of the patients from the first wave of meningitis cases went home during the next week. Dave couldn't justify keeping the people from the Justice Center in the hospital longer, not once their symptoms abated and their tests came back clean. The four who had complicating factors such as HIV or Hep-C stayed, both because their underlying conditions affected treatment and because Dave wanted the chance to treat their other illnesses.

 

When they got a new batch of patients, just as his healthy Justice Center patients left, he couldn't be surprised. This time the outbreak happened in a public housing complex down on Gifford Street. It started with one family and spread among the young children like fire through a tinderbox. The first cases presented quickly, with alert parents who knew their rights bringing their kids to the emergency room the instant they suspected a problem.

 

Dave knew, because he'd seen it before, that not all parents would bring in their kids right away. Some parents in the complex wouldn't speak enough English to know there was an outbreak, even with the press conference Dave and Rick had done. Others would be fearful of attracting the attention of the authorities, for whatever reason. Some would believe they couldn't afford the expense.

 

Dave asked the parents of the children brought in early to get involved. "Look," he said, to one matron in particular; Taneisha Atwood was an imposing woman, dark skinned with braids to her shoulders and a baleful glare for Ken any time he attracted her attention. "This isn't really your job, but no one in that complex is going to listen to a bunch of white guys in suits coming over from the County Public Health Office. I need your help to get this outbreak as contained as I can. These kids are my top priority, and they're his too." He jerked his head toward Ken. "Please ask your neighbors, your friends, anyone. If they're showing any signs of this disease, even if they think it's minor, go to the doctor. Let us worry about it. Don't worry about the money; there are funds available for exactly this kind of thing. The sooner we can treat, the better the outcome will be."

 

Atwood glared at Ken again. "Why's there got to be a cop involved if it's just a disease?"

 

Dave hadn't wanted to answer that question. He looked to his lover, who nodded. "We're not positive yet. It might be a hoax, or a coincidence. But we're not sure if someone's out there releasing samples of this bacteria."

 

Atwood closed her eyes and shuddered. "My boy, Trayvon—the one you saw—he found a glass vial on the floor in the hallway the other day. He picked it up and was playing with it." She glowered at Ken. "And before you start in on me, I had no idea there was some psycho making people sick. I took the glass thing he could drop and cut himself with away from him and I put it in the trash where it belonged."

 

Ken grimaced and then he looked away. "I want to yell and scream, but I can't say I'd have done anything different." He sighed. "It's bad from an evidence perspective, but no one's thinking about that when their kid's playing with something like that. They just want to keep their baby safe."

 

Atwood wasn't mollified, but she stopped glowering at Ken.

 

She did go home and tell her neighbors, friends and family. Dave wasn't sure how many more people brought their children in to Silver Oak as a result, but by Wednesday there were ten children on the pediatric ward with bacterial meningococcal disease. One parent had also been admitted; a young woman who'd had her spleen removed after a car accident a few years earlier.

 

That wasn't good news for her.

 

Dave's feet throbbed, because he was on them all of the time. He went from rounds, to new patients, to more rounds, to more new patients and back again. It didn't stop. He got to the hospital an hour earlier in the morning, and he stayed until ten at night, but nothing cut down on the workload. Eventually it would have to stop, right? They'd figure out who was doing this, and they would get the new cases down to a manageable level.

 

Dave's feet swelled. This wasn't unexpected. He did find it frustrating that he had to change from his nice, snazzy dress shoes to ugly, puffy sneakers, but he'd get over that with time.

 

Taneisha Atwood's son responded well to treatment, and was able to go home with his mother a week after he was admitted. He suffered no long-term ill effects from his encounter with meningitis, and he'd discovered that he loved Dave's stethoscope. Dave had been more than happy to let him play with it during rounds, and showed the three-year-old how to listen to lungs and heartbeats. When Tony came to help out with labs, Trayvon gave a listen to him too, and Dave thought his student might just break down then and there.

 

At least Tony couldn't sit around and pretend the poor kid had deserved it somehow.

 

The woman without a spleen wasn't so lucky. Her right leg turned gangrenous within a few days of her admission, roughly a week after admissions from the Gifford Street housing tower began. Dave tried everything he could to save her limb, but in the end they had to amputate. He didn't perform the amputation himself, of course. Dave wasn't a surgeon. He was present in the operating room to assist Rick though. Her family asked him to be there and he couldn't say no.

