Chapter Eleven
10:20 p.m.
What the fuck was going on with Homeland Security?
River didn’t know what they were thinking, but they weren’t acting in the best interests of any of the other agencies and people working the terrorist attacks and outbreak. Were they playing some game of their own?
Assholes.
They were putting a whole lot of other people—first responders, law enforcement, and civilians—in danger with their stupidity. He was going to get to the bottom of it. Just as soon as he got his hands on Geer.
The fucking fucker.
There was a stream of college kids coming out of the dorm now. Most of them looked confused, irritated, or bored. They lost those expressions as soon as they saw the cops, suits, and CDC people wearing respirators.
The CDC had set up a couple of portable light towers, throwing shadows across the ground and all those faces. Their eyes appeared shrunken and black, as if they were all already dead.
Ava began directing everyone, getting two of the cops to sort the kids into healthy looking and not so healthy. She kept glancing at him with an expectant expression, probably waiting for him to head back inside with the decontamination team to assist in evacuating the building. She probably thought she was going back in there with them. She was the lead doctor slash investigator, after all.
There was just one problem with that.
He had no intention of letting his mouse go back in.
The grenades in that bathroom were dangerous. He hadn’t been exaggerating. One of them had to stay in a safe zone in case the damn things exploded.
Of the two of them, he was the most expendable.
She was going to be pissed if she figured it out, but he’d rather that than injured or dead.
The stream of students coming out of the building began to die down, and River caught Ben White’s gaze with his own and gestured with his rifle to go in.
Ben headed for the door accompanied by another CDC guy.
“Palmer,” River called out. “Go with them.” He pointed at Ben.
“Roger that,” Palmer said.
River turned to look at Ava, who was watching him with a frown on her face.
“Aren’t we going in to clear the building and search for Geer? I thought time was—”
“We will,” he interrupted. “But getting all the civilians out, the sick to the hospital, the rest to where ever you need them to go, is the priority. We’ve got to get all these people at least a block away without turning the move into a stampede.” River shrugged. “If Geer does something stupid and blows himself up before we can get him out, I’m okay with that.”
Ava let out a sigh. “He’s on our side. Remember?”
River huffed. “For a good guy, he sure is an asshole.” He glanced around. Things were still too chaotic. “Time to start the roundup.” He’d managed to beg a radio off one of the cops, attaching it to Ava’s belt so she wouldn’t lose it.
“Okay, everyone,” Ava said over the radio. “We need to move these people a block away. Homeland Agents, you’re in charge of the healthy group. Take two of the El Paso police officers to help you. The rest of the police, please come see me for your assignments. Agent Toland has custody of our witness, and Sergeant River—”
“Will bring up the rear, corral latecomers, and shoo everyone else away,” he interrupted.
She didn’t look unhappy at his interruption, just added, “That’s it. Let’s go.”
River waited until most of the students were moving, albeit slowly, before lagging behind and slipping back inside the building.
He found Palmer, Ben, and the other CDC guy knocking on doors and left them to it.
He approached Squires’s apartment the same way he would have approached any hostile location, moving steadily forward with intense caution and awareness of his surroundings. Aside from the fire alarm blaring, the hallway was void of any sound, movement, or people.
The door to the apartment was locked.
Son of a bitch. Geer was in there. No one else would have locked it.
River pulled his lock picking tools out of the side of his pack and went to work. At least all the noise from the alarm would cover any sounds he might be making. The door open, he put his lock picks away and grabbed his weapon.
Cautiously, he stopped just inside the doorway to see if he could detect Geer’s location.
A shadow moved down the hall toward the bathroom with the corpse, telling River where he was.
Fucked, that’s where. The asshole was currently in fucking fuckville, but moving quickly into stupidfuckerton.
River walked toward the bathroom on soft, silent feet, his rifle snug to the hollow of his shoulder, the business end leveled heart-high on a man Geer’s height.
As he crossed the last few feet toward his destination, Geer’s back was clearly visible through the doorway. He examined the selves in the tub, picking up and putting down one container after another.
River glanced at the grenades on the counter on the opposite side of the small room.
They hadn’t moved. Yet.
Geer put a container down and picked another one up, lifting it so he could see the bottom.
“Put that shit down before you kill yourself with it,” River said in a calm, even tone.
The agent froze, then glanced over his shoulder. “I’m under orders to collect evidence.” He didn’t put the container down.
“Of what? Reckless disregard for human life? Bingo. You won that contest already.”
“My orders come from a higher source than you,” Geer said from between clenched teeth. Sweat gathered into beads at his hairline, then ran down from his temples.
“What a coincidence. So do mine.” River completely ran out of patience for the moron. “Put it down and back out of the room. Now.”
“Damn it, I have orders to find the source of the infection.”
“Every person working this disaster has the same orders, asshole. What makes you so special?”
“You don’t understand.” Geer blew out a noisy breath and blinked. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but get that microbiologist up here. I can’t figure out what’s what.”
The dude was fucking nuts.
“Geer, five feet behind you are enough explosives to turn you and anyone in that room with you into nothing more than pink mist. There’s no way she’s coming up here until those grenades are rendered safe.”
“We don’t have time for safe,” Geer bellowed, going from rational to insane in about two seconds flat. His hands shook so hard River could see them vibrating. “Thousands of lives are at stake.” He looked prepared to do just about anything. A level of willingness to do a job that could get him and other people killed. And he hadn’t hesitated to do it.
Geer’s behavior suddenly made horrible sense.
“What the fuck haven’t you told the CDC?” River asked softly, watching the other man intently. Was he wobbling on his feet? “Someone gave you additional orders. Different orders? What are they?”
