ASI Headquarters
Kay had almost forgotten how beautiful ASI headquarters was. Well, of course. John’s wife Suzanne was amazingly talented. At one point, John and Suzanne had lived on the premises but as ASI grew, it took over the building, which had once been a shoe factory.
Suzanne and John had built a beautiful residential complex on the same street, and Felicity had had Kay in stitches describing how John had wanted to turn it into a high-tech fortress.
ASI was super high tech, but with soothing colors, everything elegant but as comfortable as possible with every perk under the sun.
Felicity was very happy here. Of course, her fiancé worked here, which made her loyalty ironclad. Felicity had received head-swimming offers from headhunters and had never been tempted, not once, not for one second.
She loved her job, she loved her co-workers, she loved her bosses and their wives, and she loved Metal. Kay had watched her blossom from a shy nerd to a confident woman in the time she’d worked at ASI.
Kay had even envied Felicity, just a little.
Kay loved working at the CDC. Or had loved it until the troubles started. But no one could accuse CDC employees of being friendly or being teammates outside work. ASI guys and their women were really good friends outside work. Strong, steadfast friends, friends for life.
And at work—Felicity was making the company a lot of money. The server farms, for example, which were her idea, were bringing in income like a river pouring cash, Nick said. But Felicity was clearly valued beyond her success as a rainmaker.
While Kay sat beside Felicity studying Priyanka’s files, almost every single ASI operative stopped by, some just to say hello, some to ask her if she needed anything, some to ask how she felt. The news of the pregnancy was now official, and it was amazing to see all these really hard-bitten men all but offer to rub her feet for her.
Felicity had to beat them off.
At which point, they turned their attention to Kay. Some jungle drumbeat had somehow made the rounds that Kay belonged to Nick and might become a future consultant or even employee, and they were rolling out the red carpet. If she’d accepted everyone’s offer to make her a cup of tea, she’d drown. Pillows had been thrust at her, two operatives came in to ask her opinion on which gas masks to purchase, and everyone had stopped by to introduce themselves.
Her first day at the CDC, she’d spent completely alone in her office.
Sometimes life gives you gentle hints.
Sometimes life gives you a punch in the back to make you stumble forward. This was one of those times.
Her life was in total disarray. Very bad things were happening at her workplace. It was clear that people she implicitly trusted, people who were supposed to work tirelessly for the public good, had betrayed the trust given to them. Why had they done it? For money, for power, for both? Who knew?
The one thing Kay knew was that she would never again be able to drive onto the CDC campus and feel good about what she was doing.
For her, whatever happened, the CDC was gone. Her dream job since she was in high school had turned into a nightmare.
She was under threat. It was true that she was being protected by an amazing man and an amazing company. They had spread their umbrella of protection over her and it would take a lot to pierce that protection.
Nonetheless, pure evil had taken a swipe at her and she’d been nicked by its claws.
For the moment, there was no past for her. No job to go back to; she couldn’t go back to her apartment; she didn’t dare visit her grandfather for fear that he’d be caught in the crosshairs.
Though now, maybe, she was being given a future.
But first, unfinished business.
“I have something,” Felicity said. “Anomalies. But I don’t have any context. Don’t know what they mean.”
“Show me,” Kay said, and Felicity did. The worst possible news. As they proceeded, Kay could feel her heart breaking.
Felicity’s findings corroborated her findings of use of the CRISPRs at the CDC in Atlanta.
Kay went over the data again and again. Told Felicity to try to prove her wrong. To find data that disproved her thesis. But Felicity couldn’t.
In the end, they sat back and looked at each other.
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered, sick at heart.
“Yes, you can,” Felicity answered sadly. “I can read it on your face. This isn’t a surprise. You don’t want it to be true. But it is.”
Kay nodded.
Felicity touched her hand gently. “I can look into him. Hack into his finances. I’ll bet you anything we’ll find a sudden flow of money. Big money, to do what he’s done. It always comes down to money.”
“It wouldn’t with me or with you.”
“Or with Nick or Metal or Joe or Jacko or any of the rest of the guys at ASI. There wouldn’t be enough money in the world to have them do something like this. Betray their consciences and their country. But that’s not the case with this guy. He sold his soul to the devil, probably for a lot of money.”
Kay opened her mouth, closed it.
Sat, while the anger grew. And grew and grew until she thought she would explode.
“He’s my boss.” A fierce, fiery lump was in her throat. The words hurt.
“I know.” Felicity put a hand on Kay’s shoulder.
“Dr. Frank Winstone. The head of the CDC.”
Felicity nodded.
Kay couldn’t move, could barely breathe.
The head of the CDC was a person charged with protecting the nation’s health. Protecting it from harm. Protecting it from exactly this kind of danger. The CDC was filled with professionals working their hearts out to protect the public, often by risking their own lives.
The Viral Special Pathogens Branch regularly sent officers into the heart of outbreaks of Lassa and Ebola and they went uncomplainingly, their sole purpose to help.
Every cell in Kay’s body and every neuron in her brain rejected the idea of the head of the CDC helping to engineer a weaponized Spanish flu and genetically engineering it to hit specific people or peoples. It went against everything she believed in, had worked for all her life.
Her mouth tightened. This was the evilest thing she’d ever heard of. She knew there was evil in the world. Hell, her grandfather was a former FBI agent. He’d shielded her from most of the horrible things he’d seen, but enough got through for her to understand what was out there.
