“Is it?” His jaw tightened, and I inched over in my seat, pressed against the window. “Was it so fucking hard for you to lie low?” He ran a hand through his hair, obviously disgusted with me. “Don’t answer that.”
He’d perfected the art of stillness. And yet I could tell by looking at him he was coiled and ready to strike at anything he might consider a threat. I just hoped I wasn’t the threat.
“All the trouble I went to for you. To ensure the police were looking for a cartel hit man, to keep you hidden, and you just couldn’t leave things alone like a normal person.”
He turned his head, hazel eyes boring into me. “You truly believe you can save the world one person at a time.”
The signal to change lanes sounded loud in the car, and he let out a sigh. “It’s bloody exhausting being around you.”
Whatever. “I didn’t ask you to do any of that. And if you wanted me to lie low and be normal, then why did you leave me the guns?” I was practically shouting at him. “You must’ve known I would continue my work.”
He didn’t answer, merely pressed his lips together. Was he regretting the decision to help me? Ryder had promised to take me apart piece by piece. As I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, once again I thought he reminded me of Benicio del Toro. Talk about sexy.
The miles sped by, and classic rock played softly through the speakers as I fidgeted in my seat. Finally we stopped for lunch at a fast food joint, went through the drive-through, and continued on, but before I could fuss, Ryder pulled into one of those scenic overlooks. We sat outside at one of the tables while two kids played and their exhausted parents ignored them.
“I can hear you thinking from over here.”
I let out a sigh. Might as well find out and quit worrying about it.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Not at this exact moment, so you can take your hand off the gun. You’re not fast enough, unless you’re planning to double-tap me to the back of the skull, like an old-fashioned mob hit, when I get in the car.”
“How did you know I had them with me?”
“Your bag is heavier. You put all three guns in the bag when we stopped for gas.”
The family left and Ryder closed his eyes. I slept in the car, but he’d been awake the entire time since we left, refusing to let me drive.
“Thirty minutes. I need to sleep.”
“But—”
“Stop talking.”
He was so aggravating sometimes, how he knew what I was going to ask before I did. There was a path promising another overlook, and since we hadn’t seen anyone, I figured whoever was chasing us was still trying to figure out where we went. So I stretched, slung the messenger bag over my chest, and went for a quick jog to work off the restlessness.
Sweaty and tired, I stopped to sit for a minute on a bench built into the path before I went back to the car. It’d been twenty minutes and Ryder would be itching to leave. I was leaning over to tie my shoe when a shadow fell over me.
Ryder stood in front of me, gun raised.
I scrambled for my gun, and everything slowed down, sound fading. I saw the slightest arch of his brow as his finger caressed the trigger and squeezed, and a scream left my mouth.
There was a thud and I blinked, patted myself all over, unsure if I was still standing or already dead, waiting for my brain to figure it out.
“What? Why now?”
Ryder took me by the shoulders and turned me around, and I saw a man on the ground. He’d fallen from the tree when Ryder shot him.
“Bloody amateur.” He curled his lip. “This incompetent prick is what the Organization sent after us?”
He was insulted, and I was still shaking with adrenaline but suddenly happy. Because I remembered the last time he was insulted. I’d interfered with a dog-fighting ring a senator was involved in, and he’d used the Organization to hire Ryder to kill me. I guessed the senator got impatient, because he hired another hit man. Some blond guy; I’d seen him asking about me at Walmart.
Ryder had said, “I don’t work with others. The senator broke our agreement. I owe him nothing.” And I knew then that the only reason I was alive was because the senator injured the hit man’s pride. Sending someone else to do your job was a slap in the face.
“How did you even see him in the tree? It’s far. I couldn’t have made that shot.” With a final look at the lump in the brush, I caught up to Ryder. “You never miss, do you?”
“The day I miss is the day I retire. Come on, they know where we are.”
Ryder didn’t speed; he drove normally as he got on the highway, merging into traffic. I kept glancing in the side mirror, looking for cars following us, and grateful he was protecting me and not the one after me. If he had been, I’d already be dead.
The phone rang, and I noticed it was different. He had a second phone. I heard his terse “yes” and “no.” It was a short conversation.
He rolled down the window and tossed the phone out. An eighteen-wheeler ran over it, crushing it to bits.
“Why’d you do that?”
“The Organization has figured out I’m not bringing you in. They know about the senator. They’ve blacklisted me for helping you.”
“The senator? What does he have to do with this?”
“He drowned in his backyard pool after drinking too much. He was heartbroken over the loss of his illegitimate kid. The one you killed.”
“Henry Allen James. I remember. He deserved it. Did you kill the senator?”
“Cleaning up loose ends. Was already on probation for fucking up the job with you.”
He’d been quiet for an hour, when out of the blue he spoke. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. Now that I’m blacklisted, I won’t have the level of access I’d like.”
“How will we make it? Why do they care you’re helping me?”
“I have contacts. We’ll make it.” Ryder took an exit and we were on back roads again. It was smart; hopefully we’d lost the people chasing us.
“My employer is agnostic when it comes to politics. The Organization takes contracts from all if they have enough money. But there are rules, codes of conduct, and I’ve broken them all, thanks to you.”