The agent shook his head, but not in negation, more like he was trying to shake something loose from his own head. “We got a tip about this attack. We just didn’t know when.”
“You knew who, though?” Geer never once showed surprise. That had bothered him earlier, but now it made sense. “You knew about Roger Squires?”
Geer gave a wheezy sort of laugh and tried to wipe his face with one hand, but his hand was inside a glove, and his face was behind the respirator. “We thought we had him contained. He was leading us to his recruiter, but instead, this outbreak happened. Then the explosions. We realized we’d lost control of the asset.” He looked at his hand like he’d never seen it before.
“Asset? You considered an American college student recruited by God-knows-what terrorist group an asset?” Of all the stupid-ass things to do. “This is why no one likes working with you guys,” River said, not bothering to hide his disgust. “You’re a bunch of arrogant fuckers.”
Geer’s expression hardened, and he turned back to the shelving unit.
“What else did you find?” River asked. When Geer glanced at him with a frown, he added, “You’ve been up here a while. What else did you find?”
“Nothing.”
“You expect me to believe you? Not happening. What else?”
When Geer didn’t respond, River decided it was time to go fishing.
“You were looking for a paper trail. Something to lead back to whoever this kid was working with, right? Did you find it?”
Geer just stared at him, blinking owlishly.
River snorted. “You didn’t. That’s why you’re in such a panic and so willing to blow yourself up.” River thrust his chin at the assorted scientist equipment and solutions in the bathroom. “You’re not going to find the answer just sitting on a piece of paper, waiting for you to pick it up. Dr. Lloyd and the rest of the CDC people are the only ones who can figure out what this shit is.” He tightened his mouth and gestured with his rifle. “Time to get out, Agent Geer. Now.”
Geer didn’t move for a long couple of seconds, but finally, he came out of the bathroom and walked past River. “You’re making a big mistake.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what all the assholes say. Let’s go before those grenades go off and I have to share my ride to the pearly gates with you.”
“I’m not the only asshole around,” Geer muttered thickly.
They got out of the apartment and down the hall without incident, but on the first flight of stairs heading down, Geer stumbled and had to catch himself on the handrail to avoid falling. His arm shook like he’d overdosed on coffee and hadn’t slept in days.
“You okay?” River asked
Geer didn’t respond. He walked a couple more steps, turned the corner, and paused at the top of the next flight of stairs. Slowly, he leaned forward, then began to fall.
River reached out with a hand to catch him, but he misjudged how fast Geer was going down and missed.
The Homeland Security agent dropped like a sack of heavy artillery and mostly rolled down the stairs. He landed at the bottom of the flight on his back, his arms and legs spread out so haphazardly River knew the other man was unconscious.
Just what he didn’t need. Dead weight.
Was the agent actually dead?
River leaned down and noted the other man’s chest rising. Okay, so he was alive. Great. River grabbed one arm and hoisted Geer over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
At the bottom of the stairs, he ran into a couple of students who looked at him as if he were the boogeyman, then ran the whole way down the stairs ahead of him.
River made it to the bottom floor and managed to get out the side entrance without dropping his cargo.
The lawn where all the students had been gathering was empty now, with a couple of police cars parked in front. River followed the noise of people up the street and realized Ava had moved everyone a block away. He was halfway there when a guy in a CDC hazmat suit ran toward him with a rolling gurney. One of Ben White’s guys.
“What happened?”
“He passed out and fell down the stairs,” River said. “He was shaky before that and looked like he might be running a fever.”
“I’m marking him as showing symptoms,” the guy said, taking a marker out of his tool bag and writing exactly that on the respirator on Geer’s face. He put the marker away, then grabbed the gurney and was about to go back into the fray of first responders, police, and hysterical students.
“Wait,” River said. He opened Geer’s tool bag and pulled out a small, tattered notebook and two cell phones. One of the phones looked like new, the other had a cracked screen and a few dings and nicks in the casing. He put the new one back, then shoved the beat-up phone and the notebook into his own tool bag. “Okay, you’re good to go.”
The CDC guy pushed the gurney to a waiting ambulance, conferred with a couple of hazmat-suited paramedics, then loaded him into the vehicle.
River caught sight of Agent Toland and the other two Homeland agents arguing with someone, punctuating whatever they were saying with sharp, forceful gestures. One of them shifted and took a half-step to one side.
They were arguing with his mouse.
She spotted him through the same narrow gap between the men shouting at her and he saw her lips form the word, “You!”
Shit, his radio was still off.
He winced, mouthed, “Sorry.” And turned the sound back up on his Bluetooth.
“—the hell have you been?” Ava shouted in his ear.
The other men on the same channel winced. She could sure yell when she wanted to.
He sucked in a breath to answer, but she wasn’t done.
“You could have been killed! What if those grenades had gone off?”
“The building had to be cleared,” he managed to say when she stopped yelling long enough to take a breath.
“Ben and Palmer were doing that,” she snarled as she pushed her way past the agents to stand in front of him with her hands on her hips. “Another person going in there was monumentally…” She paused, looking him up and down before finishing with, “Stupid.”
“I call bullshit on that,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “If I hadn’t gone in and gotten Agent Geer, he’d have died in there.”
That got Toland’s attention. “What do you mean, you got Geer out? Where is he?”
“In one of the ambulances.” River turned and pointed it out.
All three Homeland agents moved toward it at a run.
“You,” Ava said, as if she were crushing glass with her teeth, “took an unacceptable risk.”
Some risks were necessary. “Define ‘unacceptable?’”
Her mouth opened just as a wave of light, heat, noise, and vibration smacked into him from behind.