Watching him move, she was reminded of a large jungle cat: no wasted motion and fluid, even strides. She noticed his eyes were never still, but moved back and forth as if he was checking in all directions for any danger that might be lurking in the vicinity.
He put his hands on her window and leaned in to look at her closely. “You haven’t changed a bit in twenty years, Kat. Still as pretty and bright as ever.”
“You haven’t, either, Jack, except maybe just a touch grayer up top.”
He grinned and brushed his hand over his brush cut. “Don’t remind me. Father Time is working its magic on me like he does on everyone.”
She smiled and thought, Not everyone, Jack, not everyone.
He moved around the car, pitched the large duffel bag he was carrying into the backseat, and climbed into the passenger seat. “Okay, what now, Kat?”
She put the car in gear and pulled out. “Now we go to meet my friends, and we’ll tell you just what is going on and see if you have any ideas on how to help us.”
“Before we get there, does this help include protecting you from physical danger?” he asked.
When she hesitated and finally nodded, he reached over the seat and pulled his duffel bag onto his lap. He unzipped it and pulled a small semiautomatic pistol and holster from inside.
Throwing the duffel back over the seat, he clipped the holster to his belt and pulled his shirttail out to cover it. Grinning, he faced forward and said, “Better safe than sorry.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, all introductions having been made, they were seated in a private dining room at the IHOP restaurant.
Dillard looked around at the group. “If you folks don’t mind, I’m gonna order breakfast, since Kat called me this morning before I’d had time to eat.”
After the waiter had brought them all coffee and taken their orders, Kat said, “Jack, I have known you all of my life, but my partners have no idea who you are or what you do for a living. Would you mind terribly telling them a little about yourself?”
“Okay, Kat. Here’s the short version. I’m an ex-marine . . . uh, scratch that. There are no ex-marines—once a marine, always a marine. For the past thirty years I have been flying people and cargo into and out of some of the worst hellholes in the world. I have also, on occasion hired on as a mercenary if I thought the fight was worth fighting. I once spent about six months working as a private investigator, but the work was too boring—nothing like on TV. I fly a Cessna 425, otherwise known as a Conquest I, and I am an expert in electronic surveillance, as well as an expert with just about any weapon known to man. I do not hire myself or my expertise out unless I am in full sympathy with whomever needs my help.”
He looked around the table and spread his arms. “Is that enough?”
When everyone nodded, he smiled and said, “Good, ’cause I think our waiter is on the way with our grub. So why don’t we eat while you all tell me something about yourselves?”
* * *
When they had finished eating and Dillard had heard each of their stories, he took a sip of his after-meal coffee and said, “So, let me summarize. Kat is a medical doctor who quit medicine to do research, Burton is a Ph.D. who has pretty much always been in research, Sheila is an internist who specializes in old people and people with endocrine problems, and Kevin is a student studying organic chemistry who evidently has quite a crush on Kat. Is that about right?”
“Uh . . . I don’t . . . that is . . .” Kevin stammered, his face flaming red.
Dillard grinned and held up his hand. “Oh, don’t worry, Kevin. I told you I’ve had to live by my wits for the past thirty years, and being observant is part of that. I just noticed the way you look at Kat and how you moved your chair a little closer to her, as if to protect her if need be. Your feelings are nothing to be ashamed of, ’cause I noticed the same look in Kat’s eyes when she looked at you.”
“I don’t . . .” Kat started to object when Dillard held up his hand.
“Save it, Kat, it’s not important. Now, why don’t you good people tell me just what kind of mess you’ve gotten yourselves into?”
It took three refills of coffee before Kat finished telling Dillard about their situation and what was going on. She didn’t give any specifics about the formula, only that it cured certain diseases that Ashby was afflicted with and that it was extremely valuable, also leaving out the exact amount he was willing to pay for the formula.
“So, the other player in all of this is your experimental subject, an ex-professor and current drunk?”
Sheila shrugged. “We needed someone who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by the use of our formula.”
At this point, Kevin pulled out his legal pad and showed Dillard his four bullet points.
“We’ve got one and two covered, but it’s three and four we cannot figure out,” he said.
“So, the bottom line is that you need to find some way to hand this magic formula over to the go-between, Dr. Alexander, and to do it in a way that you cannot be trapped or captured by the detectives that this rich guy Ashby has hired, and then you all want to disappear forever and live to spend the money Ashby is going to pay you?”
“That about sums it up, Jack,” Kevin said.
“Well,” Dillard said, leaning back in his seat and staring at the ceiling, “one way would be for me to kidnap the doctor, blindfold him, and fly him to some remote location where you could hand him the syringes and then blindfold him again and fly him back to Houston.”
“Do you think that’s the best way?” Burton asked, excitement in his voice.
Dillard laughed. “No, of course not. How about FedEx?”
“What?” Kat asked.
Dillard shook his head. “You guys are so caught up in this that you can’t see the forest for the trees. Just package the syringes up and drop them in a FedEx box with a label with Alexander’s address on it. I assume the syringes aren’t heat-sensitive?”
