Deep Freeze

by Hinze, Vicki

  “That’d work for me. Might not go over too well with law enforcement, though. They’ll understand by intercepting these men, they’re exposing themselves to the pathogen as well.”

  “It will go over fine if you bring them into the loop.” Emma pointed out.

  “So, the four—and their driver—haven’t been exposed?”

  “As far as we can tell with certainty, only the inner ring was contaminated,” Emma said, being deliberately cagey. “However, there are cracks in the lab’s rear wall. They’ve been repaired. If those repairs have been a hundred percent effective, then no, they haven’t been exposed. But if they haven’t…”

  “You’re saying we can’t determine exposure with certainty at this time.”

  Testing had come out fine. Air samples had been fine. Neither Mason nor Emma had found any evidence of leakage. Emma stiffened her spine and served the mission. “Odds are against it, but that’s what I’m saying.”

  Liz got it. “I’ll bet the construction crew on the rear wall was glad to hear they weren’t exposed. You and John Taylor, too.”

  “I am, and they will be when they know it. We’re trying to determine absolute facts before saying anything more.” The courageous construction crew volunteered to guard fearing the worst. Admirable. She didn’t want to tell them they would be fine and then have to tell them they wouldn’t. Emma stared at the security screen of Olivia. Her face was still animated. She was talking with Jacob. “The medical officer is stranded off-site and they don’t keep meds in the facility. If an occasion arises, they use a drug store about five miles away.”

  “I see where you’re headed with this,” Liz cut in. “Emma, you are not going to that store.”

  “Yes, Liz, I am.” Emma put a steel in her voice she’d never heard before herself. “If I don’t, in the matter of a few hours, we could have a dead little girl.”

  “I understand, okay? But you need to think bigger picture right now. You’re responsible for that lab. If you leave, who is left to prevent the backup team from circling back and emptying it? You said yourself, they can’t get far in this storm. Dr. Hunk can’t shoot. John Taylor’s too far away,” Liz said, then added, “You can’t make a five-mile trip and then make it five-miles back in this storm. Bottle your emotions and think. Just logic and reason, Emma. Downed power lines, falling trees, strong winds. You’d be lucky to get beyond the facility grounds.”

  “I have to try,” Emma insisted, elevating her voice. Mason loved Olivia. Her whole family loved her. And Jacob needed her. “If she gets sick, I can’t just let her die.”

  Jacob gasped. He was watching Emma. Was the monitor a two-way? From the devastated expression on his face, the way he clutched Bandit to his face, it was, and he had heard her. Emma’s heart sank. “I’ve got to go.” She clipped the phone back to her waist. “Jacob. Can you hear me?”

  He nodded and spun away.

  “Jacob, wait. Please, wait.”

  He kept going until he ran straight into Sophia.

  Feeling like the lowliest slug, Emma mouthed, “Sorry. I didn’t know…”

  Sophia nodded, then comforted her son.

  Emma walked out of camera view toward the glass wall between the outer and inner rings. “Mason.” She spotted him. He and David were inside the HC lab proper. She scanned the HC lab damage. The repairs they had made. The sealant applied over the cracks in the freezer glass-door. There was no doubt about it. The invaders had been after the BP7PP.

  Walking closer, Emma reached up to the wall and tapped the intercom system used to talk back-and-forth between the outer ring and the HC inner ring areas of the lab. “Did they get it, Mason?”

  “No.” He paused and looked at Emma through the glass. “They broke one of the vials, though. Percussion, it appears.”

  Emma’s skin crept. “It’s loose in there?”

  “Yes, but we’ve completed the protocols to neutralize and sealed the freezer.”

  “How can you neutralize if there’s no antidote?”

  “There’s a difference in neutralizing and treating, Emma. We killed it. Can we get into the specifics later?”

  “I need to know, Mason,” she insisted. “Did Olivia experience direct exposure?” Had she entered the inner ring?

  He stopped what he was doing and walked over to the glass wall. “She was close to the vault door, chasing a ball. The force of the blast…”

  David interjected. “I was on my way in. She chased the ball in after me.” Anguish flooded his face. “Bottom line, she got sprayed with the sample.”