True, a lot of evil came from ignorance. But it took a special kind of evil to spend years and years studying science and turn around and use that knowledge to kill people. While heading an agency dedicating to saving lives.
He’d betrayed her, he’d betrayed the thousands of people working for the CDC, he’d betrayed the thousands who’d risked their lives. He’d betrayed the millions of Americans who trusted the CDC to keep them safe.
It was betrayal on an epic scale—and she wasn’t going to sit still for it.
Felicity eyed her. “You’re getting mad, now.”
She turned her head. “Damn right.”
“You’re over the sad and into the mad.”
Kay grunted an assent.
“What are you going to do about it?” Felicity cocked her head and studied her.
Kay froze. Was she going to do something about it?
She straightened in her chair. Yes. Yes, by God, she was.
Frank had taken something sacred—science and the worldwide effort to improve human health involving the sacrifices of generation after generation after generation of men and women—and turned it into something filthy. Dangerous and dirty, calculated to do harm.
For money.
To let it stand would be to betray the memory of scientists she revered.
Not going to happen.
But… “I don’t think we can prove anything, or at least anything that would stand up in court.”
Felicity sat for a moment, thinking it over. “No,” she said finally, mouth turned down into a frown. “You’re right. I mean, I think I understand what he did, but only because you explained it. It makes sense to you, but you’re one of a handful of people in the world who can see it. For everyone else, it’s all circumstantial. A good lawyer, and he’d have the best, would throw out so much smoke nobody’d understand. The DA would follow the money, but I’ll bet the money disappears into opaque accounts very soon. We don’t have a smoking gun.”
They didn’t. A terabyte of data, and though it pointed down to Frank Winstone like a huge red arrow in the sky, there wasn’t enough evidence, clear evidence, a DA could follow. It was too technical.
Everything inside Kay rebelled. She shuddered with disgust at the idea of Frank getting off scot-free, continuing his path of destruction. He’d killed her best friend, he’d probably killed a researcher, and he’d killed a fine journalist. He’d tried to kill her, and he’d been responsible for the death of who knew how many people via the genetically edited flu.
If it served his purpose, he’d no doubt keep on killing. There was no one who could stop him.
Except her.
It was dangerous, and she’d have to depend completely on Felicity’s hacking skills and her acting skills and Frank’s greed. But if it could be done…
“Felicity, do you think you can do something for me?”
Felicity’s pretty face was serious. “Just ask.”
“It’s dangerous and probably illegal.”
“Will it bring this guy down?”
Kay smiled. “Oh, yeah,” she said softly. Down. Down forever. With luck, six feet under.
“What do you need?”
Kay told her. Felicity turned pale.
Kay froze. She was asking too much. “Oh God. Can you do it? Will you do it?”
“Absolutely. Count on me.” Felicity covered her mouth.
“I’m sorry if the thought makes you sick.” Kay touched Felicity’s arm.
“Not that. Morning sickness.” And Felicity bolted for the bathroom.
“Three,” SWAT lieutenant Rand Wilson said, and tipped his ruggedized tablet toward Nick.
Nick could see the heat signatures of three men. He nodded gratefully, glad that Wilson was happy sharing intel. He knew that Wilson had been given explicit instructions to cooperate with him, but he didn’t get any sense that Wilson resented that. Cooperation was fully and freely given.
The eternal brotherhood of soldiers. Wilson had been a Ranger and two guys in his team were former SEALs. One was a former FBI special agent.
Nick fit right in. But he’d have been there even if they were one-eyed green-haired mutants who hated humans, because no way was he not going to be there at the takedown. Whoever was in the warehouse, behind those metal walls, had tried to kill Kay. He wasn’t going to miss anything.
Bud Morrison was at TOC, the Temporary Operational Command, another warehouse farther down the street. Command and control, everyone bunched around computers hooked to their comms units. They were all connected via an internal comms system ASI had perfected. Or rather, Felicity had perfected, with the help of some mysterious guys in Asia with sky-high IQs and minimal social skills.
ASI had tried to recruit them, but they preferred to stay in their hobbit burrows in Singapore and Taiwan. All Nick really understood was that soon there would be a blackout inside the target building and that, inside the building, cell phone coverage and their connection to their overhead drone was already gone.
On the tablet, they could see the drone overhead, uselessly beaming down intel the fuckheads inside the warehouse couldn’t see. In the meantime, the PDP’s own drone was circling. Its FLIR showed the SWAT team with reduced profile, since they were crouching, the three upright figures inside the building, and cold emptiness all around.
The guys inside were deaf and dumb and soon would be blind.
Wilson and his guys were crouching outside, ready to infiltrate. Each had IR tape on their helmets so they wouldn’t shoot each other. The tape would easily show up in their night vision/IR goggles.
God bless technology. Though of course the principle hadn’t changed since the dawn of time. The man with the biggest club won. Now it was a battle over who had the fanciest toys.
It was also true that the most determined won, and Nick was determined. He respected Wilson and his boss, Morrison. This was their job and they did it well, with bravery and training.
But they didn’t have Nick’s motivation. The men inside that warehouse had come after Kay, the love of his life and his future. He would never let on to the SWAT team leader or to Morrison, but he was determined that none of the men come out alive from the warehouse.
Whoever their leader was, he was smart and resourceful. The kind who even from prison could enact revenge. Nick was not going to live checking his six constantly to make sure bad guys weren’t behind them, ready to kill or kidnap Kay.
Not going to happen. Not in this lifetime or any other.