 

He'd been present at any number of surgeries before. He might not be a surgeon, but he'd stepped in when he had to and he'd held his own. He'd done his surgical rotations too. He knew his way around an open body. When Rick cut into the patient's limb, however, the smell affected Dave like nothing had ever affected him before. Only a heroic act of willpower kept him from being sick inside his mask.

 

He tried not to be too hard on himself about that. After all, gangrene didn't tend to smell all that great to begin with. At the same time, he had to wonder if something else wasn't going on there. Was he getting to be too run down to function?

 

He ran that idea by Ken after the surgery, who didn't have to think too hard about it. "I've been watching you work, babe, and honestly I'm getting exhausted just watching you. You're working triple overtime trying to help these people, and you're trying to help me to solve the case, but you're not taking great care of yourself while you're doing it. Come on. I'm taking you home before you fall down."

 

Dave perked up.

 

Ken laughed at him. "None of that," he said, waving a finger. "At least not until you've had a good night's sleep and consumed food you can't eat while walking. I can't have you passing out halfway through, can I?"

 

"Only if you make me." Dave winked at him, checked on his patients one last time, and let Ken bustle him home.

 

Ken didn't even let him cook. He stopped on the way back to the apartment and got takeout. "I just want you to be comfortable and relaxed. Don't worry about a thing." At home, Ken set the table. He didn't pour wine, since "You're practically falling asleep in your food as it is, Dave. Come on." He did sit and eat with Dave, and then bundled him off to bed.

 

Ken stayed with Dave too. He slept beside Dave the whole night; who would have thought he'd have nightmares about the amputation, if only because he reacted so poorly to it, but as it turned out he slept perfectly in his lover's arms.

 

In the morning, he found himself in much better shape. His feet were still swollen, but not as badly as they had been. They didn't hurt quite so much either. He could head back into the hospital, with Ken in tow, and feel perfectly comfortable.

 

He reached out to Human Resources. Taneisha Atwood had lost her most recent job, but she'd been fantastic when she'd reached out to other people in her community. Maybe there was work for her at Silver Oak as an outreach worker. They couldn't have too many people in a role like that, especially in the middle of an epidemic.

 

And the outbreak was definitely shaping up to fit that word, at least as far as meningitis outbreaks went. Silver Oak was filling up fast. They weren't at a point yet where they would have to start routing other people away from the hospital, but they'd get there eventually. Vulnerable people seemed to be getting hit even harder than usual this time around.

 

While Dave worked to cure the victims, Ken worked to find the killer. It wasn't hard to get a list of everyone who worked at the Justice Center; not for him. Even volunteers had to sign in, so there weren't any surprises on that list. "Finding a way to link anyone from that list to both of the other sites is going to be like trying to put a puzzle together with half of the pieces painted orange."

 

"You might be able to trace some of these people to these folks." Dave looked at the list of names from the Le Moyne outbreak. "Assuming Nick Barrett was targeted and not just chosen at random, you know? Although maybe the killer has a connection to Le Moyne."

 

Ken snapped his fingers. "If the killer just wanted to make a statement, they'd have attacked at SU or Upstate first. They're bigger names, with larger student bodies. Le Moyne is a lot smaller. The killer must have a connection there. It might not be a connection to the students attacked. They might be a former student, or a former employee."

 

"I guess that's as good a reason as any to attack there. Familiarity maybe." Dave made a face. "Every time I try to put myself in the killer's mindset I get sick to my stomach, like I ate some bad cheese or something. I just—ugh. Why? Why do this to a bunch of people? Why go after the housing project? The kids at the housing project? Timmy Jones took a turn for the worse today. We're having to sedate him because of the delirium, from the fever. Someone did that to a little kid. On purpose."

 

Ken sat on the edge of Dave's desk. "Maybe their target wasn't the little kid. Maybe the target was just residents in general. Most people in the city don't know much about the public housing complexes in the area, unless they live there. Maybe they didn't know a kid would pick up the vial."

 

Dave's lip curled. "Nah. I'm not buying it. I mean sure, they might not have known that Taneisha Atwood's son would pick up the vial. But kids always pick stuff up. That's what they do. And how the hell is this person just getting vials of bacteria anyway?"

