Chapter 22

When we got back home from D.C., everyone was excited and wanted to find out what happened. Sadly there wasn’t much I could tell them. I got Marcus, Jonathan, Charles Green, and an exceptionally skeptical Ted to get in contact with Mr. Baxter. I wasn’t holding my breath about that, however. He seemed pretty sincere, but they had sent armed gunmen after us, so ‘sincerity’ didn’t really count for much.

I checked in with Alex to find out if there was any news about Margret, as well. Nothing great on that front either. She was the same, and Alex said again that she was extremely skeptical that Margret would ever recover. The one bright point was that Tina was settling in nicely.

I knew she was concerned about Margret, but I hadn’t thought she was truly unhappy about her home situation until I saw the difference between the girl now living with us, and the Tina from just a few weeks before. Some part of me was a little happy that things had worked out this way, letting Tina escape from what had clearly been a stressful and emotionally exhausting home life.

We used the lull in activities to start planning our summer vacation. Emily was still out, so it looked like right now it would be the girls, Megan, Sarah, Tina, Mom and me all heading out for a summer vacation together. We had decided to go on one of the big cruise lines that were based out of Galveston. It was close enough to drive so all we needed were the tickets for the cruise itself, making logistics pretty easy. Tami was working on getting her parents to bend and let Judy come along, so Tina would have someone to pal around with. Mom was footing the bill, couching it as one of my birthday presents. We were all pretty excited about it, although I wished that Emily were coming with us.

Since I returned from D.C., Emily hadn’t been around much and I was starting to get a little worried. Even when she was around, she had started to pull away from me, retreating back into her shell a little, which I took as a bad sign. I had made a few trips to her house, and didn’t see anything overt. There were no new marks of abuse to hint at things starting up again. Her dad had made himself scarce the times I had visited, so it was hard to read the dynamic, but the hairs on the back of my neck were telling me something wasn’t quite right.

Sadly, there was nothing I could really do. I had already taken a risk once meddling in her family affairs and still didn’t know what the full effects of that would be. I didn’t want to go wading into her family dynamics again unless I absolutely had to.

Thankfully I finally managed to find something to ease my worrying over Emily, and my guilt over Margret. In the early evening a week after we got back from D.C., I got a call from Jonathan to turn on the TV to the national news. Tina and the girls were all watching some show and I got a chorus of discontent when I grabbed the controller from them and switched the channel. Once the words of the broadcast sunk in, they all became as focused as I was.

The video showed men in shirts and ties with suit jackets draped over their heads being escorted out by agents with windbreakers that declared the government agency they worked for on the back. In the background other agents could be seen hauling box and other supplies out of the building.

The scene on the TV then switched to a man I didn’t recognize standing in front of several microphones. The newscaster explained that he was the head of marketing for the company, and that he had made a statement moments after the arrest. They then proceeded to air part of that statement.

I handed the controller back to Tami and called Jonathan back.

“Holy cow,” I said as soon as he picked up.

“Yeah, I know. Aaron called me personally to let me know what was happening, and said that this was the part of an offer he wanted to make us. He already talked to Ted and Marcus as well, and is flying here. We have a meeting scheduled in the morning.”

“So this is serious? He is going to make a legitimate offer on our patents?” I asked.

“It seems so,” Jonathan said. “Even Ted is convinced. I know we haven’t been bugging you with the details of the negotiations, but this could be serious. So far it has all been preliminary, going over what the sale would cover and what they would need from us. Charles told them we wouldn’t sell for less than five hundred million, which I thought was a stretch. But he swears that when you figure in the sales to NATO allies, it could be worth a lot more that that.”

“Wow, that is a lot of money,” I said, stunned. “That would really open up things for us.”

“Without a doubt. It is clear he is going to make his offer tomorrow, so we should all be there.”

“Count me in. See you in the morning.”

I walked back into the living room like a zombie, completely stunned.

“Cas, are you ok?” Zoe asked, looking over at me concerned.

“I really don’t know,” I said.

“What happened?” Tami asked.