Once they breached, Nick was going to have to tap dance fast to ensure that there were three kills and three dead bodies were ferried out, and those dead bodies wouldn’t be the guys on the SWAT team.
He had various ideas how that could happen but it all depended on the flow of combat. So he was going to have to stay sharp and use every single opportunity to engineer the deaths of the three guys inside without having to go to prison for the rest of his life.
Not easy. But then nothing in his career had been easy. And he’d never had so much at stake before.
“Three.” Wilson began the countdown. On three, the lights would cut out and they’d breach the door, wearing night-vision goggles, and mop up.
Nick was supposed to stay outside until the mopping up had finished, but he intended to wait until the SWAT team made it inside, then would follow on their heels in case they needed help.
They probably wouldn’t. Nick had observed the behavior of every team member, and he approved. They all had the smooth, easy grace of athletes at the top of their game and they communicated without words, good signs. Their moves were smooth, not jerky. No panic in these men, no confusion. They knew exactly what to do.
Nick could visualize in his head the moves. The sudden darkness as the lights cut out, the cops bursting in screaming, “Police! Down on your knees!” They’d have HK G36s at the shoulder, Beretta 92s in quick-draw thigh holsters for close work.
“Two,” Wilson said.
They’d burst through the door in a controlled way guaranteed to cover the entire area. High, low, left, right, as choreographed as the dancing in Swan Lake, only prettier as far as Nick was concerned. Anything planned to put down bad guys was as pretty as could be.
Two guys would be stationed out back in case they were able to make a run for it.
“One, gogogo!”
The door blew open and the men moved as one, swarming into the space.
And the three red figures on Nick’s tablet disappeared.
Fuck!
He looked up from the tablet and saw an immensely bright glow coming from the door. The inside of the warehouse was lit up like day. Light that bright would blind the SWAT team members, who had on night vision. Night-vision goggles magnified ambient light sometimes a thousand fold. In the sudden presence of a very bright light, they’d automatically switch off but not before causing temporary blindness.
His guys were now blind.
The shooting started immediately, careful single shots. No spraying and praying, these guys were pros.
Someone screamed.
There was an explosion in the back of the building. The two SWAT team members stationed in the back were gone.
Nick ran, a clock ticking in his head. The SWAT team would know to go to ground and seek cover, even while nearly blind. But right now, right this instant, they were sitting ducks.
Another shot, another man screamed.
“Down!” Wilson roared. Then screamed as a bullet hit him.
Fuckfuckfuck!
“Morrison!” he yelled into his comms. “Men down!”
“Incoming,” Bud’s calm voice replied. “Two mikes.” A car door slammed in the background and an engine revved.
Two minutes were an eternity. Plenty of time for the good guys to die, for the bad guys to escape.
Nick rounded the corner to the back, briefly eyeing the remains of two brave police officers. Rage burned in his heart. He toggled the handle of the back door, but it wouldn’t open. There was a lot of noise coming from the warehouse, so nobody would hear the bullet that struck the handle unless they were right on the other side.
If somebody was right on the other side, and heard the shot, then they’d be standing right there, armed and waiting for him.
Nick shot out the lock, kicked the door open, went in low, almost hoping someone would be there.
Nothing.
He could see at a glance the situation. A three-sided wall of glass had been erected around what was a command station. Glass explained why the three heat signatures had winked out. It didn’t allow IR through. The men had stepped into the cubicle when the lights went out.
Two huge spotlights had been mounted on stanchions. A generator buzzed. They’d expected the lights to be cut.
The SWAT team was recovering, shooting back from behind makeshift cover. An overturned table. Ominously, two of the SWAT team members were on the floor, still.
The spotlights were aimed at the door, so Wilson and his men were still blind. They couldn’t see what Nick saw, the three men retreating, firing steadily to keep Wilson and his men under cover.
The way the bad guys were retreating showed discipline and training. One would keep up a steady fusillade of bullets while two retreated, then another one would take to a knee while the shooter fell back. It was disciplined and well thought out. Nick knew from the drone footage that out back was an SUV, which would no doubt be armored. They had their escape planned, already probably rejoicing that they would make it out and disappear.
Nope. They were not leaving this building alive.
To hell with the order not to shoot to kill. Two men were down, two others were dead. Nick hoped with all his heart that the SWAT team members lying so still in the warehouse were alive, but the bad guys had shot to kill and had forfeited anything resembling mercy. There were two dead men out back.
And they’d tried to kill Kay.
The first of the men was almost at the back door. Wilson and his guys were still shooting blind, the bright light directly in their eyes. Their bullets went wide.
Calmly, Nick took a knee, shouldered his weapon, selected single shot. This required precision shooting.
So far, they hadn’t realized he was there. They were too busy trying to kill Wilson and his men.
Nick took careful aim and fired three shots. One after the other, spaced not even a second apart.
One by one, the escaping men fell. The first one grabbed his neck and looked astonished before falling to the ground. The other two realized there was another shooter but they couldn’t tell where. They were still looking when they fell, red mists where their heads had been.
The shots from the back of the warehouse ceased and so did those from the SWAT team. Wilson stood from a crouch and limped forward. The front of his tactical pants was red with blood, but you wouldn’t know that from his face.
“Mancino?” he called, shielding his eyes with the palm of his hand.
“Yo.” Nick stood just as Bud rushed into the room.
