Blood Money (7 page)

“I know,” Jessica said. “I just don’t like
the spot I’m in. It’s not that I’m ungrateful for what you’ve done,
it’s just that I don’t really know if my situation has gotten any
better. I’m captive in a car with someone I don’t know, on the run
from the federal government, heading toward God knows who for God
knows why. I just wish I knew what the hell was going on.”

“Then why don’t you just ask?”

“Very funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be a joke.”

“You’ll really answer my questions?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I figured you’d
just tell me to keep my mouth shut and don’t worry about it. You
know, all that macho bullshit.”

“Look, when I told you that I want this to
be as easy as possible, I meant it. You can ask me whatever you
want, and I’ll answer it as best I can. After all, the more
comfortable you are with what’s going on, the easier this will be
for both of us.”

“But how will I even know if you’re telling
the truth?”

“You won’t,” Kelton said. “You’ll just have
to trust me.”

Jessica sized him up for a few seconds, then
said, “All right, I’ll play along. Why don’t we start with who you
are, who you’re working for, and where we’re going.”

“My name is Kelton. I’m working for the man
that hired me to rescue you. And we’re going to San Diego to meet
up with him.”

“Ha-ha,” Jessica said. “Very funny.”

The corner of Kelton’s mouth turned up
slightly. “Hey, you asked.”

“You’re right, I did. Let’s try this again.
Now, who are you? And not just your name. I want details.”

Kelton opened his mouth to answer.

“And not just any details,” Jessica said
before he had a chance to speak. “Pertinent details.”

“How about if you ask me more specific
questions. That might make things a little easier.”

“Okay. Let’s start with your name, then. You
said it was Kelton?”

“That’s right.”

“First or last?”

“Last,” Kelton said. “But nobody ever calls
me by my first name.”

“And I assume it’s not your real name?”

“It’s as real as any other.”

“But not your given name.”

Kelton shook his head. “In my line of work,
real names are like kryptonite.”

“So what are you saying? That you’re
Superman?”

“Not quite,” Kelton said. “More like
Wolverine, if I was forced to compare myself to someone.”

“Ahh, so that’s where the name comes
from.”

Kelton nodded, impressed. He hadn’t pegged
her for a comic book fan.

“So what are you?” Jessica said. “Some kind
of mercenary?”

“That’s one way you could describe it.”

“How do
you
describe it?”

“I don’t, usually,” Kelton said. “I just do
what I do. I let other people figure out a way to put words to
it.”

“But if you were forced to . . .”

Kelton gave her a sideways look. “You don’t
give up easily, do you?”

“What can I say? I’m a curious girl.”

He turned his eyes back to the road in an
attempt to hide his growing smile. Normally he would have stood his
ground on this subject, but something about Jessica was disarming.
Perhaps it was the straight-forward manner in which she asked the
questions, or perhaps it was something else, something he didn’t
want to explore right now. Either way, he knew he was going to play
along.

“If forced to describe it, I guess I would
say that I do things that other people are unwilling or unable to
do.”

“For a fee,” Jessica said.

“Usually.”

“Regardless of the law.”

Kelton laughed. “You say ‘the law’ like its
some immutable force of the universe, when its really nothing more
than a set of agreed-upon rules and regulations used to control the
masses.”

“So I take it you don’t put much stake in
it,” Jessica said.

“Let’s just say that I don’t take it into
consideration when deciding if I’m going to do a job.”

“So let me get this straight,” Jessica said.
“You do things for money, regardless of whether or not they are
considered illegal.”

“Pretty much.”

“Yet you don’t consider yourself a
mercenary?”

“No,” Kelton said. “Because a mercenary does
things solely for the money.”

“And you don’t?”

“That’s right. For me, the money is just a
small part of the equation; the least important factor, actually.
”

Jessica brought her legs up, shifted her
body so she was able to face him without turning her head. “What
else do you take into consideration?”

“A whole host of things,” Kelton said, “But
basically it comes down to one simple question: Is it the right
thing to do?”

