Outbreak

by Davis Bunn

  thirty-eight

  Avery stopped Theo with an upraised hand and the words, “Hold that thought.”

  Della had seldom seen a man so much in his element as Avery was at that moment. He stood flanked by the three whiteboards, a blue marker in one hand and a black in the other. So totally caught up in his work that he was utterly beyond the normal boundaries that defined him. The stained lab coat, the dab of mayonnaise on one cheek, the way his glasses had slid down his nose, or the perspiration dotting his forehead—none of this mattered. His voice had not risen, yet there was an energy now, a passion that dominated the room.

  Avery went on, “Soon as I decoded Dr. Lanica’s data, I contacted a lab I’ve used many times before. I gave them general coordinates. Entire regions. We needed such a large population base, because there was no telling where or even if human blood and tissue samples had been taken.”

  The idea struck her then. Even so, Della remained where she was. Her immobility was only partly due to Avery’s excited chatter. What most captured her was Theo. He had approached the whiteboards and now seemed joined to Avery, both in thought and purpose. Two academics united by a shared quest for knowledge. At this moment, Della sensed neither of them was actually aware of the lives hanging in the balance. For them, the knowledge itself was enough.

  She had never known anyone like Theo before. His strength and quiet enthusiasm seemed to expand the space his body occupied. She wanted to reach out, grip him as hard as she could, and ask the question that dominated her mind and heart whenever they were together: Would there ever be a time for them?

  Then she noticed that Harper was watching. Soon as their eyes met, the dark-skinned woman smiled knowingly. Della felt her face flame crimson. She interrupted Avery with, “I need to obtain some information online. Which means spending money I don’t have.”

  Theo searched through his pockets and came up with a credit card. “Go ahead.”

  “Don’t you want to know what for?”

  “Later.” His gaze had not shifted from Avery. “Go on.”

  thirty-nine

  Cruz jogged past the biology building, making a casual loop around three interconnected parking lots. Just another student defying the oppressive summer heat. The same security guards who had scouted him earlier from their small cop-mobile drove along the main road. Cruz opened the fanny pack and settled his hand on the Glock. But the guards did not even glance his way as they passed.

  Cruz stopped by a water fountain that marked a point where the sidewalk circled a little patch of blooming flowers. He waited while two girls filled their water containers, then splashed his face and neck. Taking his time, his glasses pushed up on top of his head, giving his surroundings a careful inspection. Two cops on foot patrol passed the rear of the biology building where it was closest to the next building, a narrow angle of shadows that weaved with the blowing tree limbs. Cruz was especially concerned by this, because he suspected if the other team was hunting, they would have used this as their hide. But the male-female pair strolled past, chattering happily, clearly more interested in each other than the hide.

  Even so, Cruz felt the spider sense crawl inside his gut. He was missing something. He could almost feel the foe’s body heat.

  Avery was saying, “More than two-thirds of the tissue samples showed a very high level of potassium.”

  Theo felt like he should be paying stricter attention. But two things kept getting in the way. Three, actually. He could see that Della was growing very excited by what she was pulling up on her laptop. Three times now she had hit a site and coded in Theo’s credit card details, then gasped at what she had found.

  Added to this was how Harper kept watching him. Something she saw made her smile. And something in that smile unsettled him. He felt himself blushing and had no idea why.

  Plus, he had an idea of his own. One that kept building in force. It was like a cresting wave rising in his chest. Staying quiet and showing patience had become very tough indeed.

  Avery said, “There are a number of possible reasons why people will have an elevated level of potassium. But we’re not talking about what a western lab would class as ‘normal population’ samples. These people are poor. And something more.”

  Theo started to interrupt, to tell the man to stop with the dramatics and get to the point. But Avery was smiling now. Just loving this.

  “There is no reason why a population spread out over a thousand miles, in a cluster of different countries, all with different diets and habits, would show the same elevated potassium.”

  That lifted Della’s head. “What, none?”

  “Not one. If you examine the list of possible reasons, you can discount them all when you factor in the various incomes and nations and diets and cultures.”

  Harper said, “Wow.”

  “Exactly.” Avery was beaming now, his face turned handsome by his excitement. “If I were writing up these findings for publication, I’d call this our first confirmation that we’re on the right track. But wow will do.”

  forty

  “I have something that might help.”

  Della fiddled with her laptop, fingers racing. “It would be nice if I could hook this up to the projector up there in the ceiling. But I don’t see a cable.”

  “That’s because it’s Bluetooth,” Harper said. She walked over to the controls mounted on the wall by the door. She pushed a button while watching the projector embedded in the ceiling. A light gleamed, and the machine gave off a little beep. “You know how to do a wireless search?”

  “Yes.” Della moved the arrow control. “Got it.”

  At the same moment the machine beeped a different tone.

  “There you go.” Harper touched another button. “Watch your heads, gentlemen.”

