Kay woke up disoriented, dry-mouthed. Where was she? What happened?
Something had happened, that was for sure. She felt pounded, pummeled and yet…completely relaxed. As if someone had beaten her up and then given her a full-body massage. While kissing her.
Hmmm.
Nick.
Her body knew it before she did. She turned her head and came up against Nick’s face, so close to hers that they’d be kissing if she puckered. She could feel his breath on her face. If he were awake, he’d be kissing her, that was for sure. She’d spent almost the entire night with him inside her, kissing her.
Her body flared with heat as if a bomb had gone off inside. Incendiary heat that filled her from the inside out, rushing along her veins, blossoming under her skin.
She ached in places. Her lips felt swollen, as did her breasts, the tissues between her thighs. She was marked by Nick. She brought her forearm to her nose, the memory vivid of holding those broad shoulders with her arms. Yep. She even smelled of Nick, as if his molecules had rubbed off on her.
A heavy arm lay across her belly. She was going to have to finesse things to escape from under that arm without waking him. Waking him would be…dangerous. Last night had been time out of time, a sort of going-away present to herself. It had been even more powerful and magical than she had imagined it would be.
But it was over. Real time, the real world, came rushing back. She had something dangerous to do and she had to do it alone.
Nick was incredibly single-minded. He wouldn’t allow her to just disappear without saying anything and there was nothing to say. Nothing she could say to him.
Certainly not the truth.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few hours but whatever happens, it won’t be good.
No way could she say that to Nick and expect him to step back. That wasn’t his way, Nick never stepped back. So last night had been a one-off.
Oh God. Kay knew she had to get going, but she allowed herself another minute or two, just looking at Nick, imagining another universe. A better one, a universe where they’d be allowed to explore this amazing chemistry they shared.
She watched his face as he slept, reaching a hand out to trace his strong features with a finger one inch from his face. What she wouldn’t give to touch him. She knew his face as much by touch as by sight. She knew exactly where the rough beard ended on his cheeks and the beardless skin began—soft compared to the rasp of the whiskers. She knew the feel of the lines around his eyes, more a product of wind and sun than age. His firm jaw, the tendons in his neck, the blade of his nose—she’d traced them endlessly last night.
Her hand hovered, so close she could feel the heat emanating from him. The urge to touch him was so strong her hand trembled. If she touched him, he’d wake up. His eyes would open, those dark, fascinating eyes, and lock with hers. He’d reach out for her.
And she’d be lost.
No, she couldn’t touch him. But how to get out of this bed and out of this room?
Slither out, like she was escaping. Which she was. It was hateful to think it, but she was doing an old-fashioned bunk after a one-night stand. Just like the skeeviest of guys. A female dick.
Nick was breathing deeply, regularly. Follow the rhythm of his breathing, she told herself, like catching a wave at sea.
She watched him carefully, pulling away just a little every time he breathed out. Each exhale, Kay shifted, breath by breath, until she was free of the heavy weight of his arm.
The second she was free, she missed it, missed being held by him. Standing by the side of the bed, she looked down at him. He was sleeping on his side, one strong arm out, the one that had curled around her. His eyes were unmoving behind the lids, he wasn’t dreaming, he wasn’t just about to come out of deep sleep.
In repose, his face looked relaxed, younger. Awake, he looked older than his years. He was thirty-four but sometimes he looked forty—a man who’d seen a lot of things, few of them good. A man who bore great responsibilities uncomplainingly. A man who didn’t shirk his duty, no matter how heavy.
Kay was used to being around men who were responsible, at least at work. All her male colleagues at the CDC were serious men at work. Outside work, not always. Nick was always responsible, admired by everyone who knew him.
He was hers, for the moment at least. He’d made that very clear. She had a remarkable man who showed in every way there was that he liked her. And she was throwing this away, in the name of…what?
Responsibility, duty. She heaved a deep sigh, watching him sleep.
Would this be the last time she ever saw him?