  Oh, God. Olivia needed those meds desperately. They wouldn’t cure her, but maybe they would slow things down and give them time to come up with something to help her. Something to kill it in her. It was a long-shot. Totally irrational, probably. But it was hope. She had to hold on to hope. “My associate is moving heaven and earth, trying to get medicines to us.”

  He stepped closer still, so she could see his eyes. “I know Emma. Everything that can be done is being done.”

  Her eyes burned. She blinked hard and fast. “Hurry and get out of there, okay?”

  “We’re doing our best.”

  She let him see her fear, her concern for him. “Do better, all right?”

  He locked their gazes, and his expression softened. “I’ll try my hardest. I promise.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “Okay.”

  “Okay.” He turned back to what he was doing.

  Fighting tears, she shut down the intercom, her hand shaking.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tuesday, December 18th

  0545 (5:45 AM)

  In the kitchen, Emma wolfed down a piece of buttered toast and a cup of coffee. She was about to raid the refrigerator when her radio blared. “Emma? Emma?”

  John Taylor’s voice, and he sounded strained and agitated. She swallowed fast. “This is Emma.” The bite of toast stuck in her throat. She gulped down hot coffee. “Go ahead.”

  “I need clout at the Main right now. Janette knows about Greer and she is freaking out. She’s seen the body.”

  Shock pumped through Emma. “All of them?”

  “No. Thank heaven. Just Greer. I couldn’t put him with the thugs.”

  Great. Just great. Emma rinsed her cup at the sink. “I’m on my way.”

  “She doesn’t know you. Mason needs to get up to the Main. That’s where she is right now.”

  “He can’t.” Mason was in running lab tests on Olivia. “I’m on my way.”

  Abandoning the kitchen, Emma headed down the hallway toward the outer door. When she moved past the monitors, Mason intercepted her. “Emma.”

  She stopped and turned, saw him standing there. Tense and stiff, as if only by sheer will he was holding himself together. The agony in his expression was too palpable to misunderstand. The tests had been completed. The results were in. “It’s positive.”

  Mason nodded. Beside him, on the screen in the quarantined quarters, Sophia collapsed against David. Jacob and Olivia were asleep. “She’s contracted it, Emma.” Mason choked up.

  “Don’t give up. Get creative,” Emma said. She hadn’t wanted to do what she was about to suggest, but now she had no choice. “There are a lot of people upstairs. “Maybe someone has antibiotics on them.”

  John Taylor, listening in on his radio, groaned. “Janette will never allow you to canvass the passengers.”

  “We can’t do that.” Mason objected. “We’d have to expose the lab.”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” Emma said. “And I’m not going to let Olivia get sicker and sicker because Janette will get upset. That is not happening.”

  “If you tell her, she will stop you,” John Taylor warned Emma.

  “Then I won’t tell her.”

  Mason was more pragmatic. “I’m not going to bother trying to stop you. I’ve seen that look on you before and won’t waste your time or mine. I will say be careful.” Mason grimaced. “Going above, you’ll be unarmed, Emma.”

&nbs
p; “Dr. M., she can’t—”

  “She will, John Taylor,” Mason said. “The woman sometimes has more guts than sense, but she’s doing what she has to do, and we have to trust her. If Janette does go toe-to-toe with her… well, just trust Emma.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Emma heard the skepticism in John Taylor’s voice. It told her more than his words. He feared Janette. “I know it’s risky,” Emma told them both. “And I will be careful, but I am going to do it.”

  “Have you cleared this through Liz?” Mason asked.

  She’d forbid it. Her concern was the lab. Emma’s concern was the lab and Olivia. She couldn’t lie to him, so she ignored the question.

  Thankfully, he understood and didn’t ask it again.

  Appreciating Mason’s backing her and the additional argument reprieve, Emma headed to the outer door, confiscated a cart parked near it, and then raced to the elevator, driving nearly as fast as Mason had the first time he’d driven her down to the lab.