  Theo stepped back as a screen he had not noticed until that moment began descending in front of the whiteboards. “You never cease to amaze.”

  “Hey, you spend enough time talking to juries, you learn a few magic tricks.” Harper resumed her seat. “It’d probably be the polite thing if you both sat yourselves down for the lady’s show.”

  Theo wanted to interrupt, to talk, to take control. But there was such a sweetness to this moment, seeing the two ladies move in tandem. He watched as Della rose from her chair and asked Harper, “Do you mind handling the computer?”

  “Girl, I’ve been waiting all day for somebody to give me something to do.”

  “Okay.” Della waited until Harper replaced her in front of the monitor. Then she pointed to the screen and said, “I want to lay this out in timed sequence.”

  Harper breathed in sharply. “What on earth?”

  “Pay attention. With each one, you go in tighter, see? That’s already set up. They’re laid out like cards. Start with the left one and move right.”

  “Got it.” Harper grinned at Theo. “Gentlemen, prepare to have your socks knocked off.”

  Entering the biology building proved easy. Somewhere in the distance, a bell rang. It was the sort of bonging note a church might have made in some distant era. Back when the television shows were all about happy families doing happy things, the sort of stories that had made no sense to the young Cruz. Three minutes later, the two girls he had seen at the water fountain drifted past, and they were soon joined by a cluster of other students, all of them wearing bright summer clothes. Cruz did not exactly fit in with his running gear, but he wasn’t out of step either.

  He took off his sunglasses and settled them into the fanny pack.

  Cruz kept a smile on his face as he drifted down the first-floor hallway, moving a half step slower than the others. The students piled into a classroom on his left. He continued on, checking each door without turning his head. All those he checked showed classrooms. More than half were dark. The doors without glass were most likely either offices or custodial closets. Cruz kept to his easy pace as he stepped through the far exit, where he noticed a second door leading to the basement stairs. It was alarmed and m
arked No Entrance. He took the stairs up to the second floor.

  The corridor was wider on this floor. Something about the layout had his heart moving into strike mode even before he saw the first lab. He decided the halls had been designed extra wide to accommodate the type of equipment used in lab work. Observing such things came easily when approaching a kill. Afterward he would sift through his memory, segment the work, and catalog what had gone well and what needed improvement. His memories of these moments were so clear they seemed jagged, like photographic images etched into razor-edged glass.

  He passed a lab where two white-coated technicians were bent over a very complex-looking apparatus. Cruz did not slow his pace. Neither of them were of any interest. The room next door was scarcely visible through the glass dividing-wall. It was almost completely dark.

  But just as he moved out of range, something flashed. Cruz could not be certain whether it was from the technicians and their equipment or the dark office. Still, he kept moving. Reaching the end of the corridor, he entered the stairwell . . . and hesitated. There was nothing to suggest his target was located on this floor. Even so, the flash of light was interesting. He decided to check the top floor, then return if nothing panned out upstairs.

  forty-one

  Harper asked, “Start with the far left image?”

  “Yes. No. Wait.” Della walked over and switched off the light. With the office dark now, she said, “Okay. Show them.”

  Theo was rocked back in his seat by the image. It blasted him, a silent explosion. From the chair beside him, Avery let out a breath, like someone had punched him in the gut. Which was exactly how Theo felt.

  “These sat photos are from the third line on Lanica’s list,” Della explained, calm as could be. “That was the first one to give us a precise date. This is four days before the outbreak.”

  “Liberia,” Avery said. “Amazing.”

  The projector’s screen was eight feet wide by six feet high. The boundaries of Della’s image were an emerald green, so vivid it could have been the aerial shot of some new golf resort. Deep forest greens spilled into waters that glistened in the sunlight. A few clouds painted drifting shadows.

  The idyllic photo ended there. Inside was a blooming rose of death. The entire bay was a single poisonous flower. The edges were sharply defined, a boundary that weaved into several estuaries. The color appeared extremely violent. There was no question that this was a terrible occurrence.

  “Lupa,” Theo said. The enemy now had a face.

  “Takes your breath away,” Avery said.

  “Kind of brings everything into focus,” Harper agreed.

  “I should have thought of this before now,” Avery said.

  Theo shook his head without taking his eyes off the screen. “You said it yourself. The outbreak isn’t timed to the Lupa itself.”

  In response, Avery rose and approached the screen. A moment’s silent inspection, then he asked, “Can you change this to the date Lanica gave for the outbreak?”

  “Harper,” Della said. “Next image.”

  The image shifted to one of rich greens. The water was darker, the stain still there. But it was still just another shade, one of many.

  Avery said, “Can you zoom in closer?”

  Della said to Harper, “Click on the plus sign in the corner.”

  The image tightened until the boundaries were lost. The surface became dotted by little water beetles, or so it seemed to Theo.