 

"Could they maybe have taken a sample some time ago? Started a grow-your-own kind of operation?" Ken leaned toward Dave.

 

"Maybe. If they know what they're doing, sure." Dave put a hand on his stomach to settle it. He wasn't usually this delicate, but this whole epidemiology-as-murder situation had him turned around so badly he could barely see straight. "I'd hate to live next door to the killer, assuming they live in an apartment."

 

"Why do you assume they live in an apartment?" Ken tilted his head to the side. "Do you have someone in mind?"

 

"No." Dave blinked. "I don't know why I assumed they live in an apartment. Probably just a New York thing. There aren't a lot of stand-alone houses in Manhattan, you know?" He hummed, and then he shook his head to clear it. "We're going to have to make an announcement, you know. When it was just at Le Moyne, or just at the Justice Center, that was one thing. Now someone's leaving vials at housing complexes. People need to know to be alert, and keep their children from touching things they don't recognize."

 

"I know." Ken bowed his head. "And we're going to have to call in help too."

 

Dave called the hospital's communication department. Ken called his superiors. Neither side was happy about it, but they couldn't argue with what was right in front of them. They convened a joint press conference at the hospital, with a few more journalists than had been there for the initial outbreak announcement. Even Don Arena was in the crowd, pouting in the back with a buddy to take pictures. Awesome. Dave couldn't resist an eye roll, even if he had to try to stay as professional as possible right now. All I need right now is for that jerk to get involved.

 

Dave got up in front of the crowd. "Thank you all for coming out today. We wanted to update you on the meningitis outbreak that started at Le Moyne College a couple of weeks ago. As most of you are already aware, one of those patients did lose his life. Our hearts and prayers are with his family at this time.

 

"Many of you may also be aware that a second outbreak took place at the Onondaga County Justice Center. A third outbreak also took place at a public housing complex on the West Side." He paused while the reporters buzzed between themselves and then he leaned into the microphone again. "Once is a challenge. Twice is a sad coincidence. Three times is a little too much to be believed. I'd like to introduce you to my colleague, Deputy Ken Sykora from the Onondaga County Sheriff's Department."

 

Ken stepped up to the mic. "Thanks for having me. We have absolutely no doubt in our minds at this point that these outbreaks have been deliberately induced." He held up his hands as reporters shifted positions. "Now, we had to weigh a lot of factors when it came to going public with this, and one of them was the possibility of creating a public panic. We had to consider the possibility of panic against the need for people to understand what they could do to keep themselves safe. The media—that's all of you—play a key role in that process."

 

A reporter in a pink dress shirt raised his hand. "Is there any possibility that this is related to terrorism?"

 

Dave shook his head. "I've done work on bioterrorism, and it would be unusual for terrorists to choose bacterial meningitis. It's not the easiest disease to pass back and forth, at least not living the way we do in America. You need to be living in crowded conditions for it to really take a foothold, and sharing space in a way that isn't usual here. Young people—little kids and their parents, teenagers who kiss, college students, people who are incarcerated; you see where this is going—are at higher risk.

 

"It usually pops up naturally, no one really understands how or why. In this case, it's being introduced. If you see a test tube, vial, or other container you don't recognize, don't touch it. Don't let your kids touch it. Get away from it, wash your hands and dial 9-1-1."

 

"This might wind up causing a bunch of false leads." Ken gave one of his slow and sexy grins for the camera. "We don't care. Right now, public safety is our top priority. We've called in the CDC and the FBI—just because it's not likely to be terrorism doesn't mean it's not a nasty crime. It's already murder, and likely to cause a lot of harm before we're through. Another patient lost a leg yesterday. We need to get this person off the streets.

 

"We don't care about what else you've done. We don't care about your immigration status. If you call about one of these vials, we aren't going to bust you for anything else. We won't even check your ID, okay? Be vigilant. Keep yourselves safe, and keep your family safe."

 

Dave took over again. "Doctors like me, and hospitals like Silver Oak, are important in the fight against disease. Everyday people are more important. No one can do more to stop the spread of this disease than you can."

 

He stepped back from the mic to let the reporters ask questions. There weren't many. Everyone seemed to be in a state of shock and Dave couldn't blame them.