It was unusual for someone as senior as Bud to be part of an op, but Bud wasn’t a desk jockey. He looked around, noting everything. The three dead guys clustered at the back. Wilson and his team around Nick. The two men on the ground. They were wounded but breathing, Nick was delighted to see. And the bad guys were dead.
“Mancino saved our asses,” Wilson said quietly to Bud.
“No, no man.” Nick pushed that away with a gesture of his hand. He didn’t want the credit, he just wanted the dead guys dead. As a matter of fact, things had gone his way, because he’d have killed them anyway. The fact that he’d done so and wasn’t going to be charged with homicide was icing on the cake. “I happened to be outside and could make a lateral entrance. Your team softened them up, I was just on mop-up detail.” He looked at Wilson and allowed the grief he felt to show. “Your two guys out back. They’re gone. They had explosives ready to blow.”
Wilson staggered, almost lost his balanced. His head hung low, then he raised it. He turned to Bud. “Medics on the way? Eisner and McBride are wounded. Eisner’s losing a ton of blood.”
“Yeah.” Bud tapped the comms unit in his ear. “They should be here right—” A loud ambulance siren filled the air, cutting out as the ambulance drew up outside with a screech of brakes. “Now.”
Two guys wearing EMT jackets jumped out of the back of the ambulance while it was still rocking, carrying a gurney. They carried out a stabilized Eisner, already transfusing, then McBride. Both men held thumbs up, Eisner’s hand shaky, McBride’s firm.
Everyone stood silently as two body bags were carried out.
The ambulance drove away, the PPD crime scene unit showed up and Nick groaned.
Bud’s heavy hand landed on his shoulder. “I know,” Bud said sympathetically. “But we have to do this by the book and I need to get your testimony, together with that of the SWAT guys still standing. We can get Eisner and McBride’s testimony later when they’re out of surgery.”
Nick quivered. He wanted to get this over with as fast as humanly possible and get back to Kay. He wanted to hold her, reassure himself that she was all right, then get her into bed as fast as he could.
He was pumped with adrenaline, and the handiest way to vent that was fucking. Way out in the desert in Afghanistan, there hadn’t been any women available who wouldn’t have been stoned to death for talking to him, and he didn’t fancy goats. None of the team members did, so they all beat off in the barracks.
So yeah, he wanted Kay, because he was about ready to explode.
He wanted her. Not just any woman with the right plumbing but her, Kay Hudson, beautiful and brilliant and all his.
It was way too soon to propose. He knew that. But he wanted to stake his claim. Nail her and nail her down at the same time. Make sure she’d stay with him in Portland. Nick wasn’t one to think much about the future, because usually the present was enough to handle. Or that was the old Nick.
The new Nick wanted to make plans, be absolutely certain that Kay would be part of those plans. He wanted to look into the future and see her in it.
Right now, he’d give anything to be with Kay, holding her, kissing her, being inside her. He didn’t want to be here in this abandoned warehouse, walking Bud and his crime scene team through what had happened. But—Nick was a professional. He’d had patience beaten into him when he’d joined the Navy as a hotshot hothead. Patience and control and discipline had been pounded into his head and muscles.
So he answered Bud’s questions patiently, walked him through it, basically did an after-action review, like he’d done countless times after a battle.
And it had been a battle, no doubt about that. A hundred bullets fired, five dead, two wounded. Yeah, that was a battle.
They’d discovered the laptop that operated the drone and one of Bud’s techs would go through its entire history. About an hour into the debriefing, IDs on the dead guys came in from the facial-recognition databank.
The head guy was a surprise—Oliver Baker, himself.
Nick looked at Bud in shock, and saw his surprise reflected in Bud’s face.
“Oliver Baker,” Bud said slowly. “Huh.”
Huh indeed.
Baker wasn’t quite a security contractor, not in the sense that ASI was. He was more a power broker, the “Fixer”, as his nickname suggested. So, he was the one who had used the bio-weapon?
The two other men were in his employ. Basically his only employees, so his company, Solutions International, was effectively no more. Nick wasn’t too clear on what exactly Baker did, and didn’t care. What he cared about was that for whatever reason, Baker and his guys had gone after Kay and now they were dead. Everyone who wanted to hurt her was dead. That was good enough for him.
Nick looked at Bud. “Kay has about a terabyte of data that she’s studying. What he was up to will be in the data. Kay will figure it out, if she hasn’t already.” He met Bud’s sober gaze. “What I can tell you is that he was messing around with bio-weapons, with some kind of weaponized super-flu. Something that had Kay scared shitless. She’s a virologist and doesn’t scare easy.”
Bud’s face tightened. “Bio-weapons, huh? Give me a gunned-up mobster any day.” He shuddered. “Don’t ever want to puke up my insides.”
“I think that’s Ebola, but what this guy was messing with was potentially worse. Could have caused a pandemic. Millions dead.”
Bud made a sound of disgust deep in his throat. “Then we owe Kay our thanks.”
“That we do. Okay. We done here, Bud? I’d like to—”
“Get back to her,” Bud said. “Yeah. Get out of here. If we need you again, we’ll call. Get back to your woman, she’s been through a lot. We might need to depose her, but not right now.”
“Not right now.” Nick pulled out his cell. “Felicity, Nick here. It’s all taken care of.”
“I heard.” Nick could hear the smile in her voice. “I imagine you want to know where Kay is.”
“Like my next breath.”
“She’s waiting for you back in her room at the hotel. I heard mention of room service and champagne. If I were you, I’d get there before she changes her mind.”