  “Fishing boats,” Avery said, his nose just inches from the screen. “You know what that means.”

  “They’re harvesting the seaweed,” Theo said. “They knew what to do. And when.”

  “My guess is, if we go back in time, we’ll find the Lupa tides occurred before this season.”

  “Only this year, something changed,” Della said. “The red tide became a killer.”

  Harper asked, “What was the chemical you found?”

  “Potassium,” Avery replied.

  “Is that poisonous?”

  “If you shoveled in enough of it, potassium could stop your system. But that isn’t the case here. Remember, people eat this seaweed all over the region.”

  The third floor held two small classrooms, five labs, and seven offices. One lab was occupied by two female technicians, both bent over a laptop set on a central island. There was the muffled sound of a lone voice, talking through an office’s closed door. Otherwise the floor was empty. The hallway held the still hush of a summer lull. Cruz covered the floor in less than sixty seconds, gliding with the smooth speed of a ballroom dancer. He pushed through the exit at the front of the building and crossed the landing. The stairwell window overlooked the front entrance. He could see the hood of the target’s vehicle. Cruz faced three possibilities. There could be a basement lab behind the alarmed door, restricted because of their working with hazardous materials. He decided it was unlikely the university would allow a dangerous environment beneath three floors holding hundreds of people. Which meant either the target and his team were hidden behind one of the windowless office doors, or . . .

  He slipped down the stairs and entered the second-floor hallway. He was in his element, a sleek predator cat moving soundlessly through the high grass. Hunting.

  forty-two

  “Phosphate isn’t the killer. It isn’t even the smoking gun.”

  Avery had said it four times before. Della did not mind. She actually liked the repetition. She took it to mean he was intensely engaged. So tightly focused that he was talking to himself out loud.

  “Phosphate is like identifying a footprint at a murder scene. Our job is to find out how the footprint got there in the first place. Who made it. And lastly, why.”

  Each time Della signaled, Harper shifted to the next sequence. Della had lined them up according to Lanica’s timeline. Each sequence started with the Lupa, the bloom. Then the algae growth turned a rich green, like an old-growth forest seen from above, only this one was underwater. And each time the fishing boats came out. Literally within hours of the bloom vanishing. Della was convinced Avery was right.

  Theo stood back a couple of paces from Avery, giving the scientist space to roam. He said, “This was not the first season of Lupa. Not by a long shot.”

  Theo voiced what she had been thinking. Which Della liked. A lot. Being on the same wavelength, even on such a horrid topic, was still a kick.

  Harper nodded. “The question we’ve got to answer is, what changed?”

  “Something took this seaweed and turned it into a killing machine,” Della said. “But what?”

  “Phosphate isn’t the reason,” Avery repeated, gliding around, almost dancing now, tapping the screen where the fishing boats plied their nets. “But it may lead us there.”

  “Something tied to the phosphate,” Harper said.

  “That’s my guess.” Avery stepped back, lifted his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “What’s next?”

  “Those are all the locations I’ve tapped into so far,” Della said.

  “No, no, that’s enough. You’ve given the killer a face. It’s excellent work.”

  Avery’s two lab techies had drifted in and were leaning against the windowsill at the back of the office. One of them clapped softly and said, “Bravo.”

  Theo stepped forward. “Now it’s my turn.”

  forty-three

  Cruz was certain of his target’s location the instant he pushed through the second floor’s stairwell entrance. Two voices spoke from midway down the corridor and to his left. The walls were concrete and the floor shiny linoleum, with a typical drop ceiling and long fluorescent lights. The hallway served as a perfect baffle for the voices, one male and the other female. Then a third female voice spoke. Cruz had no idea if his target was one of those speaking. It did not matter. The sounds carried a high level of tension or excitement. All the voices were mature, older. Which meant they fit the group he had been tracking. He stood where he was, pretending to study a poster taped to the wall beside
the exit. The entire second floor appeared to be empty, except for the two labs and the darkened room, which he now assumed held his target.

  The problem was his location. The lab that opened into the darkened room was on the opposite side of his target. Cruz needed to have a look inside, make sure he was going after the right location. To be wrong meant he might be seen in attack mode by civilians. Which meant adding to the list of collateral damage. Worse, he might raise the alarm before the target went down.

  Cruz went back through the exit and climbed the stairs, hitting every fourth step, adrenaline sparking everything he saw and touched and breathed. Halfway up the stairs, however, he was halted by a deafening boom.

  Cruz froze on the middle landing and stared at the world beyond the stairwell window. His first thought was that the second set of shooters had found their target. But laughter followed, and he realized he’d been spooked by a steel exit door slamming against a concrete wall.

  The other hunters loomed large in his mind. Cruz had survived this long by not taking chances. And by relying on his spider sense. Which was now telling him the second team was still out there. Watching.