Burton slapped his forehead with his palm. “Why didn’t we think of that? It is a simple and elegant solution.”
Dillard held up his hand. “That’s only a solution to Kevin’s point three. For point four, disappearing with a shitload of money and staying off of everyone’s radar, including the government’s, is a lot more difficult.”
“Mr. Dillard,” Sheila asked, “do you think you can help us? Like you say, we are scientists and doctors, not secret agents or people experienced in this sort of cat-and-mouse game.”
Dillard stroked his chin and looked around at the group. “Ordinarily, I’d say no and get up and walk away from all of you. In my humble opinion, you have about a ten percent chance of getting away from this with your lives, not to mention the big payoff you’re expecting.”
“But, Jack—” Kat started to say.
“Hold on, Kat,” Dillard interrupted. “I said ‘ordinarily,’ meaning if my favorite cousin wasn’t involved.” He chuckled. “I ought to have my head examined, but I guess I’m in for the duration, with a couple of nonnegotiable demands.”
“What is it you want?” Burton asked.
“First, I at least have to be paid expenses—that plane I mentioned cost me eight hundred seventy-five thousand dollars and costs several hundred dollars an hour to operate, and then there is the business I am going to lose working with you guys twenty-four/seven.”
Kat looked around and the others nodded. “How about this, Jack? If you can wait until we get our payment from Ashby, we’ll guarantee you two million dollars plus any and all expenses.”
Dillard grinned. “That payoff I was talking about must be very healthy for you to offer me that much, but hell, yes, that will do nicely.”
“What about the other conditions?” Burton asked, giving Kat a dirty look for offering so much to Dillard.
“First and foremost, you must all agree to do exactly as I tell you, without deviation. If any of us are going to get out of this with our skins intact, we need to all be working from the sam
e playbook.”
Burton shrugged and nodded. “I think we can all agree on that.”
“Don’t agree too soon, Burton. It is definitely not going to be easy. First of all, as of right now, each one of you will drop off the grid, and I mean completely off. We are going to go directly from here to rent two or three safe houses. We’ll all stay together in one, and if that one becomes compromised, we’ll go to the next, and so on. There will be no going back to your old residences ever again, so if there are things there that you absolutely cannot replace or live without, make a list and I’ll go in and get them for you.”
“But, why . . . ?” Burton started to ask.
Dillard laughed. “See, Burton, I told you it would not be easy. Listen to me, all of you. If the men Ashby hired are worth their salt, they’ve already got your cars bugged, your houses under surveillance and probably bugged, and your cell phone numbers tagged and bugged, so they know everything you’ve said and probably every place you’ve been for the past several weeks.”
“But we’ve been using burner phones,” Kevin said.
“Did you take the batteries out of your regular phones, and did you carry them with you?”
Kevin’s face flared red. “Oh shit! I forgot about the batteries.” He looked at Dillard and then dropped his eyes. “I told everyone not to use their phones, but I forgot about the damn batteries.”
“Crap,” Burton exclaimed. “That means they probably know about the lab house in Conroe.”
“We’d better call Jordan and have him clear out,” Kat said.
Dillard shook his head. “Uh-uh, too late for that. They’ve probably got the house under surveillance.”
He thought for a moment. “Evidently, they’re not quite ready to grab you or they would have already done it. Ashby is probably waiting for you to give him the injection and to make sure everything goes well before he makes his move to take you all out and get the formula for himself.”
“But,” Sheila interjected, “how can you be sure he is going to double-cross us? Maybe he’s just going to get the injection and be satisfied to be cured of his medical problems.”
Jack laughed. “Dr. Goodman, that is probably what you and ninety percent of normal, decent people would do. They’d thank God for their second chance and go on with their lives. But, and it is a big but, we are not dealing with a normal, decent human being here. We’re dealing with a very rich man who has gotten rich, most likely, by never accepting half a loaf when he could take the whole loaf by force.”
He sighed and took a breath. “Okay, I could be wrong, but think about it. If I am wrong and Ashby means you all no harm and does intend to go through with the deal as planned, what have we hurt by taking the precautions I’m advocating? Nothing. Then the deal will go through, you’ll get your money, and you will have wasted only some of it by paying me.”
He paused and looked around at the group, staring into each of their eyes one by one. “But if I am right and he plans, as Sheila says, a double cross, then the two million you are paying me will be the best money you’ve ever spent.”
CHAPTER 34
Dillard looked from one member of the group to the other. “My money is still betting that Ashby is planning a double-cross. Otherwise why would he hire detectives to track your every move?”
“Maybe he’s just trying to protect the fifty thousand dollars he paid us up front,” Kevin said.
Dillard shook his head. “I don’t think so, Kevin. He knows you guys are amateurs, so he knows that with his resources he could have you tracked down no matter where you tried to run. No, the only reason I can come up with to put at least two agents on you at all times along with electronic tracking devices, is so that he can find out where all your hidey-holes are, and when he’s ready, he can have you picked up wherever you might try to go to ground.”