“Oh, yeah. I think I can hitch a ride with the PPD.” He raised his eyebrows at Bud. Bud nodded. “Great.” And he took off at a run.
“Nick!” He turned at Bud’s call. Bud held his thumb up. “Good work!”
Nick gave a thumbs-up in reply and ran.
Kay was just lighting the candle on the room service dinner table when she heard a sharp knock on the door. No time to ask who it was because she heard Nick’s voice.
“Kay! It’s me! Nick!”
As if she wouldn’t recognize that deep voice.
Smiling, she opened the door, held her hand out. “Hi. I ordered dinner. I didn’t know what you’d want so, I just went with steak and—umpf!”
Like before, like that night that changed her life, Nick backed her up against the wall and took her mouth in a kiss that she felt right down to her toes. As before, ferocious and hungry, but this time with something else.
He’d killed three men, Felicity had said. Kay led a scholar’s life, but something deep in her DNA told her that coming straight from a kill meant his blood would be up. Mankind was about a hundred thousand years old, and had only been civilized for about two thousand of those years.
Right now, Nick would be in a pre-civilizational state. His movements were jerky, fierce, fast. Totally unlike the cool operator he usually was.
He was pressing against her so hard, she found it difficult to breathe.
Kay put her hands on his shoulders and pushed, just a little.
He pulled away, head back, eyes closed. “Sorry,” he whispered, then brought his head back down to look her in the eyes. “Sorry, sorry. I don’t want to be out of control.”
She could see that. She could see that he was fighting a fierce battle with himself. “It’s okay.” Kay smiled at him. “You’re just back from the wars.”
Nick leaned his head forward until his forehead touched hers. “That’s why I love you. One of the reasons why I love you. You’re both beautiful and wise.”
“Hmm. Let’s try this again, from the top.”
He cupped the back of her head and kissed her again, more tenderly, less ferociously. “Like this?” he murmured.
“Exactly like this.”
He kissed her from every angle. He’d plunge into her mouth, tasting her, then lift and kiss her again from another angle. She welcomed him, glad that he was here with her, alive and safe.
It could have gone differently. He could have been shot, as two police officers had been. Nothing about what had happened had been safe. She could right now be looking down at Nick’s dead body in the morgue, mourning him and mourning what might have been.
She didn’t have to mourn him now. She would, one day, about seventy years from now if they were lucky. But not today.
“I’m so glad you came back to me,” she whispered when he lifted his head.
“Always.” Those dark eyes looked deeply into hers. “I’ll always come back to you. So.” He winked at her. “Are we done talking?”
Kay laughed. “Yeah, we’re done talking.”
“Good,” he said, and started unbuttoning her silk shirt, focusing narrow-eyed on the task as if he were defusing an atom bomb. Slowly, taking infinite care with each button, down to the last one. He looked up into her eyes, asking permission.
Kay said nothing, just held her arms slightly out from her sides.
He brushed it off and it fell fluttering to the floor. One of her expensive Ralph Lauren pastel-silk blouses from the suitcase Portland PD had delivered back to her. She glanced down at it, at her feet. Normally Kay kept her things well, but right now, the sight of the soft sage-green silk abandoned on the floor pleased her, a symbol of her normally fastidious organization gone a little loose because she had Nick in her life.
She foresaw a lot of silk blouses on the floor in her future. Maybe.
Her black gabardine pencil skirt was next. It was closely tailored so it required her to shimmy a little to get it down and off her, and Nick shuddered at the sight.
“You’re a cheap date if that excites you,” she said.
The muscles in his jaw jumped. “It all excites me. Undressing you, thinking of undressing you. Listening to you breathe excites me.”
“How about this?” She reached behind herself and unhooked her bra. It fluttered to the floor, landing on top of the silk blouse and the skirt.
“Jesus,” Nick muttered. He curled his hand around her breast and took her nipple in his mouth, suckling so strongly his cheeks hollowed.
“Oh!” Kay had been feeling so smug and so in control, but all of a sudden, the control left her in a whoosh. She clutched his head, fire shooting from her breast to her sex. Her legs could barely hold her up.
“Okay, that’s it.” Nick picked her up, strode the few steps to the bed and laid her down. Jacket, shirt, tee shirt, boots, socks, briefs, jeans. All dropped to the hotel carpet in seconds. His hard penis bobbed, already shiny. He closed his eyes, opened them again, gaze fierce. “God, you’re beautiful.”
“So are you.” He was. The epitome of male beauty. Broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist, strong thighs, and what was between them…wow. She curled her fingers in a come to me gesture.
His face lightened and one side of his hard mouth lifted. “I thought you’d never ask. But first…”
He slid her lace panties down her legs slowly. Down her thighs, knees, ankles and threw her panties over his shoulder.
“At one point, we’re going to have to treat our clothes better.”
“Yeah,” he answered. “When I get a little less worked up at the thought of having you. Maybe in about a hundred years. And speaking of being worked up…”
He climbed onto the bed, covered her body with his.
“Yeah?”
He kissed her while spreading her legs with his own hairy thighs. “I’m afraid that’s it for foreplay. It has to be now, otherwise I’m going to explode.”
“Now, Nick,” she whispered, watching him closely, seeing the moment his eyes lit up.
He entered her immediately, one long, deep stroke. He didn’t use his hands, but he didn’t need to. Kay had had more than one lover who’d needed to stuff themselves inside her. Not Nick. He slid in, and he found her more than ready.