Maybe, maybe not. Nothing was clear, except that after the night they’d spent together, he was going to be really pissed that she’d sneaked away. Such a generous lover he’d been. He would feel he deserved better than being abandoned without a word, and he’d be right.
She couldn’t even leave a message. Sorry I skipped out on you, but stuff is happening. Catch you at some point in the future.
Nope.
So, in all probability, this was it. One red-hot affair that lasted one incendiary night, which was over, but which she’d never forget.
Her eyes welled with tears she tried to blink away. Oh God, no. This was no good. She was about to embark on something crazy dangerous. No time for tears, no time for any emotions at all except determination to stop something evil that had already claimed two lives and might well claim millions more. Not to mention her own.
Nick was still out, more of a coma than sleep. Good. It increased her chances of making a clean getaway.
The curtains had been drawn last night, but the rising sun gleamed in very thin stripes around the edges of the curtains, providing just enough light to see by without tripping over anything.
Kay closed the bathroom door, put a towel against the bottom and turned the lights on, the reflection off the white tiles almost blinding her. She closed her eyes against the glare for a moment and stared at herself in the mirror wondering in that first startled moment whether someone was in the bathroom with her.
She blinked. No, that wasn’t a stranger. She was looking at her own reflection in the mirror.
A completely different her, transformed overnight.
Her skin wasn’t that skim-milk color it had been lately, like her body had died a week ago and she hadn’t noticed. No, her skin was pink and flushed and glowing. Partly due to whisker burn, though Nick had tried to be careful, and partly due to the sheer volume of hormones circulating through her body all night. Though she’d barely slept, her eyes weren’t shot with red. They gleamed, the whites as clear as a baby’s. Her mouth was swollen and red, as if she’d just put on lipstick. Her hair floated around her head, mussed by his hands, but the effect was like on one of those glossy women’s magazine covers, where the model stood in front of a fan.
She looked…beautiful.
Kay knew she was good looking. Her parents had been genetically blessed, and she’d taken after them. Kay had inherited their skin and bone structure and the metabolism that let her eat without gaining weight.
She’d been a pretty girl, a pretty teen and was an attractive woman.
It was a fact of her life that didn’t affect her that much, except there seemed to be a lot of annoying men who wouldn’t take no for an answer. But in general, she’d been so busy keeping herself balanced after the death of her parents, adjusting to life with her only relative, her grandfather, who’d inherited a young girl. Then college and making her way up the career ladder. She’d chosen a hard discipline—a doctorate in virology and another degree in genetics. It required long hours of study and later, in her job, even longer hours of work and dedication and focus.
No time or place for vanity there.
But right now, she felt beautiful, because Nick had made her feel that way all night. He’d delighted in every square inch of her, and she was aware of her entire body, from her wayward hair to her toes. Which he’d kissed.
Oh God.
Kay watched herself in the mirror as she blushed down to her breasts. Remembering. Remembering how he’d started at her toes and kissed all the way to the heart of her.
The memory made her so hot that she decided to take a cold shower for the first time since she’d stayed up all night studying for Biochemistry II and needed to shock herself into wakefulness.
Now she needed to shock herself into leaving Nick behind.
The cold shower was just what she needed, reminding her that she was going to abandon something wonderful and walk straight into the unknown. It was going to be painful and she needed to be clear-headed.
Her clothes were strewn all over the floor. She picked them up and put them on an armchair. Either she would or she wouldn’t be back to pick them up. Probably not. But last night’s elegant raspberry outfit wouldn’t do for whistleblowing and possibly running for her life. She had a stretch turquoise pantsuit that was just the ticket. Her friend Priyanka had loved it. Kay wore it because it was comfortable and light. It was perfect if she had to run and it honored her dead friend. And flats, of course. No running in heels.
Last night, she’d bought a wide-brimmed straw hat from the hotel souvenir shop and she put it on.
Right. Clean, dressed, holding the handle of her wheeled suitcase because she’d been told to pack a light carryon. Just in case. Okay. Ready to go.
