opened and in walked, a huge man. Inez was stunned by his sheer size alone. Then he turned to stare at her and asked, “Are you Shay’s Mallory?”
Inez nodded but didn’t speak.
Grizzly glared at her. “I’ve been waiting for some word on you for a long time. Where the hell have you been for the last few months?”
“Been trying to outrun a killer to get to you.” She stared back at him.
Grizzly frowned. He looked over at Gunner who nodded then he growled, “What the hell?”
“We’re waiting on Pappy Masterson to arrive then she’s going to tell us what the fuck this situation is all about.”
“Why did you call her Mallory?” Gypsy wanted to know.
“Because that’s her name,” Grizzly told them.
“Actually my name is Mallory Inez and Shay is the only one that really calls me that. I was named after my mom,” Inez explained. “Everyone else has always called me Inez.”
“Then why would Shay call you Mallory?” Grizzly asked.
“I suppose he does it to keep her memory alive.” Inez shrugged.
Grizzly looked over at Gunner and asked, “So when will Pappy get here?”
“Anytime in the next half hour.”
Grizzly nodded and moved to pour himself a cup of coffee. After he got one, he sat down at the table with Gypsy and Inez to carefully studied her. “I’m sorry about your dad,” he said finally.
Inez nodded. “Thank you. I miss him.”
They didn’t have to wait long for Pappy to arrive.
He, Dewey and Gage came in a few minutes later. Introductions were made and everyone was waiting for Inez to begin.
“Now seems that all the players are here, so why don’t you begin telling all of us what this is about?” Gunner asked her.
“My name is Mallory Inez Black. My father was Doctor Michael Black. He was a leading scientist in the field of biology.”
“Shay didn’t really tell us much about what you’ve been through,” Pappy told her. “He said you would fill us in.”
Inez nodded. “My father has worked on many secret projects with and for the military over his career, as well as private projects for institutions. About a year ago, someone approached him with a sample and asked him to analyze it. They told him it was something like red tide, indigenous to freshwater lakes and rivers. They needed a way to kill it without poisoning the water supply. They were hoping to offer it to countries the red tide pops up in.”
She shook her head. “My father was a great man in his field and this was a project he could really get behind. He investigated and found it was not what the man told him but was actually a deadly form of red tide, a rather nasty biologic. But then he found this particular form had already been altered. It’d been altered and rated twice as strong as the normal red tide. Red tide can be lethal and most people avoid it but this strain was deadly. When he called the people who wanted it neutralized, they said they already knew it had been altered and that’s when they told him they wanted him to actually supersize the sample.”
The men all stared at her then at each other.
She went on, “They also told him they would need a way to neutralize it and wanted him to create an antidote. They could sell the supersized version for a price but they could also sell the neutralizer for a better price.” She shook her head. “Anyone who knows my father knows he would never do something like that but these people didn’t care. They offered him more money, more funding and whatever equipment he wanted. So, when that didn’t work, they threatened my life. They knew my mother had passed a long time ago and it was just the two of us. Dad tried to get me to leave, to go away from him but I wouldn’t go. I wasn’t going to lose him the same way we lost mom, but Dad wanted a safety switch, so he told his friend Shay about the demands from this private organization. Shay did a background check on them and found several connections to different terrorist groups. He told my father to go ahead and supersize the formula and the antidote but he to delete the one thing that would do both. The one ingredient that would cause it to be so dangerous.”
The men at the table looked a bit stunned by her story.
Pappy nodded at what Shay had advised.
“So my dad did just that. Then he turned over the formulas for both and he waited because he knew they would be calling. They called him back about a week later and they were very angry. They threatened him with ruin and my dad told them he didn’t care. He would rather face prison than assist them in making a terrible biologic that would kill millions of people. They told him only two people would die and they would still get their biologic. They would come after me and dad and then find another scientist to help them.” She paused as her tears overcame her, running down her face.
Gypsy held her close to him until she regained her composure.
“They told him they would make him watch as someone put a bullet in my head before they killed him. They sent in a man named Dino.” She turned to look at Gypsy. “Last night, I spotted Dino before he could see me. I’m sorry I tried to steal your ride as you put it but I needed to get away before he found me.”
“What happened to your dad?” Cobra wanted to know.