 

***

 

phone rang. He recognized Poulsen's ringtone before he even picked it up. Poulsen wasn't technically part of Incident Response. He was the Public Affairs Officer, which meant he cleaned up after the Incident Response Team's messes. That was how Poulsen saw it, anyway, and Ken had to admit that Poulsen wasn't always wrong.

 

"Hey, Poulsen."

 

"Well, I was going to give you a double ration of grief about the way my phone's been ringing off the hook since your little news conference yesterday, but you sound so beat I'm not sure I need to do that right now." Ken could all but see Poulsen's grimace. "Are you okay?"

 

"I'm fine." Ken rubbed at his face. "I'm tired. This case is throwing me for a loop, but I'll manage."

 

"Hm." Poulsen grunted and slurped from something. Ken hoped it was coffee. "It's a weird one, I'll give you that. That little doctor of yours, he seems like he knows what he's talking about?"

 

"Oh yeah." Ken waved a hand. "He knows his stuff, no problem. He's worked with the CDC, he teaches about this stuff over at the med school. Infectious disease is really his jam. He gave me a book. It's actually a good one."

 

"He gave you a book, huh?" Poulsen chuckled. "Well, whatever. What've you got so far?"

 

"We can't quite figure out what this person's motivation is. They're not saying anything, they're releasing the virus—the bacteria," he corrected, as though Dave could hear him, "in places you'd expect to find the disease. It's weird. Terrorists would claim responsibility, and even Isis isn't claiming this one."

 

"Those bastards will claim responsibility for you stubbing your toe if they get a chance." Poulsen slurped again. Yeah, that probably wasn't coffee. Ken winced and wondered if he should say something to someone. "Of course, they probably can't find Onondaga County on a map, so. Maybe you're approaching this from the wrong angle."

 

"How do you mean?" Ken shifted positions. Poulsen had been a pretty good investigator, back before the booze had gotten to him.

 

"You're trying to figure out who has the motivation to do something monstrous. You'll make yourself nuts that way, kid. They'll put you on a desk job and have you answering phones all day. I know the old-fashioned way of doing things, the police instinct, hasn't been too welcome of late, but damn it Sykora you've got the best gut of any ten guys from the current generation. What's it telling you?"

 

Ken bit down on the inside of his cheek. "It's telling me there aren't too many people in the area who would have access to the virus and the motivation. The pharmaceutical companies have pretty strict controls on the bacteria, and the employees aren't getting involved with the investigation."

 

"That's right." Pride gleamed in Poulsen's voice. "Whenever you've got a case like this, with mass casualties, the killer always stays near the investigation. I don't care what their motivation is, or what they say their motivation is. The killer always stays near the investigation, if they don't get directly involved. They have this bizarre need to see the results. It's not something normal people do. It's what separates us from them. Take a good hard look at the people involved with the case. It's going to be someone who's a little more helpful than you'd expect."

 

Ken stretched his neck. "Everyone at Silver Oak is a little more helpful than I'd expect."

 

"I didn't say it was going to be easy, Kenny." Poulsen laughed. "Get to work, and I'll send you the choicest bits of your fan mail. Why don't we start with this one? Received today at ten-forty a.m. Why is it that nothing was done about this whole meningitis thing until after the third place got hit? Oh, right. Because it was just people in jail. Rot in hell, bitch. And that's just the one I feel comfortable reading out loud."

 

Ken groaned. "Fun times."

 

"Relax, kid. I've got your back. Just work fast, would you?"

 

Ken made a face. It was as easy as that. Just work fast. That was all he had to do.

 

Dave had been in the operating room during the conversation, helping with yet another surgery. The families seemed to get a lot of peace of mind when Dave was in there. It didn't make much sense on the surface of it. Dave wasn't a surgeon, but families seemed to trust him more than guys who were specially trained to cut into people for a living.

 

And Ken got it. He didn't know why he got it, but he got it.

 

Dave had a way of worming his way into the heart. Maybe it was the way he didn't judge people, or at least tried not to judge people. Maybe it was the way he smiled, adorable and beguiling. Ken had been hooked before he knew what he was doing, and that was even with all the baggage of Dave's wealth and his family's background. Ken still didn't think he believed Dave hadn't been involved in his family's crimes. He just wasn't sure he cared.