But she hesitated, standing by the bed, watching Nick sleep.
She was walking out on something really, really good. The sex had been off the charts, but more than hot sex, there had been connection and affection in the bed with them. Even now, after a cold shower and dressing, with a suitcase handle in her hand, Kay could feel the connection, could almost see it shimmering in the air between the two of them.
Nick was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a player. There were no stories about him loving and leaving women, using them. She knew he’d had partners but no one special. And he always treated his partners—whether for just the night or a week or a month—with respect.
She knew this because everyone at ASI, including Felicity, had made a point of telling her over and over again.
Nick was, in every sense of the word, a good man. Everyone made a point of telling her what a good guy Nick was, all but elbowing her in the side, just in case she didn’t get it.
They didn’t need to do that. She knew what a good guy Nick was. She hadn’t known he was a god between the sheets, but…she’d suspected.
What made him so amazing in bed wasn’t superhuman powers, though he did have a bit of that Superman vibe going. No, what made it so amazing was the chemistry between the two of them, exclusive to them. The joy and the heat between them.
A sob rose up from her chest, unstoppable, a searing ball of pain burning her up inside. At the last possible second, she was able to stifle it in her mouth, but it felt like a grenade went off inside her chest, shrapnel tearing up everything inside.
Goodbye, Nick, she thought. Who knew what lay at the other end of what she was about to do? It could take her away forever, she could be free within a month. She had no idea. But what she did know was that walking away from Nick, after the night they’d shared, was unforgiveable.
This was it.
Everything was blurred, but she could see the door clearly enough. The door she’d walk through to walk away from Nick.
Kay reached out one last time, her hand hovering over his. What she wouldn’t give to be free. Free to touch him, free to stay with him. Free to take what was between them as far as it could go.
But she wasn’t.
She turned and left before the first tear fell, texting her contact. He was somehow going to kill all the security cams in the hotel corridor, in the elevator, in the lobby.
Outside in the corridor, she wiped her eyes and quickly made her way to the elevator, small suitcase trailing.
Okay, focus.
She was supposed to be meeting with Mike Hammer, the pen name for a man who ran a website that so far had sent three senators and two CEOs to prison. www.thetangledweb.com. It published very uncomfortable truths and never backed down. Everything it published turned out to be true. Nobody knew where it was based and nobody knew Hammer’s real identity.
Priyanka had first contacted him and offered to hand over very dangerous files. When Priyanka died, Kay inherited the mission. She’d contacted Hammer through channels Priyanka had given her. Hammer was amazingly proficient with computers and unusually knowledgeable about virology. He’d assured her that their email exchanges, using an email server on Tor, were private. He knew about Priyanka’s death and he knew what Kay suspected.
They’d arranged to meet in Portland this morning. Kay used the excuse of her presence at the World Virology Conference, where she was scheduled to deliver a paper on the last day. She’d kept Priyanka’s name on the paper.
There was almost zero chance she’d actually deliver that paper. There was almost zero chance her life would be recognizable after this morning.
It was entirely possible she’d have to leave the country with a false passport this afternoon, ending up sipping caipirinhas in Rio tonight. Mike Hammer had said he’d come prepared. He had some information for her too. Depending on what their combined info was, they’d take it from there.
One thing was for sure, though. Her life would never be the same after meeting up with Mike.
He’d provided her with a map of all the security cams in the area, with vision cones. She called it up on her cell as she walked across the hotel lobby. For a second, she looked around. This lobby was so attractive—slate floors, huge flower arrangements in beautiful enameled vases, contemporary light gray couches with pastel throw pillows. It was a policy of the hotel to offer guests tea or coffee, and many of the tables were covered in porcelain tea and coffee sets, with fruit bowls, croissants, small bowls of yogurt. People were chatting and smiling and eating and drinking. Exactly the kind of scene that always brought a smile to her face.
Now, she wondered if that was going to disappear from her life forever. If she’d be a person on the run for the rest of her life, a lighthearted cup of tea with a friend unthinkable.