“But why? I’m ordinary. Why would you risk so much for me?”
The corner of his mouth tugged up; not quite a smile, but almost. “You are the opposite of ordinary. God help us if there were more ‘ordinary’ people like you. I swear you’ve given me gray hair. Bloody hell, this is why I don’t have kids.”
“You’ve gotten verbose being around me.”
He cut his eyes at me. It was quiet for a few minutes, and he had a look on his face like he was puzzled.
“What?”
“I’ve met a lot of people, pride myself in understanding what makes them tick, but you, you’re different.”
“You know what happened to me when I was little. I guess I blocked it all out until a simple wrong turn brought everything back.”
“Wilmington,” he said, obviously having done his homework on me. “I went to the NCARCA conference, met Grayson and some of his coworkers. Heard a lot about what you’d been up to.”
“You heard what happened?”
It had nothing to do with me, yet I felt responsible for his death, like if he hadn’t met me, Grayson would still be alive.
“Hit by a drunk driver. Sad.”
“Didn’t Grayson wonder who you were? No offense, but you don’t look like an animal control officer.”
“I blend when I need to, Miss Rache. They simply assumed I was another officer they hadn’t met, and I didn’t tell them otherwise.”
“The law was bullshit, so I decided somebody had to speak for those who couldn’t.”
“And even after I gave you a chance, a new identity, you couldn’t let it rest. Unless I can show them you’re dead, you’ll be on the run for the rest of your life. And without me, you won’t know what to do. Have no idea how incredibly lucky you’ve been so far. It wa
sn’t hard for me to find you. Other guys in my organization will find you and kill you without hesitating.”
“You hesitated. Why did you let me live? Lord knows I don’t deserve to.”
He got back on the highway, moving among the other cars until we were driving next to two other black vehicles.
“I’ve asked myself that too many times. Something about what you were doing intrigued me. And it’s been a long time since anything has intrigued me.”
The miles sped by, afternoon giving way to evening before I spoke again. “I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you. Sorry you lost your job because of me.” Unwilling to risk a look at him, I stared at my hands, turning each charm over and over. “There was a time I thought perhaps I could find my way back to the light. But you know what? I can’t. It’s fine people eat meat, but Will or Kurt or whatever name he went by, he and his friends abused those cows for no other reason than to be cruel, and I couldn’t let that stand. He would have gotten away with it, just like he did with the drunk driving when he hit that bus, killing a mother and her two kids.”
Screwing up my courage, I looked at him but saw no judgment on his face.
“There is no light for me, only darkness and death. You should leave me to die. Everyone close to me ends up dead.”
CHAPTER 30
“DO YOU REALLY THINK ALL this is unconnected?” I’d been telling Ryder what I’d uncovered, from the old and rotten food at the Grab-and-Go to the information I found online and the video Chris showed me. I explained what he saw at the plant, how companies kept meat red and fresh-looking for up to a year using gas. I wished I’d had time to bring the video with me, but Ryder made me leave almost everything behind, especially electronics.
He flicked a glance my way. He was the only man I’d ever met that could sit perfectly still.
“I think you’ve spent too much time alone. Now you see conspiracies everywhere. What would these companies gain from making people sick? Consumers would quit eating their foods and they’d all go bankrupt.”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
We’d pulled into a cheap motel late last night and slept like the dead. Well, I had. Ryder didn’t seem to require more than thirty minutes here or there. The room was sketchy, but the water was hot and I reveled in the feeling of tight muscles relaxing. Figured that I’d bought the massage package before I could use it up.
The breakfast place was thinning out as we ate, and the television droned in the background, mixed in with the pop music and people’s conversations.
After the weather, the newscaster gave an update on the outbreaks. “Hinkle Foods has expanded its recall to include all bagged salad mixes with used-by or sell-by dates between…”
I cringed thinking of how much salad I’d eaten over the past several months.
“If you’ve purchased any of those products, bring them back to the store you bought them from for a refund.” The news guy paused. “And there’s an update on the E. coli outbreak as well. A Texas beef processor is recalling more than twenty tons of meat after a hundred people at a family reunion fell sick, and three were hospitalized. The implicated meat was shipped to two distribution centers in Texas. Consumers who have purchased these products are urged not to consume them. The products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase.”
“This is what I’m talking about.”
Ryder left cash on the table to pay the bill. “Come on, Sherlock. Or maybe you’re Gene Hackman in that movie Enemy of the State. No, I’ve got it, Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, before he went crazy.”
“Laugh all you want, but I noticed you didn’t eat any bacon or sausage this morning.”
Back on the road, I rolled down the window, enjoying the breeze and hoping Midnight and Maddy were safe. And happy together.
“The food outbreaks, the factory farms, people getting sicker and fatter every year. It’s all tied together. Don’t you remember the scandal with the banks? Too big to fail. Hinkle, Gier, and those other companies only care about profit. So for them, people getting sick just means more people go to the doctor, big pharma creates more medications for problems we never knew we had, health insurance premiums skyrocket, insurance companies bill more, and everyone makes money. Except the little consumer.”
