Free The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers) by Mark Dawson

Eddie Fabian was turning in for the night.
    Hicks stared up at the window. He was uncomfortable. He knew very little about Fabian, but he did know that Leo Isaacs was a deeply unpleasant man with an unpleasant past, and he would not have been disposed to help him under normal circumstances. Hicks had two boys, and if the things that Fabian had said about him were true, then he was a vile predator who deserved to rot in prison.
    But then Hicks thought of the money that the general had so insouciantly dropped onto the seat of the car. Thousands of pounds, just like that. He thought of the money that they had taken. Tens of thousands, maybe more. He thought of his wife, Rachel, and the cancer. It had changed everything. It had bent his principles and twisted his morals until he didn’t recognise himself any more.
    The cancer. He didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn’t stop himself. It had started with a melanoma on her back. He had seen it one morning after she had come out of the shower. The National Health Service had removed it, but the disease had already spread. The MRI discovered a five-centimetre growth under her left breast that had burrowed deep into her chest wall. There was another growth on her right lung. The doctors were talking about surgery and then aggressive chemotherapy, but Hicks had been able to tell from the way that they delivered the prognosis that they were not hopeful of being able to do very much at all.
    Hicks had immediately started to research their options. Foreign treatment seemed like the best hope. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York was offering an experimental combination of two drugs: Opdivo and Yervoy. They were among a vanguard of new medicines that worked by bolstering the immune system so that it attacked the tumours. Patients who had taken the cocktail had reported incredible results. There was a story in the press that Hicks had fastened onto. One patient, a woman of similar age to Rachel, had returned for a follow-up examination to be told that her tumour had gone. The melanoma cells had simply been dissolved. Hicks spoke to Rachel’s oncologist and suggested that they try the treatment. The man shook his head. It wasn’t available on the National Health Service. Hicks called the clinic in New York. Treatment was possible, but the drugs were expensive. Two courses would cost over a hundred thousand pounds.
    They didn’t have that. Not even close.
    Hicks had no choice. He had to find the money.
    If he couldn’t find it, or if he was too slow, then Rachel would die. He would be widowed. His children would lose their mother.
    And that was not going to happen.
    Hicks wouldn’t let it.
    He had served with Gillan in the Regiment and they had kept in touch afterwards. The two of them met for a drink once or twice a year, and the last time Gillan had suggested that he had been getting extra work with a group of other ex-SAS men. Hicks had been working in private security, body guarding for rich Arabs who treated London like their own private playground. They showered money around like confetti, yet they were parsimonious when it came to paying their staff. Gillan had asked whether Hicks would be interested in learning more about the opportunity, but he had said he wasn’t interested. It was before the diagnosis, and he hadn’t needed to know any more to suspect that it wasn’t completely legitimate. But then came the cancer, and Hicks’s priorities had changed. He would never be able to make the money he needed by working for the Arabs. He was open to alternatives.
    He called Gillan and said that he might be interested. They had met again and, this time, Gillan had brought the general with him. Higgins explained the kind of jobs that they undertook: they targeted serious criminals, robbing them at the same time as they removed them from the street. He made it sound as if it was a public good.
    Hicks saw that for the fig leaf that it was, but he said that