No. Stop that, she told herself.
She couldn’t deal with the future right now; the present was fraught enough. Before her lie what Nick and his teammates would call a mission. Priyanka’s mission, now hers. Nick and men like him risked bullets to keep people safe. She could do this.
With a wrench, she took her mind off Nick. Last night had been her gift to herself—a night of passion with the most intriguing man she’d ever met. But it was over and danger lay ahead of her. Be careful and focus, she thought. There was so much at stake.
She walked out of the hotel and instantly felt the difference, leaving the past behind, facing this new, uncertain future. Outside was a pedestrian street, with pretty shops and flowering shrubs in planters.
Happy people, looking at shop windows, planning breakfast in one of the numerous elegant coffee shops. No one paid her any attention at all.
It felt like slaloming, staying out of the cone of the cameras, but Mike’s map was a miracle. It moved as she moved. It was a street view, so if she watched where she stepped, she knew she couldn’t be followed by cameras. Or, as he explained, if he were caught, nobody could back trace where she’d been.
The restaurant, conference venue, hotel and a big department store, Conrad’s, comprised the city block. The department store continued via a skywalk to the next city block.
Mike had given precise instructions on how to get to the meeting place. Kay reached the second cross street past the department store, turned left and immediately found a narrow street with no cameras at all, and halfway down to the right, a service alleyway.
It was a sunny day but dark in the alleyway. To the right was the offshoot of the department store and to the left was a tall office building. The back of the building was windowless up to the third floor. He’d chosen well.
Kay slowed down. Mike was supposed to meet her here. She glanced at her cell phone. There were coordinates and, as if that wasn’t enough, a big white X where Mike was supposed to be. This map, too, was a street view. The X was where a row of Dumpsters were lined up. She couldn’t go wrong, the view exactly matched what was on her screen, but in real life there was no one where the screen X was.
Mike wasn’t there.
The appointment was for 9:30 a.m. The digital time at the top of her cell went from 9:29 to 9:30.
No Mike.
Oh God, now what? The flash drive in her pocket that Priyanka had given her felt like both a thousand-pound weight and a searchlight beaming into space. What was she going to do with it if Mike didn’t show?
And if Mike didn’t show, that meant—well, it wasn’t good. Mike Hammer was a pen name he used for his investigative journalism, given his love of ’30s noir detective novels. The Hammer of Justice, they called him. His avatar on the blog was a stylized white profile against a black backdrop. Kay had no idea who he really was, though there were rumors that he had been a big shot in either a law enforcement agency or intelligence service. Careful probing on the net showed that his identity really was a secret. But Priyanka trusted him, and that was good enough for Kay. She was risking everything for this.
But, if Hammer had changed his mind, if he had been detained, arrested or—God!—killed, she had no idea what the next step should be. None.
All she knew was she was holding information that at least two people had been killed for and she had no idea what to do with it. There was no Plan B.
She stopped, heart pounding, then walked forward slowly. They were in the heart of the city, but with no traffic and surrounded by high buildings, it was so quiet she could hear her own footsteps.
Just as she was crossing in real life the big white X on her phone, a man appeared, a tall, thin shape suddenly materializing in front of her.
“Dr. Hudson?” His voice was low, a pleasant baritone.
She stopped herself from taking a step back. She was here to meet him, after all.
“Mike? Mike…Hammer?”
He stepped forward, revealing a thin, pleasant-looking face. He looked smart and exhausted, with red-rimmed eyes and deep lines bracketing his mouth. The lines looked recent. Well, yes. If he was pursuing a story that had gotten two people killed, might unleash a worldwide pandemic, he had every reason to be stressed.
“Yes. And you are Dr. Kay Hudson.”
She nodded then reached for his outstretched hand. At the last minute, she realized he was holding it palm up. Not to shake hands but to receive something. Kay handed over the flash drive. Mike’s long, pale fingers closed over it, then he raised somber eyes to hers. Two people had died for that flash drive, as he well knew.
“Did you make a copy?” he asked.