“He stood up to Dino and Dino killed him for it,” Inez told them as she sniffled through her tears. “He challenged the bastard to a fist fight and Dino agreed. Dad thought he had at least a little honor but it seems he didn’t. Their fight was vicious but dad got the upper hand then I stepped into the room and dad turned to tell me to run...” She sighed sadly and added, “And when he did, Dino shot him in the back. The coward cheated rather than fight him like a man. But dad hadn’t known I was there watching the whole time and I-I don’t know what happened that caused me to step out of the shadows, but it gave Dino
the opportunity to shoot him. I shot at Dino.” As she spoke of that night with horror in her eyes a cold tone came into her voice, “He took a bullet in his arm, I’m not a great shot, but as he ran away he lit a fire. Apparently, he had set everything up ahead of time to burn the house down, to hide his crime before he faced my dad.” She shuddered and took a deep breath as she swiped away more tears
The men all sat and waited for the rest as she tried to get a hold of herself.
“I went to my father as the fire began to burn around us. That’s when he told me he put a call into Shay before Dino arrived and he was on his way. He gave me a flash drive and said to head for Jasper Texas to get to John Crowly and give him the drive. He’d said that no matter what, I had to get the drive to John. Then he told me he left out one important ingredient in his formulas on purpose. I begged him not to leave me but he knew he was going to die. Then he told me to survive by running. That I needed to get this information into the hands of the US Marshals, so they could go after the ones responsible for developing the biologic in the first place. He didn’t want this plague released on an unsuspecting world where it could cost millions of people their lives.”
She stopped talking and everyone took a moment to digest her words.
Gypsy stared at her as she sort of slumped with exhaustion after finally telling her story. He realized why she was in the pitiful state she was in and why she had skirted around the truth all day. This had been far more than just her trying to steal his bike.
Chapter Five
Pappy nodded. “Shay told me he’s been tracking down the company that hired your dad but he’s been unable to find them. They lied to him from the very first day about who they were. The phone number they gave your dad was a burn phone and is no longer in service. “We have our girl looking for them. If anyone can find them she can.” He looked over at Inez. “Shay was able to tie this group to a few terrorist organizations but he could never pin them down to any one place. These people evidently have unlimited funds but Shay couldn’t find them. He tried to follow the money but could never find out where the trail began or ended. The more he looked into this group the more he found that this group has done this before. They move around a lot, so the authorities can’t find them. They are an underground group, no one knows who they really are. Once we started looking for them, we found out they change their names with everyone they deal with. Our computer person has had a hard time tracking them down because their computer presents pings all over the world whenever she tries to find them.”
“Do you or Shay know anything about the man who killed her dad, the one who has been tracking her all the way here?” Gunner asked.
Pappy nodded. “His name is Dino March. Doesn’t really matter what you call him, he’s a hired killer, and the only reason he goes after someone is for the money he earns for it.” He looked over at Inez and said, “We’ve been able to determine you and your dad were supposedly his targets. He got your dad four months ago but he hasn’t gotten you yet, so we don’t think he’s been paid yet. At least, we haven’t seen any big deposits in his account.”
“You have access to his accounts?” Cobra looked surprised.
Pappy nodded. “Our computer wizard can get in anywhere she wants to go. Why?”
Cobra looked over at Gunner and smiled. “Let’s throw ole Dino off his game, shall we?”
“What do you have in mind?” Gunner wanted to know.
“What do you suppose ole Dino would do if his account was suddenly empty? Who would he blame? His bosses or someone else? His bosses might be a little on the edge with the job taking so long, don’t you think?”
Pappy smiled. “They might at that. Since they’re an underground organization, he might just figure out they’re the only ones that might have his banking information.” He turned to Inez and told her, “Once we knew where to look we were able to follow your journey all the way here from West Burke.” Turning to Gunner, he informed him, “He used his bank card a lot. If his account suddenly had no money and his credit cards were frozen that might throw him into a panic.”
“He might even make a serious mistake.” Grizzly reasoned. “We might even be able to smoke the sonofabitch out of hiding and bring him in for questioning.”
Pappy and the men he rode in with snickered. Then Pappy looked over at Inez. “Do you still have the information your dad gave you?”
Inez nodded. “I have a little more than that. I have a sample of the supersized biologic and the antidote.”
Pappy whistled. “Wow... that’s. Well, dangerous, but so fitting. You hang on to that until Shay gets here. I want nothing to do with it. All I need is the flash drive I was told about.”