  John Taylor stood inside the open elevator. The grated metal door stood slats open and waiting for her. When she stepped inside, John Taylor groused. “Figured you’d need the code.”

  She had committed it to memory but saw no sense in disclosing that if she didn’t have to do it. “Thanks.” Emma stepped back, deeper into the elevator.

  The door closed and the ride up started. “Don’t give Janette any advance warning,” John Taylor said. “She says to stop you, and her minions will do whatever it takes to stop you. They know her, and they know their jobs are on the line if they dare to cross her.” He shrugged. “I’ve got your back, but there’s only one of me.”

  And his job would be on the line, too. Especially if Graystone failed to return. “No problem. I’ve got this,” Emma said. The woman would never see her coming.

  The elevator stopped and they walked out together and into the Main proper. It was crowded and busy and, considering the early hour, fewer were sleeping than Emma had expected there would be. Briefcase Man, the one she’d noticed multiple times before, fell in behind her.

  “Do you know him?” Emma asked John Taylor. Maybe the man was an undercover member of his staff.

  “He’s been hanging around here for three days. We’ve been watching him closely, but he hasn’t made a move that could even be considered suspicious.”

  That was before the airport had been closed. Before the storm had unleashed on them. “Three days warrants asking him who he is and why he’s here.”

  “I thought so, too.” John Taylor coughed. “But Dr. M. vetoed me.”

  Mason knew Briefcase Man—or knew about him, then. “He’s one of theirs?” That would have been a handy piece of information for someone to have shared with her.

  “To be honest, I don’t know who he is, but Dr. M. vouched for him.” John Taylor glanced her way. “That’s good enough for me.”

  Because John Taylor trusted Mason.

  Emma wound through the crowd to the buzz of hushed voices. It was kind of people to be mindful of those sleeping around them. A clump of media, including Darcy Keller, had gathered under a tent in a roped-off area. Janette stood with them. She looked a little stunned, but as if she were trying to harness it. A gaggle of microphones stood set up on a wooden podium. The airport’s logo was on its front in big, bold letters.

  John Taylor stepped closer to Emma. “I need to back off or she’ll sense something is coming and intercede. I’ll be close by.”

  “No problem.” Emma veered away from him and toward the microphone.

  Janette didn’t appear formidable, just all business in her tailored tan suit and heels, her blond hair pulled back from her face in a somewhat severe looking knot at her nape. Engrossed in conversation with a seated Darcy Keller, Janette didn’t notice Emma, so Emma ignored the women and went straight to the microphone. “May I have your attention? Attention, please.”

  Janette swirled toward Emma, strode double-time toward her.

  John Taylor stepped in and blocked her. “Don’t.”

  “Who is she?” Janette demanded to know. “Who are you?” she called out to Emma. “I demand an answer immediately.”

  “Cut those cameras, right now,” Emma said, motioning with her hand.

  Red lights went off, but one remained. “I said now. Unless you want to be banned from this facility and tossed outside, do it.”

  The light went out and Emma focused on Janette. “Lower your voice. You’ll frighten the passengers.”

  Janette glared at her, resenting the instruction, and turned to John Taylor. “Where’s Dr. Martin?”

  “Dr. Martin is currently unavailable,” Emma answered.

  Sliding her a sidelong look, Janette put a bite in her tone. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Martin’s boss.” Emma paused for that to sink in, then swiveled her gaze to one of the cameramen. “Is this being broadcast to the other terminals?”

  Janette didn’t answer.

  Darcy Keller did. “It is.”

  “Thank you,” Emma said, then turned back to the mike. Everyone, it appeared, was now awake and watching her. She didn’t smile. “Your attention, please.”

  A hush fell over the crowd. “We have a medical emergency and I desperately need antibiotics. Streptomycin, Levaquin, Avelox, Cipro—any kind of antibiotic but especially one of those four. Because of the storm, no one can get the medicine to me, and I can’t get to it. If you have antibiotics, please speak up.”

  A few rows behind Briefcase Man, a disturbance broke out. An elderly man and woman arguing.

  “Stop it, Ethan.” The woman swatted at his hand, reaching for her purse.