Kay shook her head. “I tried. But it was so strongly encrypted I simply couldn’t. I couldn’t even read the data. Priyanka said to get it to you if something happened to her and that you could decrypt it.”
Mike nodded solemnly. “Yeah. I can decrypt it. And if I have problems, one of the people I work with used to work at the NSA.”
Kay just then realized that the hard encryption was Priyanka’s way of shielding her. Priyanka didn’t want Kay to be in danger, only to act as a courier.
The message had come two days after Priyanka’s death, like her friend rising from the dead. They’d set up a message board in Tor under an untraceable account they both had the password to. The messages were always in draft.
Kay had logged on, simply to read some of Priyanka’s old posts. Priyanka had been on someone’s trail and her usual sense of humor had deserted her lately.
Kay missed her so much and wanted to read some old posts, just to feel near to her friend. But what she found was a new post, sent the day after her funeral, with a video attachment.
“Kay,” her friend said solemnly on her computer screen. “If you’re reading this, it means something happened to me. I’m sorry to ask this, but this is what you need to do.” Suddenly her friend’s face broke into an uneven smile, tears welling in her eyes. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kay-nobi. You’re my only hope.”
They were both Star Wars nerds and hearing Priyanka say that, Kay had burst into tears.
“There—there will be a lot of science data on the flash drive,” Kay said hesitantly. “If you have any trouble understanding the data, you can count on me to—”
“I have a double PhD in biochemistry and computer science from Stanford,” Mike said.
“Oh!” Kay’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry, I—”
He waved her apology away. “No need to be sorry, you couldn’t know. And I’m sure if I didn’t have a strong bioscience background, I’d have needed help. I have a rough idea what’s in the data. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.”
Meaning—people high up in the nation’s science and health establishment had gone over to the dark side of the force. It hurt Kay’s heart to even think of it.
“Is there anything in the data that can be linked back to you?” he asked.
Kay shook her head. “I don’t think so, but really, I have no idea. Certainly Priyanka wouldn’t want to endanger me. But…” she hesitated. She didn’t know Mike Hammer at all except through his articles. But Priyanka trusted him and so should she. “Some of the data probably came from my lab. Not much but some.”
He nodded. “I’ll anonymize as much as I can, but I can’t promise that nothing will be traced back to you.”
Kay took in a deep breath. “Understood.”
“I think it would be a good idea for you to go underground, or away, for a while.”
“A while?”
She’d expected this. Feared it, too. Whistleblowing didn’t have a great tradition in terms of enhancing lifestyle. Most whistleblowers ended up fired, their reputations trashed, colleagues avoiding them. Some ended up dead, like Priyanka.
She’d put in a preemptive request for a two-month leave. It hadn’t been accepted yet. If she disappeared before it came through, it would cost her at the very least her job. At first that thought had cut her like a knife, made her bleed. But now that anger had taken over, the pain was less piercing
His lips thinned. “Yeah. I don’t know how long it would be. Whoever came after Priyanka and Bill Morrell will come after me, only I know how to defend myself and nobody knows my real identity. But you’re different, you have a high profile, you’re in the business, a lot of people know you were Priyanka’s friend. At a rough guess, I would say that if your name doesn’t pop up in the first ten days after publication, you could maybe consider yourself safe.”
Kay nodded. “I asked for a two-month leave when I received Priyanka’s message.” Kay bit her lip and looked to the side for a moment. Mike said nothing. He knew that the message had come after Priyanka’s death and that the pain would still be raw. “My request hasn’t been accepted yet, but I think it will. Actually…” She hesitated.
“Yeah?”
“Actually, I was thinking of resigning.” There. This was the first time she’d said it out loud and just like that, it became real.
Resigning from the CDC. Not an easy decision. For a scientist, a job at the CDC was top tier, a sign of scientific excellence, and you left the job only if you were planning on going into private industry for about ten times the salary. “For the moment, I can say I have health issues, ask for medical leave. And I have a place I can go to for ten days. It’s—” She stopped when Hammer held up a long, thin hand.
