PRESENT DAY. WEDNESDAY. Adam Novak’s Home, Seattle, WA.

Adam Novak stared at the light shining through the curtains in his living room.

He hadn’t left the lamp on when he ran out to get dinner. There was no doubt about that in his mind.

Someone was in his house.

If he called the cops whoever was inside stood a chance of getting away with they’d broken in for. He’d known the neighborhood wasn’t the best place, all things considered, which was why he opted to stash all of his gear at the Aegis headquarters. The last thing he wanted was for some idiot to get their hands on his service weapons and kill someone.

He left the truck at the curb and cut through the grass into his neighbor’s yard. The elderly couple would be in bed by now, so there was no one to observe his trespassing. He let himself into his back yard by way of a gate between the two properties.

Lights were on in the kitchen, too.

Whoever was inside didn’t care about being seen. There was no broken window, no obvious signs of forced entry.

What did he have worth stealing, anyway? The TVs?

The back door opened and a familiar, dark skinned man leaned out.

“Yo, Novak. Get in here and stop creeping around in the dark.”

Adam gaped at the man, his brain not quite wrapping around why one of the Aegis Group higher up’s was here.

A job.

It had to be

That was the only thing that made sense.

“What are you doing in my house, Luke?” Adam plodded toward the back door. Truth be told, he welcomed the idea of getting back out in the field after most of his team had been sidelined by medical leave.

He stepped into the kitchen and Luke closed the door behind him. Adam stared at the four people sitting around his dining table. Zain and Abigail he knew, and two were strangers.

If this was a job where was his Team Leader? Where were the other guys?

“To what do I owe the honor?” Adam asked. There was no good reason for Zain—the boss of the Aegis Group Seattle office—and two senior officers of the company to have broken into his home.

“Sit.” Abigail patted the chair at the head of the table. Luke had already taken up a spot next to his wife on the bench seat. Those two were the real trouble. Adam didn’t know what they were into at the main offices outside of Chicago, but every time Abigail got involved things got worse on a global level.

“Sorry about this.” Zain’s expression was tight, concerned.

Adam didn’t like this one bit. Something was up. This wasn’t standard operating procedure, which meant shit was going to get real dangerous if someone didn’t act fast.

He set the plastic bag containing his dinner on the counter and took the chair at the head of the table. The other two individuals kept staring at him, like he was a ghost or something.

“This is Cindy and John.” Zain nodded at the two strangers.

Adam took in their neat, plain appearance. No jewelry, the woman’s nails weren’t done, they appeared to be low maintenance individuals. Clients in hiding? People in need of a bodyguard and a place to crash? Three of their five person Alpha Team were out of commission due to medical leave from their last gig. It stood to reason that Zain might throw a curve ball at Adam.

“They’re from the CDC,” Zain said slowly.

Adam’s world slowed to a stop.

The Centers for Disease Control?

Sweat broke out along Adam’s spine and his mouth went dry. Their appearance made sense now. They were researchers, lab types who worked too much and forgot the world.  They were like her.

His stomach knotted up until he tasted bile on the back of his throat.

He’d feared this day.

There was only one reason anyone from the CDC would want to contact him.

“Okay, someone is going to have to start talking. You wanted it to wait until you were in the room with Adam, here he is. Now, talk.” Abigail stared at the two newcomers.

Cindy and John glanced at each other and shifted.

Cindy was younger, probably in her mid-thirties. She had a slight upturn to her nose and her glasses made her eyes seem too large for her face. John was older, probably in his late fifties, with silvering hair and a thin frame.

“Is she okay?” Adam’s voice was rough, and it was a chore forcing the three words out.

“We don’t know,” Cindy said softly. Were they friends? Did they work together?

“What’s going on?” Adam directed his stare at Abigail.

Someone was going to give him answers.

On a good day, he thought about his wife a handful of times. On the bad ones, it was all he could do keep from getting in his truck and driving across the country to find out what she was doing these days. He’d never thought things would turn out this way that they would grow apart, but they had. He still wasn’t sure how it happened, but with Heidi crazy made sense.

“Start at the beginning,” Abigail said in her no nonsense voice.

