48 - THE JOB
Derek
"That's it, then. I think."
I went around the table one more time anyway. Saying it out loud is how I find the holes.
"Terry. Infil and exfil. Make doubly sure our contacts have exactly what you asked for. Not what they think you asked for."
Terry lifted two fingers off the table without looking up from his tablet.
"Karl, everything on their systems. You back it up with Styx, and the two of you work it separately before you compare. I don't want one set of hands on that." They growled at each other in mock aggression.
"Josie. Skies clear, as per usual."
"Sarge, you lead the four grunts in case it goes sideways, and I would like very much for you to be bored."
That got a small laugh from the far end.
"Aaron. Coordination."
I sat back. "I feel good about this one. Feels tight to me. Aaron?"
Nothing was tight until Aaron gave the nod, and Aaron hadn't given it. He had a pen he wasn't writing with, and he was turning it end over end against the table, and eleven other people in that room were watching him do it and pretending they weren't.
He shrugged. "Give us a few days. Make sure it's all clicking."
"Three days." I stood. "We're back here Thursday with everything finalized."
Chairs went back. Terry was already arguing with Karl about something in the doorway.
Aaron caught up with me in the hall.
"D. You know we don't need this job to fund your hospital, right? Singh has the investments humming. We've got plenty."
"I know."
He waited. He's good at that.
"It looks clean to me," I said. "And the upside is very high."
Aaron sighed. "Yeah. Probably." He shifted the pen to his other hand. "But you know me."
I clapped him on the shoulder. "Brother, I trust you and your PTSD to see everything the rest of us don't. It's why we've only lost two in almost a decade."
He gave me a wan smile. Not the expression I wanted.
"How's it going, by the way? The new treatment doing anything?"
"About as good as the last one." Another shrug. "I doubt I'll ever be all the way over it."
I hated this for him. The things this man had done, and done for the right reasons, and done for me, and the bill had come to him instead of to me.
"You tell me if there's anything at all I can do. I could talk to the hospital, get you in front of—"
"Naw, D." He was smiling now, finally, properly. "Don't go scaring the poor docs any worse than you already do."
"I'm very charming."
"Like a piranha." He knocked the pen against my chest on his way past. "I've got my family. Sometimes it's bad. More times it's good."
I stood in the hall a while after he'd gone.
Singh could have wired the money for the machine on Monday. I'd known that when I told Aaron the upside was high.
Aaron had felt something wrong with it and couldn't put a name to it, and vague gets overruled. My rule. I wrote it. Nothing was wrong.
My cut of this one would buy the scanner and the room to put it in. It would catch things early. Kids would come through it for thirty years and most of them would never know what it spared them.
Jessica would come through it. Twice a year.
And Lacey would know exactly what it was worth. Not the board's number. The real one. She'd stand in front of it and run it out in her head the way she does, every kid it caught, and then she'd look at me.
I wanted to see her face when I told her.
I stopped walking.
Then I walked again.
No. This was for the kids.