“Don’t tell me. I can’t betray what I don’t know.”
Kay shut up. He was absolutely right.
She’d worked out a place to go. What she hadn’t worked out was how sad it made her feel to abandon her job, abandon Nick, to hole up and…wait. Depending on how Mike published and what happened after that, she’d know whether she’d have to leave the country.
Felicity could get some fake documents for her. She’d done it before.
Kay cleared her throat, which had suddenly tightened. “Like I said, I might quit. I can’t work in a place where I don’t trust my bosses.”
“There aren’t many places anymore where you can do important work and can trust your bosses completely,” Mike said seriously.
Kay nodded. It was true.
They were both silent. Bad things were happening everywhere, it seemed, and bad people were rising to the top. Staying clean was becoming harder and harder. One of her college friends had quit working at a biotech company and had become a baker. Said getting up at 4 a.m. was better than making drugs that made people sicker.
Okay. Kay had done what she was supposed to do. She had honored Priyanka’s request from beyond the grave. It was her last link with her best friend, who’d died to get that information to her. Kay had to swallow the lump in her throat.
But, she’d done her duty. She’d handed off a problem to a very capable man who would know what to do with the flash drive and its contents. He’d know how to investigate it and publish the findings in a way that couldn’t be covered up.
And Kay would be without a job, possibly without a career, and alone. She wasn’t dragging anyone into her problems.
She’d always been a future-oriented person, always thinking ahead. Now a gray veil had been drawn across the world. There was no future she could see. All she could see were walls and darkness.
She’d already decided to quit in her heart. The feeling was there, she just hadn’t recognized it yet because it was so painful to think about. No matter what, she was done. There was no way she could work where she wasn’t sure what they were working for. Were they trying to eradicate diseases or creating new ones?
“Disappear,” Mike said, new lines appearing in his face. “For a while at least. You have somewhere you can disappear to, you said?”
She nodded. An old family homestead that belonged to her maternal grandparents, and was still in their name twenty years after their deaths. Her grandfather had insisted on keeping the records murky, essentially untraceable. She remembered being amused at his paranoia when she was in college, certain that the world was rational and filled with rational and good people. She’d thought it a minor eccentricity of her grandfather’s to keep what was essentially a bolt hole no one knew about.
It was entirely possible that the small country house in the woods near Denver was going to save her life. She’d rent a car with cash and drive there.
“Like I said, don’t tell me where it is,” Mike said. Their eyes met again in perfect understanding. “But I need a way to communicate with you. We continue with our old system?”
“Yes.” He’d taken over Priyanka’s password to the message board.
“If I’m being forced to send the message, if there’s danger to you, I will include the word ‘passage’ in the message. If you read ‘passage’ in the message…run. Immediately.”
She bowed her head. “Understood.”
This was stuff she read about in thrillers. Never in a million years could she have imagined her life would take this turn, that it would be dependent upon passwords and safe houses and keeping her head low.
“Here.” He held out a stiff blue and gold passport. She took it, flipped through it. It was a passport for a woman, Flora Nunes, with her photograph. She couldn’t read the text. It was in Portuguese.
“What’s this?”
Mike sighed. “A Brazilian passport. Don’t worry, it’s genuine. I had one for Priyanka, before—before—”
He stopped, swallowed.
“Before Priyanka was killed,” Kay said softly.
“Yes. If this breaks unexpectedly or if you feel you are in immediate danger, buy a round-trip ticket for the first flight you can to Rio with this…” He held out a VISA card in the name of Flora Nunes. “Throw away the return ticket. I’ll know if you have to run. By the time you’re in Rio, check our email and I’ll have arranged a safe house.”
Kay held the passport and the credit card tightly. The card bit into the palm of her hand. She welcomed the little bite of pain, it helped ground her. Fleeing to Rio would make her an international criminal. She had good reasons, but if the truth never came to light, if all the good guys died, then she’d live the rest of her life in hiding.