“I think tomorrow MilTech is going to offer us five hundred million dollars for our patents.”

The room went dead silent for a moment, then exploded in loud noises. Some of it was questions directed at me, questions I couldn’t hear because of the squealing and jumping up and down Tina and Vicki were doing.

Eventually everyone calmed down enough for Zoe to ask, “Is this for real?”

“Yeah, we think so. But I guess we’ll know for sure in the morning.”

I could barely sleep that night and was at the office a full hour before the meeting. So early in fact that Zoe, who had driven me, and I were the first ones there.

“Is this for real?” I asked Ted when he came in, echoing Zoe’s question from the night before.

“It seems to be. Trust me, I was as skeptical as anyone, but everything seems on the up and up. As he promised, we saw his first real gesture, yesterday,” Ted said, putting his stuff away.

Ted was the last one to arrive, as we had all agreed to arrive early for a pre-meeting pow-wow.

“So you think the five hundred million is a fair price,” I asked Charles.

“I do. Stealth is the big thing in military technology right now. The innovations that Marcus made can be used as a stepping stone outside of drones. Once you consider it’s long range value, in addition to the actual sales of drones to both the US government and allies that we would be allowed to sell this kind of material to, I think it’s fair.”

He paused for a moment before continuing, “Actually it’s a little under what I think the real value of this is, but I think it was the smart play. It’s high enough that they know it’s a real number, but a bargain that hopefully MilTech will want to jump at.”

“It sounds like you think we should sell this off, even if we get less than full market value for our tech,” I asked.

“We all talked about that in the earlier meetings, and I do. You guys just aren’t set up for this kind of thing. Contracting to the government is a very specific specialty, and honestly you lucked into what you originally got. The odds of your selling a second product are not good. No, you want to get out of the military contracting business.”

“Ok, that makes sense. I have been wanting to move us to more humanitarian projects, or at least humanitarian adjacent. I just didn’t want to leave money on the table.”

“Trust me,” Charles said, “I think it’s worth leaving forty cents out of every dollar on the table if you can step away. Besides the infrastructure, there are political aspects you haven’t had to deal with yet, that you will really want to avoid. It’s worth the loss of some money upfront, to keep from dropping money down rabbit holes later.”

“Ok, so we are all agreed, as long as he is in the ballpark, we take the deal,” I said to the room in general.

Everyone gave their agreement, which was good since that was the moment Mr. Baxter showed up. Mary Ann announced him over the intercom in Ted’s phone, who told her to send Mr. Baxter back.

He shook everyone’s hand when he entered the room saying, “Was that proof enough to our commitment to make this right with you?”

“It was an excellent first step,” Jonathan said.

Always the negotiator. Maybe it’s my youthful naïveté or the fact that I wasn’t part of the negotiations over the last week, but I was blown away by their proof of commitment. Wisely, I held my tongue.

“Excellent,” Baxter said, unfazed by Jonathan’s wording. “So let’s make this quick, since we have already gone over the details for what you would be willing to sell. We are talking about the drone patents, along with the accompanying patents for the internal mountings and electronics. Also the design schematics, and all ancillary work product connected to the patents in question”

Jonathan looked in Ted’s direction, who gave a single assenting nod.

“Correct,” Jonathan said.

“Excellent. I have spoken with my board of directors and we are prepared to offer you this in return,” Baxter said as he handed a folded piece of paper to Ted.

Ted opened it, and his jaw dropped. I was surprised. Normally, Ted holds a pretty tight poker face in meetings. He handed the paper to Jonathan, who showed no reaction at all, at least none that I could see. Next the paper moved to me and I unfolded it.

Seven-Hundred and Fifty Million!

I couldn’t believe it. We were prepared to take anything in the ballpark of Charles’s estimate, and they instead added half again the value. Sadly, I followed Ted’s example, rather than Jonathan’s. I am sure the look of surprise on my face was readily apparent.

I handed the paper onto Charles who, after opening it, said, “This should work. I am curious how you arrived at this figure?”