John cleared his throat and leaned forward.

“We don’t know where to start,” he said.

“Where’s Heidi? Is she okay?” Adam asked.

“We don’t know where she is,” John replied.

“Let me. Heidi works in virology. She brought a matter to us for our input.” Cindy gestured at John. “We’ve seen a higher number of outbreaks in the last...eighteen months or so. A lot of them have been related, but there’s no geographic reason for the similarity. I mean, remote groups with little to no outside contact, on different continents should not be contracting similar, unknown diseases. Unless...someone was making those people sick.”

“How does Heidi tie into all this?” Adam feared the answer.

“She saw the connection first and brought it to us to verify what she’d discovered,” John replied.

“We think someone is using CDC samples to engineer viruses and infect people. We think the CDC has someone exploiting our resources for a nefarious purpose.” Cindy glanced at John while she played with her watch band. She was afraid. Whatever Heidi was looking into was bad.

“Shit.” Adam glanced at Abigail then Zain.

“They came to us earlier today, and we hopped a plane here,” Luke said.

“What about Heidi? Where is she?” Adam could see how engineered viruses would be bad, but they were avoiding his question.

“She was working on another outbreak near Lima, similar to ones we’ve seen. The last I heard from her, she said she thought she was close to identifying the strain of virus they’d used to create this outbreak.” John glanced at Cindy. “No one has heard from her in a week. The team said she just disappeared. We think... We think whoever is behind this knows Heidi was on to them. That we’ve been digging into it. We didn’t know what to do at first, and then someone broke into Cindy’s apartment and went through her things. We knew then that we had to do something. Heidi always said if anything ever happened to her, we should come to you.”

Adam stared at the stranger across from him.

Heidi, his estranged wife he hadn’t seen him since their wedding day, had sent these people to find him. Adam sat back and scrubbed his hand across his face, somehow pissed off, terrified and hopeful all at once.

“What the hell am I supposed to do?” Adam knew what he wanted to do: buy a ticket to Lima and go find her. The question was, what should he do?

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Abigail leaned forward, her gaze directed at the two scientists. “Do you know why they’d take Heidi? Is it just because she knows something? What purpose would someone have in using these viruses? Are they deadly? Would they spread quickly? Are we talking about a weapon? Some sort of attack?”

Adam stared at Abigail. There was no real reason for her to be here unless the threat was greater than they suspected. He didn’t know what the hell Abigail did these days, but it was dangerous. Adam didn’t want Heidi involved in danger.

“Heidi had all that information,” John said.

“She didn’t want to share it. She said she was scared it would make us all targets.” Cindy gestured at her partner.

“Why would Heidi send you here?” Adam had thought about just showing up at the CDC a few times and forcing Heidi to see him again, but he hadn’t. She’d run from him to a better, happier life. The last thing he was going to do was drag her back to the past.

“You’re her husband.” Abigail reached over and squeezed his hand. She glanced at the other two. “What exactly is the job?”

“Usually we’d go through the CDC to the military, who would then find Heidi. We fear whoever is behind this would be in that chain of command. By going to them, we’d tell them what they might not know already—which is that more people than just Heidi are aware of what’s going on.” To Cindy’s credit she spoke calmly, while her fidgeting told another story.

“We just want to find Heidi,” John said.

“Who is the we wanting to hire us?” Luke asked.

“Just the two of us. No one else knows.” John nodded at Cindy.

“Will you give us a moment?” Abigail asked.

“Of course,” Cindy replied.

The two CDC doctors got to their feet and retreated to the living room.

Adam continued to sit there, stunned by the details. His heart knocked painfully against his ribs. Time and distance had never mattered when it came to his feelings about Heidi.

He knew she was a bit of a hot shot that she got her kicks by going into dangerous areas and working her magic. She had a gift.

The truth was they wouldn’t have gotten married if she didn’t need him. He’d thought about asking her before, but she had the chance to get away from it all. He couldn’t stand in her way. And then her parents had died, and she’d been left footing their bills, trying to go to school and manage it all. That was what had changed it. There were certain perks to being the wife of an enlisted service man, and following the death of her family, she’d needed support. He couldn’t very well get out of being deployed, but he could offer her the perks that came with being his wife.