He lay his head next to hers on the pillow, mouth next to her ear. Cupped her hips. “Now.” And started moving so strongly, the headboard beat against the wall in a pounding rhythm.
Kay closed her eyes, concentrated on where they were joined, feeling him thrusting so hard and fast inside her, and surrendered almost immediately to her climax. The pressure was almost too much to bear, so much heat, that slick rhythm that echoed her pounding heart—she erupted with a cry, holding him so tightly to her.
Nick bucked and moved in her even faster, harder, then held himself deeply inside her, grinding, groaning as he came, too.
Long minutes went by as she slowly came back into herself, drifting back down to earth. Who knew where she went when she had an orgasm with Nick? She had no idea. Somewhere really nice, though.
Coming back to earth was always a jolt. Nick’s heavy body crushing her so that she had to consciously expand her lungs to breathe. Her sex and thighs were damp and the smell of sex was sharp in the air. Her knees fell to the sides, her arms dropped down to the mattress. She had no strength left.
“Whoa.” Nick lifted his head. “That was fast.”
“But furious.” She smiled.
“I’ll make it up to you once I eat something. You were saying something about room service when I walked in.”
“There’s nothing to make up for.” Kay made a real effort and lifted her hand to caress one sharp cheekbone. “But yes, I did order room service. Steak and salad. And it should be arriving right about—”
There was a knock on the door.
“Now. There’s a robe on the armchair. Can you put it on and open the door? I’m going to take a quick shower.”
“Sure.” Nick rolled easily out of bed, found the bathrobe, walked to the door.
Kay hoped the room service meal would be good. Considering she was going to leave Nick tomorrow morning.
Deja vu. The next morning, Kay slipped out of the hotel room like she had…what? Only a couple of days ago? Was that possible? It felt like a lifetime ago. So much had happened, everything was different and yet here she was, slipping away from Nick. Again.
He was going to be so pissed.
If she was successful, she’d have to calm him down.
If she failed, it wouldn’t matter because she’d be dead.
This time, walking out the door, she didn’t pay attention to the cameras. She didn’t need to.
There was an internal passageway to the auditorium and conference venue, but Kay wanted to walk along the road. Feel the sun and smell the air. Because maybe it would be the last time she ever felt the sun on her face.
No. No use thinking like that. She was sure of her reasoning and she was sure of Felicity’s skills. This was going to work and her revenge was going to be complete.
And then she was going on to lead a long and happy life with Nick.
But still, she gulped in the fresh air, lifted her head to catch the sunshine, glanced in shop windows on the way. Feeling terrified, determined and angry.
The conference hall entrance was around the corner from the hotel. The building itself was stepped back and the entrance was a two-story atrium. Inside was a reception hall where conference attendees met and mingled. Poster sessions lined the walls.
It was the last day of the World Virology Conference and the place was buzzing.
Inside was all virology, all the time.
Her people.
She looked around fondly at the very unlovely people who prized brains over looks. The men all but wore lab coats. Lab coats probably would have been an improvement over the wrinkled, rumpled polyester sports jackets that male scientists seemed to privilege. The women were frumpy, too. Most with messy hair and no makeup and not a malign thought in their heads. Friendly souls, mostly, who worked themselves into the ground in the hopes of providing a tiny brick in the wall of human knowledge.
Her tribe, and she loved them.
It was early. She walked around, greeting people she knew. It wasn’t that big a world. Most of them knew each other from their graduate student days and she caught up on work and life with a number of people. One woman, a researcher for NASA’s extraterrestrial life program, gave gentle condolences for Priyanka’s death. Unexpectedly, tears sprang to Kay’s eyes.
Oh God. She still wasn’t over it. She looked away, blinking furiously, then brought her gaze back to the woman, who was looking at her kindly. She placed a hand on Kay’s arm, a gentle touch. “She will be missed,” the woman said, and Kay nodded, a lump in her throat.
It reminded her why she was here. Because evil men had killed her best friend and removed a bright, wonderful soul from the world.
For money.
And they were playing with a fire that could burn down the world.
For money.
Goddamn them.
She stood in front of a poster. Mutation Analysis of the ATP7B Gene. She knew two of the authors, genial nerds working at a research center at Biopolis in Singapore. Hard workers, very smart.
Her cell pinged. An incoming text.
She swiped, read.
Where R U?
Asshole. Trying to be young and hip. Two could play at that game.
@ poster sessions
He’d want to be private. Sure enough…
Meet u @ Rose Bar in 10
The Rose Bar was the evening cocktail hour gathering hole. No one would be there this morning. Most would either be in the breakfast room or the coffee bar, chatting, networking before the sessions began.
She replied.
Gr8
Ten minutes later, she felt a tap on her shoulder, turned and smiled into the bright blue eyes of her boss, Frank Winstone.
The director of the CDC.
“Hello, Frank. Thank you for coming.”
Nick smiled in his sleep, opened his eyes a crack, then closed them again. They wouldn’t stay open.
Post-op collapse. Not to mention post-op sex. Though sex with Kay was anything but routine, he knew enough to realize that every hormone in his body was wrung dry. No matter, he could relax. His mind wasn’t functioning well but he knew he wasn’t on duty, today or tomorrow. Tomorrow was the furthest he could stretch his mind to anyway.