“So you have your own set of morals. Your
own code.”

He nodded. “I only take on jobs that I feel
comfortable doing. Things I believe in.”

“How quaint.”

Kelton snorted, shook his head. “You know,
on second thought, maybe I will stop answering your questions—”

Jessica held up her hand. “I’m sorry. That
was rude. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

Kelton accepted her apology with a nod.

“Actually, I think it’s fascinating that
someone like you still has a place in this world,” Jessica said. “I
would have thought your kind long gone.”

“Yeah, I guess I am a bit of an
anachronism.”

Jessica gave him a funny look.

“What?” Kelton said.

She shrugged. “I’m just . . . surprised, I
guess.”

“At my word usage?”

Jessica nodded.

“What, you didn’t think someone like me
would know any five syllable words?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you were thinking it.”

“Maybe,” Jessica said. “But can you blame
me? I mean, come on, how many mercenaries do you know that
aren’t
retired marine grunts?”

“About the same number of biochemists that
also look like Victoria’s Secret models.”

This time, it was Jessica that started to
blush. “Touché,” she said. “I’ll try not to jump to any more
conclusions.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Kelton said. “I’m just
messing with you anyway. Trying to keep the playing field level,
that’s all. I wouldn’t expect you to think of me as a well-read,
civilized person.”

“Well-read, huh?”

“I like to think so.”

“What, like comic books?”

“Actually, I have read my share of graphic
novels,” Kelton said. “But that’s not really what I was referring
to.”

“So you read real books too?”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“Fiction or non-fiction?”

“Some of both. Why?”

“Just wondering,” Jessica said. “I’m a bit
of a reader myself, which means I automatically quiz other book
lovers on their preferences.”

“What do you read?” Kelton said.

“Non-fiction, mostly. But pretty much
whatever I can get my hands on.”

“I hear you there,” Kelton said. “I’m the
same way.”

They fell into a comfortable silence. Kelton
stifled a yawn; he’d only had four hours sleep in the last day and
a half, and it was starting to catch up with him. The lanes were
starting to become blurred, fuzzy. It was a good thing there wasn’t
any serious traffic.

“Are you going to be all right?” Jessica
said.

“I’ll be fine. Just a few more hours until I
pass you off, then I can get all the sleep I need.”

“Speaking of which, who do I have to thank
for hiring you in the first place?”

“The man you’ve been conversing with through
email for the last few days. The man you were on your way to meet
when you got picked up.”

“I was hoping that’s what you were going to
tell me,” Jessica said. “Based on my earlier correspondence with
him, I knew he had connections, but I didn’t know they ran that
deep.”

“Yeah, he’s got quite a network,” Kelton
said.

“What his name, if you don’t mind me
asking?”

“I know him as Walter, but I’m sure that’s
no more his real name than Kelton is mine.”

“Are you guys part of the same group, or
something?”

“No, nothing like that,” Kelton said. “I’m
more like an independent contractor. Our things are totally
separate. Walter’s got his gig, I’ve got mine.”

“But you have worked for him before?”

Kelton nodded. “A few times.”

“Can he really deliver on his claims?”

“I can’t guarantee anything, but he’s never
let me down.”

A hopeful smile skittered across Jessica’s
face. “God, I sure hope he can,” she said softly, mostly to
herself. “I assume he told you about my discovery?”

“You created an AIDS vaccine, right?”

Jessica nodded.

“That’s pretty amazing.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Too bad the government is
too scared of the ramifications. I mean, here we are, able to save
millions of lives at the drop of a hat, and they want to sit on
it.”

“So they really were going to suppress it?”
Kelton said.

“Hell yes. The group I worked for spent
three years testing it, only to come back and tell me that it
failed during the final testing phase. The only problem was, it
didn’t fail. It passed with flying colors. They falsified the data
because the government didn’t want an AIDS vaccine on the open
market.”

“And how did you find out the truth? There’s
no way your handlers told you what they were doing.”