“It’s a lot to take in,” she said, meeting his sad eyes.
“It is. And we’re asking a lot of you. But—you know what’s at stake.”
She nodded. She did know. Perhaps the fate of the world. If a worldwide pandemic hit, it could take generations for mankind to come back from the brink, if it ever did.
“In the meantime,” he waggled the flash drive, “it will take me some time to digest this material.”
Kay gave a crooked smile. “Yeah. I think there’s well over a petabyte of information.”
“When Priyanka contacted me, she gave me an indication of the data and how to sort through it.” His tired, serious face lost a little color. “If even half of what she suspected is true, it would be catastrophic. We’ll go through every word, every chart and table. I have people and I have software. But still. It’ll take a couple of days to decrypt it and go through it with my team, and it will take us a week to put together an article. Probably a series of articles. So, stay underground for at least ten days, more if you can. It’s good that you asked for leave. If you need to, say you’ve taken ill and need treatment. Keep an eye on my site and when the articles start coming out, you can reassess. Nothing should happen to you once everything is out. You’ll be the last person they’d be interested in. You should be safe.” He looked suddenly fierce. “I don’t want what happened to Priyanka to happen to you.”
“No,” she said softly. “I don’t either.”
“I will protect your identity no matter what. No one—” He broke off and looked around with a frown. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” But she heard it too. A soft buzzing, louder by the second. The louder it got, the more she realized it was coming from above their heads. Some kind of electricity glitch?
She looked up, puzzled, when Mike suddenly shouted, “Drone!” and pushed her head down. She was initially stiff, not understanding. “Keep your head down,” Mike shouted. “Don’t let the drone photograph your face!”
Oh God!
Somehow the bad guys had followed Mike! Oh God! She couldn’t allow the drone to photograph her! As a government employee, her face was in the CDC database. Two people had been killed for the information she’d handed over to Mike. Kay pulled the wide-brimmed hat lower, glad she had sunglasses on. “Let’s get out of here.”
He nodded, took her elbow, ready to run for it. He kept his head low, features in shadow from above.
Maybe it would be okay.
Holding on to the hat, Kay risked a glance up and saw with horror that the drone wasn’t hovering.
It was diving. Straight at them.
Mike put one hand on her head, pushing her face down, and the other on her shoulder, rushing them to an iron service door set in the wall. He ran them toward it, taking his hand off her head—she’d gotten the message loud and clear, staring straight at the ground—reaching out for the handle. The buzzing grew louder and Mike gave her a big shove against the wall, so hard she bounced.
The drone dove down. Kay turned away, back to Mike. She heard a click and felt moisture in the air, a fine mist coming down. Swiveling her head away from the drone to peer up at the cloudless sky she saw nowhere the moisture could have come from.
The drone lifted, hovered for just a second, and then flew away, straight along to the end of the alleyway, where it lifted farther up to the rooftop and disappeared. The buzzing sound was gone and there was total silence in the alley.
“It’s gone, Mike,” she whispered, rubbing her shoulder. In his attempt to shield her, hurling her against the wall, he’d hurt her. “We’re safe. Where do we—”
Mike collapsed. One second he was upright, the next he was sitting against the wall, legs at an unnatural angle. He’d been holding on to her arm and almost brought her down with him.
“Mike?”
Kay couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Mike had been standing next to her and now he was collapsed on the ground. She kneeled, tried to pull him up. But he couldn’t stand.
He was wheezing, red-faced, one hand clutching his throat. His back arched like he’d received an electric shock and his heels started drumming on the pavement. It was some kind of seizure. Kay bent his head back, looking for obstructions, getting ready for CPR.
Mike shook his head violently. “No!” he gasped.
She sat back on her heels, desperate. What to do for him?
He placed the flash drive in her hand, curling her fist around it.
“Too late for me,” he wheezed. His chest expanded uselessly as he tried to draw in air.