Lazy thoughts flitted through his mind, in no particular order. He was hungry. He wanted pancakes for breakfast and a whole pot of coffee. He really needed a shower. His dick was hard. You’d think it wouldn’t be but it was. Maybe because of the smells in the bed. The smell of Kay and sex, a unique combo he was going to relish for the rest of his life. Today at some point, they needed to get home.
He reached out his hand to pull in warm woman and found a long stretch of cool sheet instead.
Hmm.
She was in the bathroom. He needed to go, too, but it could wait. First, he wanted an early morning kiss. And, well, his dick was hard. It shouldn’t be, but it was.
Finally, his senses kicked in, one after the other. There were no sounds coming from the bathroom, none. People made sounds in the bathroom. The usual, plus water splashing, either in the sink or the shower.
He rolled time back in his head. He’d been sort of awake for about ten minutes now, and ten minutes with no sounds in the bathroom was weird.
He opened his eyes and confirmed that Kay wasn’t with him or anywhere else in the room. Dirty dishes from last night’s late meal were still on the table. He could smell the steak and potatoes and a hint of the wine. There was still a finger in both their glasses.
He was hungry but the smell of food sparked a curdle in his stomach, because he was starting to get suspicious.
Nick threw the covers off and walked naked to the only place she could possibly be if she were still in the hotel room. He rapped a knuckle against the bathroom door.
“Kay?” he called softly.
Silence.
Goddamn.
He jerked open her closet door. She’d gotten her suitcase back. She’d mentioned it last night. He had a good memory for what had been in it, and there was a suit missing. It was emerald green and it wasn’t there. It was on her, wherever the fuck she was.
Snatching his cell, he punched in Kay’s number. It went to voice mail. Then he punched Felicity’s number, on videochat. It was Sunday morning and she was pregnant.
Tough shit.
She had to know where Kay was.
The cell rang a couple of times, then he saw Metal’s sleepy mug. “Dude,” he slurred. “The fuck? It’s Sunday.”
“Ask Felicity where Kay is.”
Metal’s eyes popped open at Nick’s tone. He never allowed anyone to speak with disrespect to Felicity, not that anyone at ASI ever would. Felicity was a goddess. But right now, Nick was pissed at everyone, and that included Felicity.
Metal’s eyes narrowed when he saw Nick. “Cover up, man. You’re not talking to Felicity naked.”
Nick looked down at himself. Yeah, he was naked, not that Metal could see Nick’s good parts. He kept the cell aimed at head and shoulders. Still. He put the cell face down on the bedside table and pulled on a tee shirt and briefs. Picked the cell back up, still royally pissed.
“Kay isn’t here,” he said bluntly. “Where the fuck is she? Does Felicity know?”
Metal scowled. “Kay’s not where?”
“In the hotel room. We spent the night here and I woke up and she’s gone. She wouldn’t go somewhere without telling me, unless she was kidnapped or decided to walk into danger. So, you can see I need to talk to Felicity.”
“Yeah. You must be freaking.” Metal leaned closer to the screen. “You are freaking. Can’t say I blame you.”
Nick’s teeth ground together. “Put. Felicity. On. Please.”
“Can’t.” His face pulled into painful lines. “She’s busy projectile vomiting last night’s dinner. Maybe yesterday’s lunch, too. You have no idea—”
A slender hand appeared on his shoulder. “Give me that,” Felicity said, and her face appeared. She was paper white, including her lips.
“Felicity, I am so very sorry to bother you,” Nick said, all of a sudden feeling like a shit. “But Kay’s gone and I have no idea where to find her.”
Felicity bit her lips.
Metal’s head swiveled. “Honey?”
She sighed just before Nick would have growled at her and Metal would have challenged him to a duel. Nick was a really good shot, but so was Metal. They’d have killed each other.
“She, ah… She figured out who else was involved and emailed him to meet her this morning.”
Every single hair on Nick’s body stood up. “She what?”
Felicity nodded and swallowed heavily. “Yeah.” She checked her Green Lantern watch. “She’s meeting him right about now.”
Nick was struggling into his jeans. “Where?”
“The hotel, the conference center. But don’t worry because…God. Sorry Nick, gotta go.”
Nick jammed his sockless feet into his boots, picked up his gun and holster and ran.
“So.” Frank smiled into Kay’s eyes. “Do you have a problem I can help you with?”
Blue eyes affable. Good guy, good boss attentively listening to valued employee. And underneath, a monster.
She remembered every word of the email she’d sent him.
Frank, I have some data Priyanka left me. She was working on something before she died and was very worried. I’m going through her data now and there are some anomalies. Do you think we can talk about this tomorrow? I’ll be at the conference around ten.
Kay looked around. The Rose Bar was a good choice. It was on the north side of the building and the morning light was dim. Though she could hear the voices of hundreds of people out in the corridor, it was quiet inside the cocktail bar. They had complete privacy.
She looked into Frank’s eyes, watched them carefully. The skin around his eyes was taut and smooth. No bags under them, the sclera clear and white as a baby’s. Treason and crime on a massive scale clearly did not disturb his sleep at night.
She stepped a little closer to him, slightly inside his perimeter. In her pocket, she switched on the recording function of her cell phone.
And she knew that she had backup. He was hidden and he was an excellent shot.
“Yes, I have a problem, and yes you can help me with it. Let me tell you what Priyanka thought, and what I think. I think Bill weaponized H1N1, made it fast-acting and even more lethal. And then I think you used our CRISPR-Cas9 to splice specific DNA to the virus so it would only affect one person, or one person and his or her family. Or an ethnic group or tribe. And I think you did that as a service to be sold. For money. And I think you are despicable beyond words.”