  Ethan glared at the woman and then spoke to Emma. “This is my wife, Claire. She’s got antibiotics.”

  “And I’m keeping them, too.” Claire pointed to her black-booted foot. “I had surgery. I need them.”

  Emma walked over to the woman. “Claire, you don’t understand,” Emma said softly. “I said it’s an emergency. A child needs that medicine right now or she won’t live.”

  “I need it, too.”

  Emma looked Claire over. “You don’t appear to have had any surgical complications. Were there?”

  “No, but I don’t want any either.”

  “I understand. Honestly, I do.” Emma resisted the urge to snatch her purse. “But this is a child, Claire, and I’m telling you, if she isn’t treated with antibiotics, she will die.”

  Ethan urged his wife. “For land’s sakes, give her the medicine, Claire.”

  “No.” She frowned and spat at him. “I will not.”

  Short of forcibly taking the medicine from the woman, Emma wasn’t going to get it.

  Ethan gave his wife a look of pure disgust. “I can’t believe you’re the same woman I married. If I hadn’t seen this myself, I wouldn’t believe it.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to die.”

  “You’ve had surgery on your foot. You’re not dying, but even if you were, you’ve lived a whole life. This is a kid. A kid, Claire.”

  “Quit with your guilt. I mean it. I’m not giving her my medicine. I don’t care what you or anyone else says. I’m not doing it.”

  Not even her husband’s disgust softened Claire’s resolve. Emma accepted it and tried a different tact. “Will you at least share it?”

  Briefcase man, the gray-haired man Mason had vouched for, stepped forward. “Sharing won’t be necessary,” he told Emma. “I’m a doctor. I have what you need in my briefcase. You’re welcome to it.” He paused. “But I would like to see the patient. Perhaps I can help.”

  John Taylor nodded, then turned to the crowd. “Thank you, folks.” He waved them back to whatever they had been doing. Ethan was welcomed by others in the group. Claire was not. She’d made her call, and she would now bear the consequences of it.

  “Provided Dr. Martin agrees, your offer to help will be welcome,” Emma told Briefcase Man.

  Her eyes stretched wide, the look in them a l
ittle wild, Janette rushed over to Emma but spoke to John Taylor. “What is the medical emergency?”

  “Excuse me a moment, doctor.” Emma pivoted to face Janette and John Taylor. “Don’t answer that, John Taylor,” Emma interrupted, then focused on Janette. “The Security Chief is not at liberty to disclose that information.” For good measure, she sent John Taylor a killer look. “Not one word or I’ll have you prosecuted. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He gave Janette a “you heard her” shrug.

  “Take us back now, please, Chief,” Emma added. “Doctor?” She motioned toward the alcove. “This way, please.”

  With every step, Emma prayed Mason had been right to trust this man. She felt torn on asking so much as the doctor’s name. But he was a doctor, and if there was even a remote chance that he could help Olivia, they had to take it. They’d clear him first, of course.

  John Taylor drove and wasted no time getting them back to the lab.

  When he stopped the cart, Emma turned to the doctor. “You need to know that the child has been infected with a lethal pathogen. She’s quarantined. Because her mother and brother were exposed to her, they’re also quarantined.”

  He had kind eyes, and they were clear and met Emma’s without surprise or hesitation. “Yes, I know.”

  Mason had to have told him. How else could the man possibly know? “And you’re still willing to go in and see her? I could just take the medicine.”

  “I am willing. Actually, this is something I have to do.”

  He meant that literally. He was a man on a mission. But good or evil, she couldn’t say. He appeared good, but even the most evil dregs in society never saw themselves as evil or bad. To them, they were just and reasonable and fair—even if they were psychotic or garden-variety nuts.

  “Before you can go in, I have to get Dr. Martin to clear your access,” she said. She snapped a photo of him then fired it off to Mason. Grant Lab access? A second text with the photo went to Liz. It included a single word message: Identify.

  They left the cart and waited near the outer door for Mason’s response.

  Access granted.

  “Okay, then,” Emma said. “We’re clear to go.”