Chapter Seven
8:15 p.m.
Ava stared at River, then at Dr. Rodrigues. Was he right? Were they going to be hunting the person or people behind the outbreak and explosions?
Gathering samples from a deserted location under the watchful eye of several law-enforcement officers was one thing. Seeking out the kind of people who could not only conceive of, but carry out these acts of mass murder…
Her breathing stopped altogether for a moment before stuttering, painfully, back to life.
Could anything be less safe?
Her boss continued to glare at the soldier for another moment or two, then sighed and met Ava’s gaze. “He’s right. We have to know if this is a man-made pathogen or not. If it is something someone has created, I can’t send just anyone to investigate. I need people who know the science as well as the enforcement.”
River leaned toward Ava, his gaze darting right, then left in an exaggerated motion of his head, and stage whispered, “I’m the muscle, and you’re the brains.”
Ridiculous and juvenile, but, with his clear declaration of them as a team, she could breathe again without pain.
“Yeah,” she whispered back. “I got that, since I’m, you know, the brains.”
The corner of River’s mouth tilted upward, and then he turned to Dr. Rodrigues. “Do we have an ID for the guy I shot at the coffee shop? He’d be a good place to start.”
“Not yet, but I’m expecting that information in the next thirty minutes. Homeland Security was able to get some good pictures of him from the security cameras around the square.”
“You talking with Dozer?”
Dr. Rodrigues frowned at River. “Yes.”
“Have you talked with an Agent Geer at all?”
“That name isn’t familiar.”
River grunted, but didn’t comment.
“Ma’am,” Ava said. “Neisseria doesn’t require a hazmat suit. Will you be releasing the identity of the pathogen to the press and changing the appropriate safety protocols?”
“Safety, yes, to a certain degree; identification, no,” Rodrigues said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Until we know the true scope of the bacteria’s pathogenicity, I’m not releasing anything other than the most basic information. An air respirator with at least a P100 filter should be worn by everyone, and gloves for those who might come into contact with others. Frontline medical staff in hazmat suits.” Rodrigues pointed at Ava and River. “You two will wear respirators and gloves, as will anyone assigned to work with you. I saw how that crowd reacted to your suits outside the coffee shop. Public panic is the last thing we need.”
“Do you want us to help with triage while we wait for an ID on our dead terrorist?” River asked.
“No. Prepare your equipment and eat while you have a chance.” She gave River her complete attention for a moment, taking a step toward him and angling her body so her back shut Ava out. “You are to be armed at all times unless and until I say otherwise. You don’t let Dr. Lloyd out of your sight. Her safety is your responsibility.”
Ava managed not to snort at that. Fat chance she had of remaining safe in his company. Their investigation was inherently unsafe, which was almost as dangerous as her attraction to him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled.
“I’ll contact you the moment I have that identification.” It was clearly a dismissal.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ava said, then turned and left the building by the same route they’d come in. They passed the teenager who’d been in respiratory distress, and his mother. His body was covered in a soiled sheet, and his mother was weeping uncontrollably on the floor next to the gurney.
Her heart went out to the other woman, but she couldn’t let her emotions hijack rational thought. Things were going to get worse before they got better.
River and she returned to the decontamination area and removed their hazmat suits. They were given respirators that conformed to the face for a good seal and had orange filters on either side of the mask, safety glasses, and surgical gloves.
When Ava asked for spare respirators and gloves, Sarah only gave her a couple sets.
“Until more supplies arrive, we have to ration.”
“Where can we eat?” Ava asked.
“There’s a clean room set up across the parking lot for staff to eat and sleep.”
“Thanks.” Ava led the way.
“Clean room?” River asked. “Portable?”
“It looks like a giant marshmallow. Air coming in or going out is filtered through HEPA filters. Don’t be surprised if your ears pop once we get inside.”
They walked around a couple of tents set up over crates of water and Meals Ready to Eat to find the air-filled construction.
“An air lock?” River sounded surprised.
“Yeah. The CDC doesn’t joke around.”
They entered the air lock through a door that zippered open and shut. As they walked the short distance to the inner door, the air pressure became uncomfortable enough that she pinched her nose closed with the fingers of one hand and blew until her ears popped.
River did the same.
Inside the second door, the room was deserted, with only a few picnic-style tables and a half-dozen cots set up with blankets. To one side of the entrance was a stack of water bottles and MREs.
Ava grabbed one of each and sat at one of the tables.
River sat across from her, a crooked smile on his face. It suited him, gave him a rakish air that had her pulse speeding up. “You and I are partners.”
She knew that. “So?”
He leaned forward and asked, “How can I help you do what you need to do?”
What?
Ava had to force her jaw to close. He’d been ordered to work and support her, but this kind of open-ended question with no conditions—she hadn’t seen it coming.
