Black Rose

Chapter Nineteen

Aunt Melissa arrived half an hour later and they told her everything.
"This has got to be some sort of coincidence Lee and Kristen……."
"Wait, Kristen, Kristen Hall?" Aunt Melissa stopped him.
"Yes, Kristen Hall"
"Freema mentioned her to me"
"You met with Freema, the journalist who was killed?"
"Yes she was working on a story"
"And this cargo of death, have you been able to gather more information about it?"
Wes asked.
"Yes we have, it is a virus which allows a person infected 24 hours to live without the antidote, after 24 hours all your senses shut down and you just switch off, I suspect that was what happened to Freema, her body was found in a train, she was not marked and her autopsy showed she had traces of some unknown substance in her blood"
"Oh my God, she had stayed because she thought the box of truths was in Mexico and she was coming close to finding it and I had let her stay, when all this while the box was right under my nose?" Melissa said, she was heartbroken.
"It wasn’t your fault aunt"
"But I don't understand, why didn't Curtis say anything to me, he should have at least told me he had it"
"Are you saying no other person has seen this video?"
"No, just Janice and Curtis I presume, and you two"
"I'm sure he had a pretty good reason for hiding it from you"
"I hope so, but I can't help but shake off the feeling he did not trust me"
"He did, he did say in his note to trust no one but you"
"He did, let me see that" She took the note from Adriana and read it then she smiled.
"I miss this hand writing" She said.
"I do too"
"Wes we need to contact Kristen, can you help with that?"
"Sure but I have a confession to make before this gets all messed up"
"You're not with the white rose are you?"
"No he's not, I would have known, he didn't figure out my password"
"What?" Wes and Adriana said in Unison.
She laughed.
"The first time I met him and conversed with him there was this phrase I used, that is how we identify each other, it's like some pass word, when more people began to join the White Rose we figured we needed a way to know each other so we came up with 'do you like eggs?" She laughed.
"You're joking right?"
"No I'm not, whenever you see Alfre, ask her do you like eggs, be certain she would say I like them green"
They laughed out so loud.
"Wait Alfre is with the White Rose?"
"Yes she is but back to you Wes, what were you going to tell us?"
Where the hell is Adesha, is it a good time to tell them the truth?He thought.
"Wes?"
"Yh, never mind that, we should call Lee"

***

The good thing was he had updated his whereabouts with Wes so Wes knew he was in Panama. Lee answered after calling a few times.
"Hey dude"
"Where you been?" Wes asked.
"Hiding" He answered sarcastically.
"Is Kristen with you?"
"Yeah she's here, wanna say hi?"
"Actually someone else does"
"Hey is it safe?"
"Trust me it is, I don't have a gun to my head yet"
"How can I be sure?"
"Just talk to her"
He handed the phone to Melissa.
"Hello, my name is Melissa, and I don't know if Freema mentioned me but I asked her not to so I doubt she did but can you put this on speaker, it's important that both of you know this"
"Okay" Lee said.
"We have the box of truths but we can't tell you where it is…………."
"When you say we, do you mean you and Wes or…."
"The White Rose has it, I understand you are in Panama now Wes told me you had to leave Peru, why is that?"
"I think my boss is after me, she's with the CIA, we received an anonymous call ad the caller said they knew about the drive Freema sent to Kristen and that they knew we were in Peru, at first we suspected a journalist friend of Freema's but we cleared her out only to leave my boss on the suspect list"
"Your boss?"
"Yeah Janice Secta"
"No no no, it can't be Janice, she's with us, she's one of our horsemen"
"Horsemen?"
"Yes these people are all white rose members who were put in the devils crib, which is code name for the black rose syndicate to gather Intel, the first horsemen found out that the black rose was planning some sort of biological warfare……"
"what the-" He said.
"So Janice is with the good guys?"
"Not entirely with but yes she's the only reason no one has attacked you yet"
"So what does this box of truth have anyway and even if we had it, who do we deliver it to?"
"The world, it's now my mission to get this info back to the White Rose ASAP"
"So why didn't you just broadcast it as soon as you had all the info, why let all those people die, it doesn’t make sense"
"we can only broadcast this when we have retrieved all the cargo and we are going to force them to give us the antidote, what you are going to do now is get that drive, Kristen needs to finish that article ASAP"
"Even if she does she can't publish it till we get hold of the cargo, the last thing we want is some epic pandemic"
"Leave that to us, just finish the article and wait for my go ahead, sit tight you two, the bumpy ride is yet to begin!"