Free Double-Back (Jake Waters Book 3) by Bob Blink Page B

the person.  How about you come by this Saturday and talk with me?  Maybe we can both find what we need."
    Natalie glanced at the paper, and then said uncertainly.  "Okay.  I'll call you and see what's a good time."
    "Anytime would be fine.  Just come by when it fits your schedule," Professor Morris said.  Then he added, "I need to go.  It's been good seeing you again," he added, as he hurried off.
    Natalie had looked at the scrap of paper with the wobbly writing, and shrugged.  She shoved it into her leather binder, not really expecting to follow up on it, and headed back to work.
    Friday had been a horrible day at work, her supervisor particularly unsympathetic to something Natalie had suggested, and that night while she sipped a glass of white wine and contemplated finding another job, she recalled the encounter with the professor.  She stood and checked, finding the scrap of paper where she'd crammed it.  That's when she decided she'd pay the old scholar a visit.
     
    "I wondered if you'd come, or whether you were just accommodating an old man," Professor Morris said as he led her through the front of his large, but older house toward the large screen patio in back.  Clearly the Professor's family had money.  He couldn't have afforded anything like this on his university salary. The mansion, no other word fit, was isolated from any neighbors by both distance and large, ancient trees that surround the estate on all sides.
    "Something to drink?" he asked almost formally.
    Natalie shook her head.
    "You made me curious," she admitted.  "Do you really have something I might be able to help with?  Are you still doing research at the university even though you are no longer teaching?"
    Professor Morris smiled, and slowly shook his head as he fingered the white hair of his beard.
    "This is something of my own.  I've done everything here at the house.  The university knows nothing about it.  It's cost a small fortune, but I've used Mary's money for it.  She was quite well off, you know.  I promised her I'd find something, and it seemed like the best use of the money she left when she passed."
    Natalie recalled the Professor's wife had passed almost ten years ago, long before she'd been in his class.
    "What exactly is it?" she asked, wanting to sweep away the mystery.
    The Professor nodded.  "I think I might have found a cure for diabetes," he said.
    Natalie wasn't certain how to respond to the claim.  Such a find would indeed be worth an astronomical amount of money, not to mention the relief it would afford to millions.
    "I don't expect you to just believe my claims," he said.  "I want to show you my test results and let you make your own evaluation.  I need a secondary evaluation to ensure I haven't fooled myself.  I have kept this secret up to now in part because of the value of the discovery and how certain people might want to make their fortunes from it.  I intend to release the discovery to the world for free once I'm certain my results are verifiable."
    "For free?" Natalie asked, shocked.
    "Well, it won't be entirely free.  But if all the pharmaceutical companies in the world know what the formula is and how to make the serum, it will keep the costs down to a minimum.  No one will be able to use their proprietary ownership to exact ridiculous profits from sufferers."
    "Why wouldn't you want to benefit from your efforts?"
    "I'm old, have no immediate family, and am frankly reasonably well off.  I don't need the money, and I did this for Mary.  She would have wished it," Professor Morris confessed.
    "You really believe you have found something?" Natalie asked.
    It was almost impossible to believe.  Large pharmaceutical firms with huge staffs spent millions and worked for years in hopes of a major breakthrough such as this.  For Professor Morris to have uncovered something in his private lab in his home was almost too remarkable to be believed.
    "Let me show you what I have, and you make your own