“Tell me about someone who’s done more for you in less time. Hell, maybe you should cut me in for ten percent of your stock price increases when you miraculously come back from the dead.”

“That’d make you richer than your brother.”

Rapp grinned, savoring the thought for a moment. “You can’t imagine how bad that would chap his ass.”

“So, we can make it public that David and I are safe?”

“Give me a few more days.”

Ward sighed quietly. “It’s always a few more days, isn’t it, Mitch? You can’t keep me here forever. You have armed men, but eventually you’re going to have to use them. If you expect me to just sit here for the next year watching everything I’ve built collapse, you might want to shoot me now.”

He fell silent and stared Rapp directly in the eye, proving to be one of the few people on the planet who was able to.

“Fuck it,” Rapp sighed, scooting his chair closer to Ward and leaning into the man. “The Saudi government was behind the first attack on Chism. When it didn’t work, they decided to take it to the next level. They got information on you from a CIA mole with a very high level of access and used it to plan the attack on your compound. Gideon Auma’s orders were that Chism was to be killed.”

“And me?”

“They left it up to him. But if you did survive, they made it clear that there shouldn’t be enough of you left to be of much good to anyone.”

“Why?”

“Do you really need to ask?”

“I’m a threat to the oil industry, which is the source of their wealth, and the medical industry, which they see as their escape hatch. But the truth is that it’s not just them, Mitch. I’m looking to disrupt industries that a lot of powerful people rely on to stay powerful. This may be what my future looks like, unfortunately.”

“If that’s the case, then it seems like you’d want to know who this mole is just as much as I do.”

Ward nodded, taking in what he’d heard with an expression that was almost completely opaque.

“I appreciate the honesty, Mitch. But I’m going to ask you for a little more. Do you have anything solid to pursue? Because if not, it’s going to be time for David and me to take our chances. I understand that it’s a dangerous world, but we’ll have to figure out how to mitigate those dangers as best we can and move forward. It’s true that I’ll eventually make my money back, but David’s research is in real jeopardy. If he can’t get to his test subjects soon, his timeline could be set back years.”