“Adam? Hey, I need you to tune in, please,” Abigail said.

“Here’s what we know.” Zain pushed a tablet to the middle of the table. “Looking at flight logs and what I can find, Heidi left Atlanta and arrived in Lima two weeks ago. This pin here is where she was last seen working in a village experiencing an unexplained outbreak. The lab she was working in was in a suburb of Lima. Cindy says the people there saw her a week ago, and she told them she wanted to go check a more remote village. That was why no one said anything at first. Abigail, didn’t you say you had more?”

“I made some calls before we got in the air. I’ve only been able to glance at my messages, but it does appear that a number of intel agencies have some alarming concerns about unexplained outbreaks. It could be related to whatever Heidi got caught up in,” Abigail said.

“You have to know I’m going down there, right?” Adam glanced from person to person.

“We assumed as much,” Abigail replied.

“This is obviously a tricky situation,” Luke said slowly.

“You think?” Adam straightened. He wanted to pace. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to find his wife. No matter how good or bad they might have been for each other, he’d never stopped caring for her.

“Okay, I need you to focus,” Luke said.

“The nature of this is going to be difficult to manage, and after the Alpha Team’s last op, Admiral Crawford is hesitant to put our guys into exceptionally high risk situations,” Abigail said.

“You don’t have to send anyone else. I’m going.” Adam rapped his knuckles on the table.

“None of us have said we aren’t sending a team.” Zain stared at him. “We’re trying to figure out who to send.”

“Give me Kyle. We can do this.” Adam had to believe they could bring Heidi back.

“You need more people.” Abigail gestured at her phone. “Grant and Riley from Lepta Team are in town and available. If Kyle agrees to this op, I’d like those two to join you.”

It was a shit time for Isaac, Shane and Felix to be out of commission. Adam would give his left nut for his team on hand to back him up.

“I know this team isn’t ideal, but we can’t in good conscience send two people on what is clearly a highly sensitive operation,” Abigail said.

“Those two want to go with you as well.” Luke nodded at the duo in the living room. “Besides, if someone is hurt or you encounter more of this virus, they could be helpful.”

“When do we leave?” Adam asked.

“As soon as we can gather men, resources and nail down some details,” Zain said.

“I’m going to pack.”

Adam pushed to his feet and strode through the house, back to his bedroom. He closed the door behind him then leaned against the wall.

Heidi.

They’d grown up together on the same street. She’d been this nerdy girl who merely wanted to be included. The other girls had been particularly cruel to her for no better reason than they could. She’d had heart, and so Adam had included her in tag football, riding bikes and other things that were all about the guys. Later, he’d cashed in on those favors big time by leaning heavily on her tutelage to get through high school.

They’d progressed naturally into a couple during high school. He’d had to have been blind to not see how she matured into a young, beautiful woman.

The first time they’d kissed was over a Thanksgiving break. He’d convinced his parents to take him to whatever new, hot movie was out and bring Heidi along, too. Huddled in the back row they’d put their heads together to snicker and talk. He’d made the first move and fumbled it pretty badly. There wasn’t a moment in his life that he could recall with such crystal clarity where he wanted to die. After the movie they’d retreated to the basement under the guise of doing some homework.

That was when Heidi had kissed him, and the rest was history. That holiday had begun the Merry-Go-Round of their relationship. They’d broken up a dozen times, at least, vowing each to be their last. Everyone else just laughed at them, and sure enough, a week later they were together again. School, basic training, deployments, college—none of it was a tall enough hurtle to keep them apart. All it took was a glimpse of her and he was right back to wanting her.

He still wasn’t sure where things had gone so terribly wrong. They were always hot and cold, fire and ice, but they’d come back together. He didn’t even know where she lived or how she was doing anymore, and that hurt most of all. Now she’d gone off and gotten herself in trouble, and he didn’t know what he’d do if something happened to her.

Heidi would always be his brightly burning star that thing that anchored him to the real world. He couldn’t handle the thought of something happening to her.