I saw the way he was looking at me, and went on before he could interrupt. That man could be so damned logical at times, and I didn’t want to hear it.
“I’m not making the leap that there’s a conspiracy between healthcare, big pharma, insurance, and food…although it certainly would make sense. What I’m saying is big food knows they’re cutting corners, treating animals like sacks of flour or other commodities; they’re no longer flesh and blood to these people, and there’s no compassion or empathy. It’s all about the cost of doing business and profit. It’s a numbers game. The companies get kids and adults addicted to their foods, everything from chips to soda, to candy, and fast food. And consumers want more, more, more. So if the meat or salad products are occasionally tainted with E. coli or salmonella, well, so what? People get sick, and all they do is issue a recall and go about their business.”
I realized my voice had been rising with every sentence, so I stared out the window to calm down. Why didn’t everyone see what I did?
After a while, he answered.
“I can understand the greed, and given the people I do jobs for, even the part of purposely making people sick.” He went quiet again, and I wished I could crawl inside his head to hear his thoughts. “Everything you’ve told me fits. If what you say is true, I can understand why you’d want to kill them all.”
Speechless, I gaped at him. The corner of his mouth quirked, but he didn’t say anything else.
The miles flew by. We ate lunch at a nondescript truck stop café where no one would remember us. We were getting closer to meeting with the guy he knew in Texas.
“How is she today?” Augustus met the nurse in the hallway outside the room.
“Right now, she’s good. Go on in.”
They’d taken the formal dining room and converted it into a mini hospital. His wife had wanted to be at home, and he could never refuse her, so here she was.
Why her? He still couldn’t understand how she’d gotten so sick so fast. It started with a stomachache, and the next thing they knew she had been diagnosed with one of the rarest cancers, one that affected such a small number of the population, many had never heard of it.
The doctor said the bilateral tumors were inoperable. Augustus remembered they’d gone out to eat and afterward she had complained of her stomach hurting and feeling fatigued. Then she started to scale back the committees she chaired and various volunteer organizations. She was always tired, and for a while the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with Janet.
It was only after she admitted to him they couldn’t find anything wrong, and she was certain there was something seriously wrong, that she came to him and told him of her fears. At that point Augustus called the top doctors and researchers in medicine. And after extensive tests, they found the rare form of cancer. The cancer had first been described in the thirties, and was named after the German doctor who discovered the tumors.
Across the world there had only been thirty or thirty-five cases over the past fifty years. The monster he fought against was called a Krukenberg tumor. It was a type of ovarian cancer. After the news she’d taken his hand and said how thankful she was they had Kurt, because there would be no more children. And now they’d lost him too.
Augustus could only be grateful that her cancer wasn’t as aggressive as some of the other cases he’d read about. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here.
Janet was a vegetarian, and she used to nag him about the amount of meat he ate. His wife practiced yoga, meditated, took vitamins, and look what it got her. All those crazy save-the-animal people, and meat wasn’t to blame. In the end, cancer took everyone. Well, no longer the rich and privileged. Though i
f it had been a more common cancer, Augustus could have easily afforded the cure, safely locked away in a vault and protected by armed guards.
All the money he’d spent, the best in the medical research field, and she’d been given a lousy six months to a year to live. There’d been an experimental drug that worked for a while—it had been two years since her diagnosis—but the drug was failing and he was running out of time to save the only woman he’d ever loved.
They had talked about how they’d travel the world when he turned the company over to Kurt, stepped down, and then it would be the two of them. When he’d told her about losing Kurt she had cried for a week. Now she spoke of never seeing him get married, have children, how she’d always wanted to be the kind of grandmother who spoiled her grandkids rotten. She’d urged him to let the police find the killer and bring the man to justice. He hadn’t told her that it was a woman and she’d never see a courtroom. When it was done, Augustus would tell Janet it was a crazy ex-girlfriend who only meant to set a fire, never meant to kill their only son. It was the least he could do for his dying wife.
He’d knelt by her bedside and sworn to find a cure, no matter what. He’d spend every penny, push his company to create even more addictive products to drive consumers to buy and consume more, to drive up profits—he didn’t care. If that was what it took, to sacrifice the health of every American—hell, every person on this earth—he would gladly see it done to save his wife.
As he sat by her bed, Janet opened her eyes and smiled at him. Her skin looked a little bit better today, and he held her hand, noticing how her skin felt like tissue paper.
“I took the afternoon off and it’s a beautiful day. Would you like to sit outside and get some sun?”
She squeezed his hand. “I’d like that very much. How about a bloody Mary?”
He grinned. “I’ll have a pitcher prepared.”
The nurse helped her into the wheelchair and wheeled her outside on the terrace. No matter how sick she was, his wife insisted on wearing makeup every day, and having the hairdresser come once a week. To him, she was still as beautiful as the day he married her. Though truthfully, he could see her vitality slipping away, noticed how fragile she seemed, like the outer shell had cracked, showing him the withering inside. But he wouldn’t dwell on it. Augustus would keep moving forward until he found a cure. There was no other way.
When She Was Bad Page 13