Inez nodded then got to her feet. She unbuckled her belt and pulled it out of the loops.
Then men all sat and watched her.
Next, she unzipped a hidden zipper in the back of the belt and took out a small red flash drive. She handed it to him then proceeded to take out another flash drive, this one was blue. “This is the true formula for both the supersize red tide and the antidote.”
Pappy nodded and took the red flash drive. Nodding at the blue one, he told her, “Turn that one over to Shay. Did the people your dad worked with tell him what they planned to use the biologic for?”
Inez shook her head. “No, but I heard Dino tell dad how they were going to test it the night he killed dad.”
“And what is that for?” Gunner wanted to know.
“This particular variety is for freshwater not salt water. They need to test it in a large freshwater lake. Dino told my dad they were going to test it in Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. That way, they could see just how far the poison went to all the towns on or near the lake.”
Pappy looked over at the men sitting around the table with him. “Fucking hell.” He swore softly. “That would kill thousands of people, depending on how strong it was. Pontchartrain feeds right into New Orleans.”
“That’s exactly what my father said.” Tears welled in her eyes when she told them, “Dino just laughed and said he didn’t care. He and his bosses would be far enough away that it wouldn’t touch them.” She shook her head. “The loss of human lives didn’t mean a thing to him. Not just one but thousands of lives.”
Pappy got up and moved away from the table to place a call. He called Trudy and let her know the situation. “Hey darlin, we got major problems up here.”
Trudy chuckled. “You’ll have bigger problems if Dewey hears you call me darlin.” Then she paused and asked, “How bad?”
“Real bad. A Biologic that could kill thousands dumped in Lake Pontchartrain. That lake feeds into a lot of places in, around, and including New Orleans.”
“Holy fucking shit,” Trudy swore.
“Dino March killed the scientist that created it four months ago because he handed over a dummy sample and they wanted the real one. Now the bastard is after the man’s daughter thinking she has the supersized version, along with the true antidote. She’s been on the run since the night her father died.”
“And does she have the true samples?” she asked.
“She claims she does,” Pappy replied. “But I told her to wait and turn it over to Shay when he arrives. Which will hopefully, be sooner rather than later. I want nothing to do with that shit.”
“I don’t blame you,” Trudy whispered. “What do you want me to do?”
“I need Dino’s money to disappear, his credit cards frozen and I want that bastard left without a dime to his name. Make it seem like his employers did everything. Can you do that?”
Trudy chuckled. “Yeah, I can do that. Piece of cake. Been digging into the organization a bit more and they are not nice people. Mostly moving weapons of mass destruction to our enemies. They have also been selling stolen secrets, mostly military, but from many private industries as well. They have made billions from the Chinese, Saudis and Afghanies. They even have some Russian contacts.”
“Ok, keep looking and hopefully yo
u can find us something, somewhere we can use to track this group down and take these bastards out.” He paused then added, “And get me some background on Michael Black. I need to know who he was.”
“Ok,” Trudy agreed. “You guys be careful and watch your backs. You better bring Dewey back home in one piece mister.”
Pappy smiled. “I have every intention of doing just that honey. I never leave a man behind, you know that.”
When he finished that call, he put another call into Shay. When Shay answered he growled, “Just what the hell did you get us into you old bastard?”
“I take it you got in touch with Mallory?” Shay asked.
“Yeah, I got in touch with Inez as she calls herself.” Pappy growled. “She just told us what was going on. Did you know these bastards were going to put the biologics in Lake Pontchartrain? Sort of a test run to see how many would die.”
Shay was silent for a moment. “How did you find that out?”
“Dino told your boy Michael that just before he killed him. Inez overheard them talking,” Pappy told him.
“Is she all right?” Shay asked.
“She’s a little on the thin side and looks like she could use more than a few good fattening meals but she seems to be okay otherwise.”
“I’ll leave here before dawn and be down there before breakfast in the morning. You tell her that I’m on my way.”
“Ok, but you make sure you’re safe as hell either way,” Pappy warned him. “Your girl seems a bit shattered at the moment, as in barely hanging on. If she lost you too, after all of this, she might go off the deep end.”
He heard Shay exhale hard. “You know, don’t you?”
“That she’s your niece?” Pappy asked. “Yeah, I know. Not sure anyone else has it figured out, but I know.”