Bo rolled beside him, resting his head on Lucky’s chest. They didn’t speak, merely held each other.
Lucky awoke in a dark room, a warm ball of fur tucked against one ankle, snoring coming from the floor at the foot of the bed, no flaking mess on his stomach, and Bo spooned against his side.
For one moment in time, life couldn’t get any better.
He slipped out of bed, shrugged into his seldom-used bathrobe, and checked out the house. The boys were back, the Durango parked in the driveway.
Without his knowing, Bo had returned to the kitchen and cleaned up.
Sitting down on the couch, Lucky stretched out his legs and enjoyed the peaceful moment.
The calm before Hurricane Lucky.
Chapter Fifteen
Lucky glanced right and left before ducking into his cube. He also swept the wand he’d gotten from Keith over the area. No bugs. No obvious cameras.
No help for it. He only got so far on his home computer. Further research required SNB resources.
He settled at his desk and started digging up anything available on Forsyth Pharmaceuticals. Man, what a global monster. Facilities in India, China, the UK, Canada, and headquartered in a tiny little nowhere town in Alabama.
To avoid union support for workers.
The CEO made sixty-four million dollars last year. Daaaaaang!
Lucky was in the wrong business. With its two biggest competitors taken out of the equation, Forsyth ruled. Stocks had risen rapidly in the past few days. Some stockholders would make a buttload of money.
Two competitors out of the running within a month. Even if Lucky believed in coincidences, which he sure as hell didn’t, he’d have lost the faith by now.
A suspicious fire.
A suspicious order.
A company who now held a monopoly on the market, and the threat of a better drug to knock them out of a few billion in profits no longer looming on the horizon.
Soon Chastain would receive another offer for buyout, probably much cheaper than before.
Someone was working with Forsyth Pharmaceuticals, someone with a wide enough reach to plant an illegal shipment and arrange the burning of another company. According to speculation, it’d take months to get the factory up and running again.
Lots of money lay on the table. Money made people do strange things.
Greed.
He knew the names of some of the officers of Forsyth. Pharma executives had a tendency to migrate from one company to another.
Many made ridiculous salaries.
Right now the company advertised an opening in upper management. Strange. Usually such positions were filled long before the former manager left.
“Why the hell are you investigating Forsyth?”
Fuck. Busted. Lucky swiveled his chair and stared up at a woman he’d thought he knew. Had he ever known her? She’d shot her former lover, after all. Lord knew he hadn’t encouraged her friendship. She’d approached him and wouldn’t go away.
For reasons he couldn’t explain, his heart sank to his gut. He’d trusted her, opened up to her. Well, sort of. She’d brought him coffee, advised him on relationship troubles with Bo. Hell, she’d been there when Bo hit rock bottom, helped Lucky pick up and glue the pieces back together. She’d been the first true friend he’d had in years, other than Bo.
Had she been playing him all this time? And by extension, Bo?
Lucky hadn’t lived this long by trusting the wrong people.