FRIDAY. UNKNOWN, PERU.

Heidi Novak was grateful she didn’t speak Spanish well enough to communicate her patient’s dire situation. Unlike a true doctor, Heidi was accustomed to working in a lab. Her bedside manner left a lot to be desired, something she was painfully aware of as she held the hand of the adolescent boy identified on her roster as Patient 438. She couldn’t feel his skin through her suit, but she didn’t need to. His brow was damp and his temperature still high.

“I’m going to do everything I can,” she said.

She let go of his hand and stood, taking the chart with her.

Heidi used to pride herself on being a realist. She didn’t like to wish on stars or hope for the best. Her gut always said to trust the facts. They never lied.

Right about now she’d take a shooting star.

Patient 438 was dying, and she didn’t think it was something she could stop. Not without a team of doctors and scientists unpacking the virus he’d been infected with.

She passed through the plastic walls that created the patient’s sterile environment and into the hall. Similar pods lined the bigger room, each with another patient inside suffering from a variant of the same disease. Not all of them were fatal like 438.

The guard on duty wasn’t hounding her yet, which meant she had perhaps a few minutes before they demanded the morning’s update.

She crossed to the desk at the end of the row and crouched beside it, feeling around the underside of a drawer until she could pry the tiny pad of paper out from where it was wedged. She glanced around, but still no guard.

Heidi could only blame herself for getting kidnapped like this. She’d been so engrossed in whatever the device she’d found next to the village well that she hadn’t noticed the two men creeping up on her. Much to her surprise they hadn’t killed her, which was what she’d assumed would happen. Instead, they’d brought her here.

Footsteps thumped on the concrete.

She scribbled a few hasty notes before cramming the notebook back into its hiding place. She picked up a pen she’d dropped earlier and straightened just as another figure stopped on the other side of the desk.

“Something wrong?” the man asked.

It wasn’t the guard.

Heidi fought the urge to guilty-gulp.

The man in front of her was the top guy in charge of whatever the hell was going on here. She’d heard someone else call him Léo once, but he’d never told her his name. He wasn’t a doctor or a scientist; she’d picked up that much from his lack of familiarity with the lingo. He was the man who controlled her life, so she had to jump when he snapped his fingers.

Sweat broke out along Heidi’s spine, under her arms and just about everywhere. She needed out of her PPE before she passed out from heat exhaustion.

“Fine.” She pushed to her feet and tugged on the suit’s zipper.

“How are they progressing?”

She swallowed down bile. After a week here, she understood what he really meant. She bought herself a moment, pulling the suit off and slinging her oxygen tank onto the desk.

This whole situation pissed her off. She’d devoted her life to preventing this sort of thing, and now she was helping these people create them.

“Four of the patients won’t make it through the trial,” she said.

“Have you made your notes?”

“All except the last one. You caught me as I was finishing up.” She stepped out of the suit, peeling her feet up out of the rubber boots.

“Why is it taking you so long to do these rounds?”

“I’m trying to make them comfortable and treat their symptoms. I’m a virologist, not a physician. This is all outside of my wheelhouse.” She sat down in the desk chair and went about her routine. She would not let this man intimidate her.

“You could reconsider.” Léo leaned against the desk.

“I’d rather not, thanks.” Heidi smiled and bit her tongue, holding the words she wanted to say deep inside.

“Your talents are wasted out here. Cut the chit chat with the rats and get those reports in quicker. We don’t have time to lose. In fact, we can probably eliminate the ones with a high mortality factor.”

“Eliminate—you mean...?” She stared at the man.

“I’ll have someone send a round of sedatives by.” Léo picked up her tablet and squinted at the display. “In fact, there’s only three patients we’re interested in, these in the seven range.”

Heidi’s whole body felt as though it were frozen.

There was a mortality rating. Ones had no risk of death while a ten was on their last breath. Seven might seem like an optimistic place to be, but the truth was, anything over a six resulted in death. It was merely a matter of how long it took for the patient to expire.

They wanted people to suffer? That was part of the plan?

“You should have stayed in your safe, comfortable lab if you didn’t want to come out and play.” Léo smiled and handed the tablet back.