“Then you are sure he does not plan to go through with our deal?” Kat asked.
He shrugged. “Sure is too strong a word, but I think it is a distinct possibility that as soon as he is convinced that you have given him the formula, he will do all that he can to make certain that it is in his control, and then he has no choice but to eliminate you.”
“You mean you think he will try to have us killed?” Sheila asked, a horrified expression on her face.
Dillard reached over and put his hand over hers to calm her. “Dr. Goodman, people have been killed for far less than this formula of yours is worth. Like I say, I have never met Mr. Ashby, but from what I’ve read about him in the past, he is certainly ruthless enough and has enough power to do whatever he thinks he needs to do to gain complete control of your formula.”
When no one had anything further to add, he nodded. “Like I say, you all are paying me a lot of money to keep you safe and to help you get through this process with both your skins and your formula safe.”
He bent over and reached down into the duffel bag lying next to his chair. “Which I am going to start earning right now.” He held up a flash drive. “This is designed to fit most burner phones. Plug it into the charging port and a screen will come up on the phone. Download the app on the screen, and it will automatically encrypt all of your phone calls and also bounce them off of several different satellites so that your location cannot be tracked. Only another burner phone with the same app can hear and understand your calls.”
He glanced over at Kevin. “And Kevin, since I assume you are the cyber expert for the group, you can download the same app onto your laptops and it will scramble all of your Wi-Fi transmissions so that they cannot be hacked or used to locate your computers. It will also have a feature where you can hit a key combination and it will immediately wipe your hard drives so that they cannot be recovered, in case the computers are in imminent danger of being stolen. That means you should save a copy of important documents in the cloud so you can recover them later if you have to wipe the laptops.”
While they were each in turn downloading the encryption app, he handed a piece of paper to Burton. “Pass that around, please. It’s my secure phone number and I want each of you to put it as number one on your speed-dial.”
While they were busy downloading the app and putting in his phone number, he got up from the table and walked around the room until he found a window that looked out on the parking lot in front of the restaurant. He stood slightly to the side of the window and peered out for a good five minutes before returning to their table.
“I understand from what you told me that each of you has a regular car and you also each now have a car that is not under your names and you are fairly sure have not been bugged or tagged with GPS trackers?”
When they all nodded, he went on, “Now, Burton and Sheila and Kevin came here together. Did you come in your regular car?”
Sheila nodded. “We figured that coming out to dinner in town would arouse no suspicions, and we didn’t want to risk being seen in an unknown car in case we were being watched.”
He smiled. “Good thinking, and it also gives me a chance to get a line on who is following you, since they almost certainly followed your car’s GPS tracker here. Since Kat and I got here first, they don’t know which car is ours and they haven’t seen my face yet.”
“Uh, how do you know they haven’t come into the restaurant and seen us together?” Kevin asked.
Dillard grinned. “Because I’ve been watching the door. No one other than couples or people with children have entered, at least no single or paired men, so I am fairly certain the men who followed you are waiting out in the parking lot to see who you met here. They’ve probably got a camera with a telephoto lens on it trained on the entrance right now.”
“But that means when we leave they’ll find out what kind of car I’m driving,” Kat said, alarm on her face.
Dillard shook his head. “No, they won’t, Kat. I’m going to take care of that right now. Why don’t you all have another cup of coffee and a pastry? I’ll be right back.”
He moved from the window and walked b
ack down the hall toward the kitchen. Once there he asked to talk to the head cook.
A thickset man in a white apron with a chef’s hat on his head walked over, a scowl on his face at this interloper in his kitchen. Dillard handed him a hundred-dollar bill and asked if he could borrow an apron and slip out the back door.
The man’s face went blank and he palmed the bill and shrugged, inclining his head toward a rear wall, where several aprons hung next to the back door.
Moments later, Dillard slipped out of the rear door, wearing an apron and chef’s hat. Next to the door he found a garbage can, which he hefted up on his shoulder, and he sauntered across the parking lot toward a dumpster in a corner.
As he walked, he used the can to shield his face and he scanned the cars in the lot, looking for someone just sitting in a vehicle. To his surprise, he found two such cars. One was parked in the second row and held two men, one of whom had a camera equipped with a telephoto lens resting on the dashboard pointed toward the entrance.
The other car was parked a couple of rows behind the first and was an obvious government-issue automobile . . . plain black sedan with tiny, cheap hubcaps and no frills at all. Hell, it even had a small radio antenna on the rear bumper—some undercover operative with no sense at all.
The man sitting in that car was wearing a rumpled suit and looked as if he hadn’t slept for several days. Typical government type, thought Dillard as he walked by a few cars over.
As he emptied the garbage can in the dumpster to maintain his cover, Dillard’s mind raced. What to do? He could easily take out all of the men, but that would tip Ashby off that they knew about the surveillance. And what about the government-issue man in the black sedan? He would need to find out just which agency was watching, and whether it was watching Ashby’s men or whether it was watching Dillard’s clients.
On the way back into the restaurant, Dillard made a mental note of the government sedan’s license plate and then reentered through the back door.
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