 

When Dave got done cleaning himself up after surgery, he returned to the office. "I don't like how that soap smells on you," Ken told him, wrinkling his nose. "I think it clashes with your shampoo, just a little bit."

 

Dave didn't take offense. He just laughed it off. "Sadly, soap in the OR isn't chosen for its scent. It's chosen for its antibacterial properties, and considering that we're fighting a killer bacteria I think it's probably best that we stick with what works in that department. What do you say?"

 

Ken grumbled, but he couldn't argue with the logic.

 

A nurse walked into the office before they could do more than grin at each other. Ken considered shouting, but that would have been unprofessional. So would making out when they had a hospital full of sick people. "Dr. Stanek? There's a guy at the front desk asking for you both. He says he's a journalist, but he doesn't have credentials."

 

Ken looked at Dave. The look on Dave's face probably mirrored the one on his own. Dave's normally open, smiling face looked like he'd been sucking on a lemon. "I'll go show him back here," Dave sighed. "He's not going to go away."

 

Ken set his jaw. Dave hadn't been feeling well lately. He shouldn't have to compound it by placating a troll, however pretty that troll might be. "I'll get him. You've just pulled out someone's kidney. You meet us in the cafeteria. That way he's not near anything confidential."

 

"Good plan." Dave ducked his head and grinned, pale cheeks turning ever so slightly pink. Ken couldn't not kiss him when he looked so cute, could he?

 

Don Arena waited at the Emergency Department front desk. His full lips were drawn down into a full pout and his dark eyes had widened in an attempt to look sweet and pleading. They were wasted on the nurse at the front desk. Ken had gotten to know Latoya reasonably well over the past few weeks. Latoya was an immovable object, wrapped in the form of a tall, middle-aged Black woman.

 

"Ma'am, I'm a perfectly trustworthy individual. I promise. I'm not interested in going through anyone's personal or confidential files. I just need to talk to Dr. Stanek about this whole wacky hepatitis thing."

 

Latoya didn't move anything but her lips. "If you think you have hepatitis you need to make an appointment with your doctor. If you don't have a primary care doctor of your own, you can make an appointment with any one of our skilled hospitalists. They'll conduct an examination and determine whether or not you need to see a specialist."

 

Arena gaped at Latoya. "Are you serious right now?" He turned to Ken. "Is she serious?"

 

"She's right. If you think you have hepatitis, you do need to see your own doctor. Dave's a busy guy. I don't know if you got the memo, but we're in the middle of a homicidal meningitis outbreak. He doesn't have the time to take drop-ins right now." Only years of practice and dedication allowed Ken to keep a straight face. "He is willing to talk to you in the cafeteria about the meningitis outbreak though." He shot Latoya an apologetic grin. "It wasn't scheduled; it's as much a surprise to us as it is to you, but you know how it is."

 

Latoya sniffed, but she filled out a visitor sticker. "You'll escort him right back to the exit and sign him out when you're done with him?"

 

"Of course." Ken took the sticker from her and plastered it onto Arena's chest. "Come on, buddy. Time's a-wastin'."

 

He led Arena over to the elevators. "She's not very friendly," Arena complained. "She probably shouldn't be in a customer-facing position."

 

Ken raised an eyebrow at his companion. "Do you have any idea what kind of people she faces down every day? She's the one who has to look people in the eye and say no, you can't go visit the wife, son, uncle, grandma you just beat so bad they can't see straight. She doesn't get a gun, or even a Taser. She gets that same attitude she just gave you, and the regulations that tell her she's not allowed to let them in. That's it."

 

"Okay, but she could be nicer about it." Arena tossed his bangs out of his eyes. "Anyway, you and Doc Stanek are on a first name basis now, hm?" His scowl morphed into a leer. "That's good to know. Two of our community's most positive role models turning to each other in a time of crisis? That's perfect copy."

 

"That's gossip, Arena." The elevator doors slid open and Ken led the way inside. "No one cares who's with who when there's people dying."

 

"Are you kidding me? First of all, everyone cares about who's with who. Even on big, mainstream news sites, articles about celebrity hookups and breakups get millions more hits than articles about wars, politics or the economy. Trust me." The elevator didn't take long to get to the appropriate floor. "And that trend just gets stronger when things get scary. People want—they need—a distraction."