“How do you sleep at night?”

“More comfortably than you.”

“You don’t have a soul, do you?”

“You pity people you’ve never met, but you never hesitate to wonder if they deserve what they’re getting.” Léo turned toward the chambers. “These people? Most of them were sentenced to life for violent crimes. That boy you keep doting on, trying to make better? He was in prison for killing five families. His preference was parents with a boy and a girl. He’d probably get off killing you.”

Heidi shivered and stared at Patient 438’s chamber. But, he was just a kid...

“You’re probably thinking, I bet he’s making it up. And maybe I am, but I bet next time you do your rounds you’ll look at that boy’s arms and hands. Check for the scars left by little nails. You like to live in your lab, fighting a battle of right and wrong, but you don’t look outside to see the struggle of real people.”

“What about the innocent, good people you kill? What about them?”

“We just save them from a lifetime of suffering the injustice of others.” Léo spread his arms and smiled. “You’re going to work for me someday.”

“I’d rather die, thanks.”

“That can be arranged.”

Léo saluted her, turned and strolled away from her.

Heidi sat there and watched him walk the length of the quarantine chambers. She glanced at the patients as he passed. Was he telling her the truth? Were these people killers? Or was it all a lie? Léo turned out of sight, his footsteps echoing down the hall.

She tossed her pencil down on the desk, muttering curses under her breath.

When they’d kidnapped her, she’d sat in a dark room for a day or more before she saw another human being. Two men had dragged her out of that dungeon and sat her in front of Léo. He’d offered her two options, death or contribute. She should have held firm to her morals and taken death, but in a moment of weakness she’d agreed to help. While she refused to put her talents to use creating whatever virus they were injecting the patients with, she could help treat the patients once they’d been infected. Or so she’d thought.

She was beginning to realize there was a system here, one that wasn’t new or even experimental. They’d done this enough to anticipate what would happen.

It was inhumane. A nightmare. And she was now involved.

Heidi picked up the tablet lying on the desk and clicked into the last patient record. They didn’t even try to hide that they’d used the boy before. According to what she was looking at, this was his fifth disease, and it was likely to be his last. There was no surviving this encounter. Not without some serious hospitalization and experimental work done to treat the root cause.

The most Heidi could do was make the patients comfortable, diminish their suffering and treat their symptoms. It wasn’t much, but it was more than Léo’s team did for them. Along the way she might lose her soul for her choices.

She finished filling in the record and hit send. The team in the lab would chart and evaluate what she’d entered and then continue with whatever devil work they were doing. They didn’t care about treating, only the rate of infection and mortality.

These people, whoever they were, were engineering diseases and unleashing them on the innocent. There was a systematic approach to what they did, as though this assembly line process was one built on trial, error and a wealth of experience.

How long had they been at it? Why was someone only now noticing this?

The rest of the CDC team would have reacted to her disappearance by now.

Her mind skittered away from what that meant. When this had begun, when they’d started the cloak and dagger routine of discussing the strange pathogens they were finding, Heidi had realized this went deeper than what they suspected. She’d known then that they were jumping into something beyond their scope of control.

John would have contacted Adam by now. Cindy would have told him to wait, see what happened, but John was a man of action. Adam would like him.

Adam Novak.

Heidi swiveled in her chair and stared at the brick wall behind her.

She didn’t know if she wanted Adam to slam the door in John’s face or come find her. She never knew what she wanted when it came to Adam, and she hated uncertainty. The facts of their relationship were brutally clear: they weren’t good for each other.

Then why did they keep ending up together?

She’d told herself several times that she’d break things off. They would be over. She’d never been strong enough to stick to her guns. After all these years, she couldn’t send him divorce papers. No, she needed to do something like that in person, and deep down she still didn’t want to go there. Besides, she knew what would happen when they saw each other. Her resolve would crumble and then they would tear each other’s clothes off.

Growing up people had blamed her for Adam’s poor behavior, that she was a bad influence on him, but they’d never known the real Adam. Not like her. Everyone else saw this quiet, reserved, disciplined man. The truth was, he was controlled to a point, and when he passed that point he became something else.