She scrambled to regain her composure. “My job is to locate the source of the infection as well as track and record the spread of the infection.” She shrugged. “It would help if you kept people out of my way and encouraged them to evacuate if the risk of infection is high.”
“Clear away obstacles, crowd control, and bodyguard.” He nodded and leaned even closer. “Here’s what I need to do all that.” He paused.
She sat forward.
All trace of mirth left his face. “If I tell you to get down, run, or stop, don’t think, don’t ask questions, just do it.”
What? “Do you believe I’m a target? Or is anyone dressed like me a target?”
“Both. Neither. I’m not assuming anything but the worst-case scenario.”
“What’s the worst-case scenario?”
His face hardened into concrete. “More bombs, bugs, and bodies.”
She waited for more, then realized his gaze had gone fuzzy, as if he were thinking hard and only seeing with his mind’s eye. His expression changed from one second to the next. Pain, anger, disgust, contempt, and more pain. His muscles stood out, as if he’d locked himself in place, but that control was costing him.
Whatever he had in his head was horrible.
What could be worse than what they’d seen already today?
He had an eidetic memory, he’d said. She supposed it might be a sort of torture to not forget. It would take a very strong-willed person to compartmentalize the horror, to put it in a box and close the lid on it. She’d seen horrible things, but he had, too. War amplified horror.
There was more to admire about this man than just his sexy voice and exterior.
“Okay,” she said, opening her MRE. “I can follow your orders, if you can follow mine.”
His gaze refocused on her face. “Then we’re in business.” He held out his hand.
She put hers in it and they shook, once, twice.
“We’re going to be so awesome as partners, you’re never going to want me to leave,” he said with a smug grin.
She yanked her hand away. “It doesn’t matter how great we work together, that’s all we’re doing. Work. So, don’t get all territorial.”
“It doesn’t have to be just work, you know.”
Did he really want her, or was this a case of being the only woman around? “You call me a mouse, but I’m really just a lab rat.”
His grin disappeared. “That’s not a nice way to talk about yourself.”
“Look, I’ve tried the romance with a soldier thing. It didn’t end well.”
River stared at her, his gaze searching hers for longer than she was comfortable. “He was an idiot. I am not one.”
Wow, she was going to have to pull out the big guns. Regret softened her voice more than she wanted, but it had to be said. “He was my fiancé, and he died in the line of duty.”
River’s stare froze. “Fuck.” He paused, his hands closing into fists. “Fuckity fuck fuck.”
She allowed her eyebrows to rise, but kept her response contained to that.
“How long ago?” he asked after several seconds.
“About a year.”
He bared his teeth and leaned toward her again. “Allow me to repeat myself. I’m not him.”
Oh, River.
“He was Special Forces, too.”
River exploded to his feet, jolting and freezing her in place. He paced back and forth in front of the table like a man who didn’t know what to do with himself.
He stopped suddenly to pin her in place with a gaze so full of rage and despair it was a wonder that he didn’t explode. “He made you feel like a lab rat?”
“No, not really. He just…” How could she explain it? “We’d been together for a long time. Our relationship was comfortable and safe. Only, it turned out that it wasn’t safe at all.” She swallowed down the grief and the guilt that always seemed to accompany it. “When he died…” She snorted a derisive laugh and looked at her hands. They were clenched together, her knuckles white.
He sat again and covered her hands with his. “Look at me.”
If he’d ordered or demanded, she’d have had an excuse to fight him, but his request was softly spoken, a request wrapped up in a plea.
She met his gaze, and what she saw there jolted her again. So much pain and regret, as if he knew exactly how she felt. Felt it, too.
“I won’t make promises I can’t keep,” he said, his tone turning his statement into a vow. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next hour, let alone the next few days, but I can promise this.”
Her breathing came to an abrupt halt as she waited for him to finish.
“I think you’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen, and the smartest person I’ve met in a long time.”
Her jaw dropped open.
“I won’t lie to you or fudge the truth for your own good. I’m asking you to keep an open mind, Ava. That’s all.”
The heat from his hands swept up her arms and through her with strength that made her face warm and her mouth say something completely different than what her brain was telling her to say. “I’ll think about it.”
His smile started in his eyes and slowly moved across his face. “I can live with that.”
Finally, her brain kicked in. “I’ll think about it when this is over and if we’re both in the same part of the country. That’s a big if,” she cautioned.
“Trust me.”
Oddly enough, she did. And if that wasn’t the most dangerous thought she’d had in a long time, she didn’t know herself at all.
Ava tugged at her hands and busied herself with her MRE. While she waited for it to heat, she pulled out her cell phone from one of the side pockets on the right leg of her pants.
“Why is your phone in a sandwich bag?” River asked.
“To keep it from being contaminated,” she answered, without looking up.
“Huh. Smart.” She glanced at him, to see him smiling at her. “Got another bag I could have?”