“Wait!” Kay’s shocked brain started into motion again. She scrabbled in her jacket pocket, where she remembered she’d put the cheap conference pen that had been handed out with the conference binders. She stripped the internal tube away, leaving the exterior. On a side zipper of her purse were her house keys, attached to a series of small, useful tools. Screwdriver, file and—yes!—a tiny but sharp knife. None of it was sterilized, but that was the least of her concerns right now. Right now, Mike needed to breathe.
Mentally, she went through the steps as she pulled out the knife blade. Tilt Mike’s head back, trace with her finger down the Adam’s apple to a point an inch below it, make a short, deep horizontal incision in the trachea, put a finger inside the cut to open it, insert the pen and blow.
She cradled the back of Mike’s neck with one hand, holding the knife above his throat. She was so busy preparing for the tracheotomy that she wasn’t looking at him, just at the point of his throat where the incision had to be made.
He reached up, held her hand still with surprising strength.
“No.” Every muscle in his body was straining. His voice had no air behind it. She had to lip read. “It’s the virus.”
She froze. The virus?
Priyanka had been sure that Bill had been working on a weaponized form of one of the deadliest viruses on earth, the Spanish flu virus. The virus that had killed fifty million people in 1918.
This virus would be worse by a factor of a hundred.
But her face was still wet with what had been sprayed in Mike’s face. She must be infected, too, though she felt nothing. How was that? Mike was the only one suffering.
Kay met Mike’s dull eyes. He wasn’t even struggling anymore. In his eyes, she saw the truth. He was dying. It was an animal recognition that predated civilization—the hard truth was that Mike couldn’t be saved, and he knew that. He beckoned with trembling fingers. She bent down to him.
There was a knocking noise in his chest, terminal secretions collecting in his throat and upper chest. The death rattle.
His eyes were fierce, locked with hers.
“Run,” he gasped, pushing the air out. “Hide.”
His entire body convulsed, legs shaking, hands trembling, horrible choking sounds coming from his mouth. And then silence. And then he died. The life force simply left his body and she was holding onto a husk, a shell of a very brave man.
Kay couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She looked around for help for a second before admitting to herself that nothing and no one could help Mike. All she could do was safeguard the information he and Priyanka had both given their lives for.
Why wasn’t she dead, too? The whole point of a weaponized form of Spanish flu was that it would be quick-acting, immediately fatal. She should be on the ground as well, just like Mike, drowned by the fluid in her lungs. She wasn’t. She didn’t even feel short of breath. She didn’t feel anything, except terrified. If it were to act on her, she’d be dead already.
Clearly, for some reason, she was immune.
Her scientist’s mind tried to figure that out, reason out by what kind of mechanism she could be fine and Mike on the ground, dead. But she couldn’t think straight above the drumbeat in her head. Run run run!
Kay stood on shaky legs, glad she’d changed into flat shoes. She would have fallen on heels.
What to do?
Her thoughts were slow, like molasses. Shock, she knew. She even knew the hormones that coursed through the body after shock. Adrenaline. Norepinephrine. Cortisol. Hormones that were supposed to provide heat and fuel to the muscles to flee. But flee where? She was quivering with the need to run and hide, but had no idea how. And no idea where.
There was no one in the alley. All sounds were eliminated, an effect of shock. Going out onto the street would be the obvious thing to do, but there were enemies out there. There was a drone. She glanced up, then looked straight back down. The drone could be above her right now and she couldn’t see it. It could be photographing her right now. Whatever the drone had done to Mike, it could do it to her, and all of this—the courage of two brave people who’d lost their lives—would be for nothing.
There was no way she could stay out in the open. She pushed the door open and stepped inside a storage area and stopped, unsure where to go.
What to do?
All options were bad. She couldn’t stay and she didn’t know where to go.
What to do?
She didn’t know, but her body did. Without thinking, her cell was in her hand, dialing a number. Just thinking of the person on the other end of the line made her feel better.
“Kay?” Nick’s deep, angry voice sounded like music to her ears. “Where the hell are you? Why did you—”
“Nick,” she interrupted, throat raw and quivering. “Help.”