Heidi grabbed the clipboard and fanned herself.

Adam was a good soul. He meant well.

She would always be grateful to him for coming to her rescue. When her parents did what they did, it had left her floundering by herself. Adam had offered her a lifeline. Unlike most things between them, the marriage wasn’t a product of passion. It was a matter of convenience. A means to an end. She had school to finish and no money. By marrying Adam he was able to redirect money to her that helped pay for college. She’d qualified for scholarships and worked her ass off for every penny she needed after that, but it was all connected to Adam. Everything she’d done and accomplished in her adult life was because of him, but she couldn’t be with him.

Heidi’s timer sounded. She shoved her feet into her boots and yanked the laces tight. Once that was done, she grabbed the tablet and pushed to her feet.

The people who handled regular operations wouldn’t allow Heidi to manage anything, not even saline. Once every few hours they might release supplies to her.

She walked the length of the room, but didn’t meet the gaze of her patients. She’d been in some bad areas and seen some horrific things, but nothing like this.

A pair of guards were stationed at the entrance to her domain. They rarely came farther than this, probably because they feared getting infected. She couldn’t blame them. She wore the biohazard suit for any direct contact for exactly the same reason.

Heidi stopped in the doorway and peered down the hall.

The guards weren’t there.

“Hello?” she called out.

Odd.

Léo didn’t trust her, and with good reason. Heidi had every intention to get away.

She crept down the hall, hyper aware of the sounds from the rest of the building as the noise from the air purifiers faded.

“Hello?” she said quieter.

She made this walk four times a day, and there was always someone watching. They didn’t trust her just like she didn’t trust them.

Heidi crept down to the junction where the corridor crossed another and peered toward the main areas of the compound. Her grasp of where she was being kept was limited to five areas: where she worked, where she was held, the supply room, the lab and the mess hall. There was obviously more going on, but she’d never made it out of those places.

This might be her chance.

She backtracked to an old emergency exit and pushed.

It didn’t budge.

She put her weight into it and shoved. The door opened a few inches, a thin slice of light shining into the gloom.

How long had it been since she’d seen sunlight?

Something was blocking the door. She’d spend too much time trying to get out that way.

She backed up and stared at the walls.

The windows had been painted black, blocking out natural light and giving nothing away.

She could try to escape or she could follow the rules.

Heidi hated rules.

She shoved the tablet down the back of her jeans and grabbed an old pipe secured to the wall with the other. Even now she could hear Adam’s voice coaching her up that damn tree the boys liked to climb.

Reach for the best handhold, not just the one you can reach.

Her boots slid against the brick walls, finding little grip against the age worn surface.

Don’t overextend yourself.

She made a wild grab for the windowsill above the pipe and hung on by her fingernails.

Use your head, climb smarter.

She pulled herself up with little more than upper body strength and determination, getting one forearm up and levering her weight onto the narrow ledge.

Time was running out.

She grabbed the metal catch and shoved. Paint pealed, and the window groaned open. Fresh, damp air hit her in the face. The light was so bright her whole head throbbed.

A yell echoed down the corridor below.

She pitched forward, forcing the window open with her weight and shimmied her legs up until she was folded over the wall.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered, staring at the ground below.

A hand grasped her ankle.

Now or never.

Heidi leaned forward, letting her weight and gravity do the work for her. The hand holding her slipped, and she fell to the ground. Gravel crunched and her whole body jarred on impact. Prickly weeds stabbed her skin. The sky spread out above her, gray, dreary clouds threatening some damp weather to come.

She was free.

Not for long if she continued lying here though.

Heidi rolled to her hands and knees, then shoved to her feet. Her head rang and her shoulder hurt. Neither impacted the ability of her feet to run.

There was thirty yards or so of gravel and grass to the line of rocks around what had once been a parking lot.

She had to go now.

Heidi scrambled, kicking up rocks as she picked up speed. Running had stopped being fun when she was a pre-teen, but this was her life.

An engine revved behind her. She glanced over her shoulder at a humvee rounding the corner of the building.

There was no way she was outdistancing them.