Page 7 of License to Kill

No matter what she said, I would worry about it. “What now?”

“I get you inside, you rest, and I start doing research on these assholes who tried to kill you. I’ll also submit an anonymous tipoff regarding the location of the bodies, and I’ll continue the ruse a little slip of a vic had been dragged off. I’ll make sure they understand your pa was a vic rather than accomplice. It won’t take them long to figure out, considering the age of the bodies.”

“One can hope. My pa hadn’t been dead that long.”

Amelia took me inside the RV, which was sparsely decorated, sported a television and two couches, and had enough room for somebody to live comfortably. It amazed me how elegant a home on wheels could be. “This is a lot nicer than I thought RVs could be,” I admitted.

“It helps I bought a good one. Sit down and don’t worry about any blood. I don’t care about a few stains, and if I really need to get it reupholstered, I don’t care. I can afford it.”

I sat down, careful to keep from banging the gunshot wound. I longed for painkillers, but I’d have to take the non-prescription crap and clench my teeth while I healed. “No painkillers,” I warned her.

She stared at me as though I’d grown a second or third head. “That has to hurt like hell. Why don’t you want painkillers?”

“Morphine is basically the only thing I can take without becoming a homicidal asshole out for blood, and morphine turns me into a monster, too, but at least I’m not a bad monster on it. Just a happy one prone to mood swings. Mostly.”

“In good news, I have morphine. In bad news, it’s illegal, and I bought it off the black market.”

I stared at her. “So?”

She smiled. “I see you’re not going to have any problems with going rogue.”

“I figured my days as a law-abiding citizen were over approximately five minutes after I walked out the door knowing they were going to try to put me back on active duty.” I shrugged, a mistake considering the number of holes Amelia had plugged in her effort to keep me alive. “Just give me enough morphine I can’t remember my name for a while.”

Maybe that would help.

Three

I would prefer to believe I am a being completely lacking in emotion.

For two weeks, Amelia gave me enough morphine to knock out a horse, and I appreciated the respite from trying to cope with the ruins of my life. The time didn’t help as much as I would have liked, but I could live with the lessened pain on all fronts rather than being overwhelmed by everything I’d lost.

I made killing those who’d tried to kill me my last mission in life, and I refused to think about what would happen beyond that. Perhaps I’d find a different purpose, perhaps I wouldn’t.

It didn’t matter.

For the moment, I had a goal, and I would make that be enough.

I began the slow, tedious climb out of the drugged fog with a cup of coffee. “I don’t know how you did it, but thank you for preventing any infections.”

“Antibiotics,” Amelia informed me, and she pointed at her refrigerator, which hosted the medications she needed to keep chilled. “The nice thing about the black market is it’s possible to get just about anything. The bad part about the black market? I think I got the drugs cheaper than I would have at the damned pharmacy.”

“Seriously? Wait, that’s a bad thing?”

“Sure, for those who like keeping things legal. It turns out when the black market buys their drugs from other countries that don’t overcharge for it, they can undercut the regular market and still make a fortune. I’m not going to complain. I got your morphine for at least twenty times less than I would have paid if I were to be some law-abiding citizen.”

“Twenty times?” I blurted.

“Well, even more than that. Around here, it’s something like sixty dollars per milligram. I got yours for seventy-five cents per milligram.”

My mouth dropped open. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“And now you know why the illegal drug trade will never go away.”

I scratched my head. “I mean, logically, I’m aware, but it never occurred to me to really do a comparative per milligram. I used to get involved only when things got violent.”

“Well, now you know. The black market I purchase from is clean—as in, the drugs are never contaminated. They source it from good markets in Asia and Europe, so they’re safe for use unlike a lot of the street stuff, which often has additives to make them more addictive. I paid a little extra for the best stuff I could get. If I’d gone cheap, I could have gotten it for fifty cents a milligram. Your antibiotics were a little more expensive, as I wanted the best I could get my hands on. But even then, a little more expensive means eighty cents a milligram.”

Jesus. “No wonder people work the drug angle. You could make a fortune while saving people a lot of money.”