She reached into the same pocket, pulled out another bag, and handed it to him, then went back to looking at the pictures she’d taken with her phone. The crowd River had spoken to had been aggressive and ready to rush the police. Why?
She got a good picture of the man who’d argued with River, his mouth open and finger pointed right at her new partner like he’d done something horrendous. Given the situation, that much anger seemed out of place.
She turned the phone toward River. “Remember this guy?”
He grunted. “How could I forget that dick?” River frowned as he began eating his food. “Way too eager to start shit.”
“It felt, to me, like he wanted to attack you. He was so…angry.” She’d been afraid that anger would set off a stampede. River had stood there alone, confronting all that rage with nothing but a half-dozen police officers, a few traffic pylons, and yellow caution tape to keep the mob from trampling him.
Idiot.
“Too angry.” River chewed with the thoroughness of a man deep in thought. “Could you send me a copy of that picture? I’d like to see if he’s on anyone’s radar.”
“What’s your phone number?”
He gave it to her, and she sent him the photo.
“You took a huge risk when you confronted that crowd,” she told him, her tone as even as she could make it. He’d scared her. Badly. But, she didn’t want him to know just how shaken she’d been when he’d strode away from her. It was irrational, the depth of her fear. It resided in the deepest part of her soul. A dark, cold pit inside her she hadn’t been consciously aware of until that moment. “Things could have easily gotten out of hand. You put the safety of those police officers and yourself in jeopardy.”
His eyebrows rose as she spoke.
So much for keeping it professional.
Damn it, she sucked at this.
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then, while he ate, his head tilted to one side.
“I think part of the problem is that you and I got assigned to work together without so much as a hello. Which means neither of us knows much about the other.”
“Does that mean you know how to handle a crowd?” She tried not to sound too skeptical, but she didn’t think she succeeded.
He nodded. “I’ve performed in training roles for foreign military and police forces. I’ve taught everything from guerrilla warfare to crowd control.” He gave her a nod. “I had a pretty good idea of what would work to get them to disperse, but I should have told you what I was going to do before I did it.”
Ava blinked. Was he apologizing to her?
“I won’t make that mistake again.” He met her gaze with a steady regard that was in no way apologetic.
She dropped her gaze first. “Thank you,” she muttered, right before shoveling a fork full of food in her mouth. Though he wasn’t smiling, she had the distinct impression he was laughing at her.
Jerk.
“So, you said you worked in Africa during the Ebola outbreak.”
Was there a question in there somewhere? She glanced at him and found a smile on his face. The kind a parent wears when their kid just got 98 percent on a math test.
“Where else have you worked?” Even his voice sounded happy.
What the hell was he up to?
“I worked for three years for the World Health Organization, first tracking the annual influenza infection patterns and the bird flu across Asia. Then, investigating recurrent cholera outbreaks in Tanzania and the Middle East. I also investigated the stubborn repeated occurrence of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in South Korea and Saudi Arabia.”
“What was your biggest takeaway from those jobs?”
He made it sound like her job was of the fast-food variety, when it was actually the most exclusive restaurant in town.
“Travel,” she answered, “has a huge impact on infectious diseases. The world population is so mobile one aid worker can carry the flu and infect other people in a different country within hours.”
“How can that be mitigated?”
Two questions, and he’d already asked more about her job than Adam ever had.
Adam hadn’t wanted to know all of the details and dangers of her job. He recognized her work was valuable and a service to not only the United States, but the world, and had supported her 100 percent. Still, he hadn’t learned more about what she did than that.
He’d been caught up in his own training and missions, too busy to ask more than surface questions.
River was deep-sea diving in comparison.
So far, he was doing it alone. Nope, for safety’s sake, one should always have a diving buddy.
“Tell me more about your training,” she said. “Aside from crowd control, what do you learn?”
He thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I speak five languages. I’m a medic, which means I’m closer to a physician’s assistant than an emergency medical technician. I’ve also been trained in dentistry and veterinary medicine. I’ve twice had to vaccinate the entire population of a village for diseases that are almost nonexistent here. There’s a lot more to it. It takes longer to train a Special Forces medic than a fighter pilot.”
“Five languages?”
“Can’t get along with people if you can’t communicate with them.”
Get along with people? “You’re in the military. Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”
“Not if you want to win.”
“A war of words?” she asked, trying to understand.
“When you fight a war in another country, the only way to win in the long run is to communicate with, and educate, the locals. Empower the good guys so they can deal with the bad guys on their own.”
“How do you know who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy?”
“Lots and lots of talking.” He pursed his lips in a rueful gesture. “But, sometimes the good guys are really the least bad of the bad guys.”
“Sounds like a dangerous job with no guarantee of success, and the price for getting it wrong is death.”
