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“But Ripper wants to sell that stuff?” she said.
“There’s an awful lot of money in it. Our club isn’t rich, not in money, at least. Our rewards come from having a decent place to live, and the fact that our policies against hard drugs and violence against civilians has created a friendly relationship with the police. So our guys rarely go to prison, even more rarely for felonies.”
“And that trade-off is worth it?”
“I don’t know, Becca, what do you think?” Boomer said. “Is it worth having a community you can be secure in, a life you can be proud of, your brothers here with you and standing by your side rather than locked in a cage?”
“There are a lot of guys I’ve worked with that would say you should go for the money,” Becca said. “Risk everything and try to cash in and never think about anybody else.”
Boomer looked at her. “What about you?”
“Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” she said with a little bitter laugh.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” she said, “that I got fired from my job because I wouldn’t concede on a deal. This last deal I made, we had to give up a bunch of intellectual property rights… those are copyrights.”
“I know what they are.”
“Oh, right, because giant Yoda. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be condescending.”
“Before you say any more,” Boomer said, “I’ll jump in and say that I also know what condescending means.”
“Look at that, giant Yoda’s got jokes!” Becca said with a cheeky smile. “Okay. Well, our team was looking to screw this guy who invented… I’m not sure what it was. Something techie that does something with superconductors. I didn’t really get all that, but what I did get was that he worked really hard on it, and we were trying to squeeze it out of him as a part of this deal with his company.”
“And you wouldn’t let that happen?” he said.
“No. I played dumb and took twenty million cash up front instead of the rights.”
“Twenty million sounds like a lot of money,” Boomer said.
“The rights were probably worth that much per year, maybe fifty or a hundred million all told.”
“So you lost out on the deal,” he said.
“I couldn’t do it,” Becca said with a sigh. “That guy worked for like, ever, on his nerdy whatever-it-was. And we were going to just steal it from him, basically. He wouldn’t have seen any of that money.”
“So you accepted less money, in order to keep the moral high ground,” Boomer said.
“That, and to not have to drink myself to death just to look at myself in the morning.”
“Sounds to me like you fit right in around here, Becca,” he said.
“I don’t know about that,” she said.
“You’ve got a lot of iron in you, Becca,” Boomer said. “I can see it. Maybe someday you’ll see it, too.”
“God,” Becca said. “You really are giant Yoda.”
Boomer smiled. “Well, I’m not green and my ears haven’t grown that big, but I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Her phone started to buzz in her purse, and after checking the caller ID, she said, “It’s my sister calling.”
“You can tell her that you survived your trip to our clubhouse,” Boomer said.
“So far,” she said.
“We’ll be with you every step of the way,” Boomer said. “When you talk to the police, when you testify, everything.”