“Through Walter,” Jessica said. “He
contacted me shortly after my handlers informed me that it had
failed. He told me that they were lying, and when I doubted his
contentions, he emailed me a couple of inter-department memos that
he’d somehow gotten a hold of, outlining their plans. That’s how I
knew he had to have some serious connections. How he got his hands
on those memos, I’ll never know.”

“What I don’t understand is why the
government would want to sit on something like that. You’d think
they’d
want
to get it out in the open.”

“They can’t. Too much political
pressure.”

“From where?”

“Everywhere,” Jessica said. “Foreign
governments who wouldn’t be able to feed the millions of people the
drug would cure, the right-wingers who believe AIDS is a scourge of
God sent to punish homosexuals, and of course, the biggest push of
all—lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry.”

“It’s that big of a business now, huh?”

“Do you have any idea how much medication
costs are if you’re HIV positive?”

“No.”

“Fifteen thousand dollars a month,” Jessica
said. “All for a combination of drugs that don’t even cure you,
just prolong the length of time it takes for HIV to transform into
full-blown AIDS.”

“Which, in turn, extends the amount of time
you get to pay them for their drugs, which in turn, increases their
profits,” Kelton said.

“Exactly,” Jessica said. “AIDS is a
multi-billion dollar a year industry, with more than 100,000
researchers in America alone. There’s no way the pharmaceutical
industry is going to just sit back and watch as a cure is
introduced to the world. No way in hell. And when you add in the
pressure coming from all the other political angles, it’s easy to
see why the government is perfectly willing to suppress it.”

“It’s a screwed up world,” Kelton said.

“It certainly is. But it doesn’t do us any
good to whine about it, so let’s get back to the issue at
hand.”

“Which is what exactly?”

“The plan for getting me into Walter’s
hands,” Jessica said. “Where do we go from here?”

“We head down south to San Diego, and as
long as nothing out of the ordinary pops up, we’ll meet up with
Walter at seven o’clock tonight.”

“And you’ll hand me over to him
personally?”

Kelton nodded.

Jessica looked at the clock on the dash.
“What time are we going to get to San Diego?”

“Around 5 o’clock this afternoon.”

“So we’ll have a couple of hours to
kill?”

“About that.”

“Where are we going to spend them? The Zoo?
Sea World?”

“I think it’s better if we just go to my
house,” Kelton said. “It’s not far from the rendezvous point and I
know it’s safe.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Taking me to your
place? How romantic.”

“I don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“I bet your girlfriend loves that attitude,”
Jessica said.

Kelton flashed her a half-smile. “Back to
the personal questions already?”

Jessica shrugged. “I thought I might as well
give it a shot, keep things lively around here. Otherwise I must
just fall asleep from the lack of stimulation.”

“What, this morning wasn’t stimulating
enough for you?”

“Actually, it was quite a bit easier than I
expected it to be,” Jessica said. “When you showed up in my room, I
figured we were going to have to do some hard work to get out of
there.”

“Really?” Kelton said.

Jessica nodded. “Weren’t you expecting more
trouble from the Feds?”

“Not really,” Kelton said. “The safety of
the place they were holding you was predicated on it’s anonymity.
Once that was breached, it didn’t have much to offer.”

“Still,” Jessica said. “You couldn’t have
been expecting it to be
that
easy? We waltzed out of there
without any real confrontation.”

“Actually, with the information I had, it
should have been even easier,” Kelton said. “The plan was to get
you out of there without anyone even knowing you were gone. It
would have happened, too, if that agent would have stayed in the
bathroom for another fifteen seconds.”

“Speaking of that agent, why didn’t you just
shoot him and be done with it?”

Kelton shrugged. “It wouldn’t have done us
any good. Shooting him would have resulted in enough noise to wake
everyone up anyway, plus it would have just made things much more
difficult down the road. With an agent dead, the heat would have
been turned up even further. And the last thing we need is more
heat.”