River snorted. “You’ve just described every armed conflict since the beginning of time.”
Was he really that blasé about it? “How can you live with that kind of risk hanging over your head like a…a guillotine?”
“It’s no different than the danger you face when you’re in the middle of an infectious disease outbreak,” he replied with a shrug. “You gather all the information there is, you use your understanding of the situation and its dangers, then you formulate a plan to deal with it.”
She must not have looked convinced, because he continued with, “Crossing a busy street at rush hour is dangerous, too, but pedestrians do it all the time, every day, despite the possibility of getting hit by a car.”
“Cars and armed men shooting at you are not on the same level of dangerous.”
“How we manage risk is the same.”
His mind was made up, but then so was hers. “So, what do you do with people like that idiot Homeland agent? He wasn’t listening to you or me, and it’s not like you can shoot him.”
River laughed, an open, unfettered sound that relaxed a restless, anxious part of her she’d been unable to ease since Adam died. Until now.
The absence of strain unbalanced her. Panic of a different sort teased her senses, and she found herself hyperventilating to keep it at bay.
On her second heavy breath, he stilled, his gaze taking in everything.
She had about a third of a second before he called her on it. Before he asked questions she didn’t want to answer.
“Sergeant River.”
Ava jerked her head around at the not-quite-masculine shout.
A tall, broad-shouldered man in a rumpled suit strode toward them.
“Agent Dozer, Homeland Security,” River said as he got to his feet. “This is Dr. Lloyd, from the CDC.”
“Doctor,” Dozer nodded at her before addressing River again. “I have some new information.”
He took the spot next to River and leaned in, speaking to both of them. “The name of the kid River shot is Roger Squires. He’s the oldest son of John Squires, who owns Gold Inn, an international hotel chain. Roger was a student at the U of El Paso, majoring in political science. He was in his fourth year, held a 3.9 grade point average, and from what I’ve gathered so far, seemed like a completely normal, intelligent American twenty-two-year-old.”
“Have you spoken to his family?” Ava asked.
“No. There was no answer when I tried to reach his parents. We have agents on their way to his parents’ home and his dorm room at the university.”
“Have both locations been cleared by CDC personnel?” River asked.
Dozer frowned. “No.”
“Call them off,” River ordered.
Dozer’s eyebrows went up.
Was he high enough in the Homeland food chain not to have many people telling him no?
“River is right,” Ava told the agent. “Until they’ve been cleared by CDC personnel, both locations could be biologically hot.”
Dozer looked at her for one second, then pulled out his cell phone, hit a button, and relayed her instructions. He ended the call, then gave them both a fierce smile. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything at his parents’ house.”
“His dorm has two things that make it more likely to contain useful information,” River said.
“What’s that?” Ava asked.
River held up a finger. “Roommates.” He held up a second finger. “Questionable cleaning habits.”
“Thank you for volunteering.” Dozer grinned, punching in a number on his phone and tapping the speaker icon.
Dr. Rodrigues’s voice called out a hello.
Dozer explained what he wanted River and Ava to do.
“We’ve done a level one background check on the first hundred people to report sick at the hospital,” Rodrigues told them. “Half of them live in the same dorm building or within a quarter mile of it on the university’s campus.”
“Well, shit,” River said, giving her a half-smile. “The kids on a campus like that are too fucking mobile.”
“This is going to make containing this bug a lot harder,” Dozer said.
“It’s possible the coffee shop wasn’t ground zero for the infection,” Rodrigues said tentatively. “Investigate Roger Squires’s dorm. Dr. Lloyd, take whatever equipment you need. Sergeant River, her safety is your number-one priority. Your second priority is to assist in the investigation using whatever tools you deem necessary.”
Agent Dozer’s choke was in no way quiet.
“Does that include my M24?” River asked with far too much glee.
“I assume that’s your rifle?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Yes. Agent Dozer, please coordinate with law enforcement and assign an appropriate escort for Dr. Lloyd and Sergeant River.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
“Good. I expect updates no less than every fifteen minutes.”
“Very good, ma’am.”
“Make sure your people follow orders, Agent Dozer. Their lives, and the lives of thousands of Americans, depend on it. I know some of your agents don’t think the CDC is the appropriate agency to be in charge of this disaster, but if this infection gets away from us, the death toll could be astronomical.” Rodrigues ended the call.
“Is that true?” River asked Ava.
“If the sick aren’t isolated from the healthy, or if someone exposed carries the pathogen to another location, it could spread. From the pattern of infection and death we’ve already seen, it would be devastating.”
“As bad as Ebola?” he asked.
“Oh no,” she said as she thought back to the chaos of the emergency room. It was a scene she’d witnessed hundreds of times when she was in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak. Though she didn’t like making predictions about how virulent a pathogen was, she wasn’t about to hold back the truth from her new partner. “Much, much worse.”