Frank’s expression didn’t change, except for a slight narrowing of his eyes. “Well,” he said, rocking back on his heels and putting his hand in his pocket. “That’s—that’s quite a series of accusations. Do you have any proof?”
“Yes,” she said, happy to see him pale.
He’d stopped smiling. “You don’t.”
“I do. On Priyanka’s data. Clear evidence of use of the CRISPR, at night. Unrecorded, unregistered, but she has proof.”
“Experiments,” he said. “Nothing wrong with that.”
She edged closer to him. “Maybe. Maybe not. But you’re going to find it hard to explain the accounts in Panama and Aruba. Worth millions of dollars. That’s impossible on a CDC salary.”
His face splintered, then rearranged itself, only this time the affable good guy was gone and Kay’s heart beat faster, because she was looking into the face of pure evil.
“You little bitch. You and that Indian whore, meddling in things that are none of your business.”
“Oh, but it is my business, and it was Priyanka’s. We didn’t dedicate ourselves to science to have scum like you spread disease and corruption. You’ve defiled everything science and the CDC stand for.”
“Spare me the sermons, you bitch. Whatever you think you have on me can’t touch me. And you won’t be alive anyway.”
He pulled his hand out of his pocket, lifted a cylinder, and sprayed her with a liquid. It coated her face, dripped down off her chin.
Kay gasped. Held out a hand to keep her protector at bay. She had this.
Frank’s eyes glittered with malice, with triumph.
Kay gasped again, stumbled, grabbed on to his shirt front. With every ounce of strength in her body, she jerked him toward her until they were nose to nose.
Snaking her hand around his neck, she brought his face closer, closer still…
And kissed him full on the lips, lingering. Rubbing her face against his.
She could feel surprise in his body. Could feel something else, too—his lungs starting to heave.
Kay pulled away just enough to be able to speak, watching him so carefully. She wanted to see every expression, every nuance. Her heart was pounding but it wasn’t with fear. Oh, no.
“The DNA was switched. The wrong DNA was flown out to you, so when you worked the CRISPR you also had flown out—you were working on your own DNA. You matched your DNA to the weaponized H1N1 virus. You’re dying, Frank.”
His eyes bulged. She was so close, she could feel his heart beating hard in his chest. Hear his lungs struggling uselessly for air. “No!” he wheezed.
It would be the last word he ever spoke.
“Yes.” Kay smiled right into his eyes, her face an inch from his. “Oh yes. It’s filling your lungs with fluid right now. You can feel it, can’t you, Frank? Such a vicious little virus you and Bill created. But effective, very effective.”
He was turning blue, choking. Kay was holding him up by his shirt front as his feet scrabbled for purchase. He was falling, but before he fell, she had something else to tell him.
“This is for Priyanka, you son of a bitch. And Mike Hammer. Die, you bastard.”
His face was below hers, now, desperation in his eyes. The choking sounds grew loud.
“Kay!”
She turned, letting go of Frank. He fell at her feet, hands desperately scrabbling at his throat.
And suddenly she was in Nick’s arms, held tightly, his head buried in her neck. “Oh God, oh God!” He pulled back, lifted a finger to her face and looked at the liquid in horror. “God no!”
Frank’s heels were drumming on the floor. Neither of them paid him any attention.
“Is this—is this the virus?” Nick asked hoarsely. She could see the whites of his eyes around his dark pupils. He looked like a madman.
“Yes,” she said, and he flinched. “But I’m not the one who will die here. He thought the virus was tailored to me, but Felicity and I switched the DNA so he designed his own death.”
Nick didn’t look any less horrified. “You—you switched?” His Adam’s apple bobbed.
She smiled, looked down. Frank’s heels had stopped drumming against the slate floor. His legs twitched once, twice, and then he was still.
“Our DNA is kept in numbered vials in a carousel, so we simply gave Frank’s computer the wrong number. So, he—”
Nick held up a big hand. “Do I want to know?” He looked down at the dead man at his feet, looked back up at her. “No,” he said decisively. “I don’t want to know. Is this the last of the bad guys?”
“The very last,” she reassured him.
“You’re not going to run off again and put your life in danger?”
“No. Definitely not. And I wasn’t in danger. I knew he didn’t have my DNA. Felicity and I tracked him giving orders for the wrong vial. And I had backup.”
From a corner, Jacko lowered his pistol and gave a salute off his forehead. Then like smoke, he disappeared.
Nick turned back to Kay and blew out a breath. Punched a number on his cell. “Yo. Mancino. Another guy down, the head honcho, I think. Yeah, deader’n dirt. No, I didn’t gun him down. Kay scienced the shit out of him.”
Kay laughed. She felt light, free.
Nick just stared at her, breathing heavily. He glanced sideways, slid a linen napkin from a crystal napkin holder on the table.
“What are you doing?”
Nick kicked Frank’s body out of the way and kneeled.
“Kay Hudson. Will you do me the honor of marrying me?” She gaped. He took her hand and slipped the crystal napkin holder on her left ring finger. It was so huge she couldn’t close her hand. “If you’re married to me, I have the right to keep you out of danger, yeah?”
“Uh, yeah.” She blinked. “I guess.”
His chest heaved. “Marry me. Please. Say yes. Before my head explodes and we have two dead bodies on the floor.”
She felt even lighter, as if she could float away.
So this was what happiness felt like.
“Yes,” she said softly.
The End