 

"First of all, that's ridiculous." The elevator let them out right in front of the cafeteria, so Ken didn't have to try to keep Arena from poking his nose anywhere it didn't belong. "Second, that's celebrities. Not a doctor or a cop."

 

"It's Syracuse, not Los Angeles." Arena looked over the crowd. "Oh, look. I see your steady sweetie over there." He waved.

 

"Steady sweetie?" Ken followed Arena over to the table by the windows that Dave had reserved for them. "What is this, 1953?"

 

Dave plastered a big, fake smile across his face. "It's good to see you," he said, gesturing to the table. "Please, have a seat. I'm sure you've got lots of questions, and I want to be as respectful of your time as I can."

 

Arena puffed up a little. "Thanks. I do have a lot of questions, now that you mention it." He sat down and pulled a digital recorder from his pocket. "I hope you don't mind."

 

"Of course." Dave leaned back in his seat, the picture of ease. "You've got a job to do, after all."

 

"Right? Anyway. When did you know for sure that the outbreak was deliberate?"

 

Damn it. The guy couldn't build up to it?

 

Dave didn't flinch. "We didn't know for sure until the outbreak on Gifford Street. We had some hints before that, but we couldn't be sure. They were in places that were prone to outbreaks, you know? There's a reason college students have to get vaccinated against meningitis before they go to school. And jails, unfortunately, are rife with disease no matter what we do. I'm looking forward to working with the county department of public health to try to rectify that, at least as far as that's possible, once this current crisis is over.

 

"It wasn't until we got an outbreak in a place we wouldn't normally see it that we could say for certain that this was being deliberately introduced into the community. When we knew, and once we'd done what we could to contain the outbreak in that particular location, we had the press conference and alerted the community."

 

Ken watched as his lover spoke. Dave never broke his calm, assured facade. Was public speaking part of the medical school curriculum? No, he'd seen plenty of doctors who couldn't get up in front of a crowd to save their lives. Dave was just that smooth. Ken wouldn't have known Dave was stretching the truth if he hadn't been right there for all of it.

 

"Why wait?" Arena scowled at Dave. "Why wait even for a minute? Once you even suspected that this might be a terror attack, why wait to warn people?"

 

"Well, for starters, I'd be very surprised if this were a terror attack." Dave folded his hands on the table. He looked every inch an expert. "I've seen terror attacks, and they usually get followed up by a claim of responsibility pretty quickly. It's a criminal act, and I'm pretty sure that Deputy Sykora here will prosecute it as far as the law will allow, but it's not an act of terror. There's no apparent political or social agenda behind it. They're not trying to achieve change through fear. They're quite simply trying to kill people, with a horrifying disease."

 

Arena frowned, but he nodded. He'd accepted that distinction. Ken wasn't sure he understood the distinction, but as long as Arena did he'd be happy. "How do you think this attack impacts the gay community specifically?" Arena asked, leaning forward. "Do you think we're more at risk than the general population?"

 

Ken shook his head. "I don't think we're specifically being targeted. I could be wrong, Dr. Stanek would be a better person to ask, but we do have some folks who are a little more vulnerable than others and that's something we should all keep in mind. Those of us who are living with HIV, for example, will need to be extra cautious. But the killer is looking for places where people are stuck together in close quarters, for a long period of time. We should follow the same guidelines as the rest of the population."

 

Arena relaxed, just a little bit. "Now, on to the two of you. Obviously you've been busy working on this outbreak. Do you have any announcements to share with our readers? They haven't been shy about rooting for the two of you."

 

Ken's cheeks burned. Dave's turned pink, but he just gave a little smile. "Look, this is a weird time for anything like that, you know? I'm not going to pretend he's not an attractive guy, but even if there were some kind of relationship brewing and even if we were the kind of people to make formal announcements about who we were dating, I don't think the middle of a murder investigation is the right time."

 

Arena laughed. The little bastard actually laughed. "I suppose that makes sense. Well, if you change your mind, you let me know. What can you tell me about the symptoms of meningitis, so our readers know when to panic and when to take it easy?"

 

Ken let Dave handle this question, since he couldn't contribute much. Instead, he tried to calm his own inexplicably soaring heart.