by Julie Rowe
“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.”
&
nbsp; Some risks were necessary. “Define ‘unacceptable?’”
Her mouth opened just as a wave of light, heat, noise, and vibration smacked into him from behind.
Chapter Twelve
11:16 p.m.
Behind River, light bloomed, followed almost simultaneously by heat and an invisible kick, knocking Ava backward off her feet. Airborne and out of control, fear had enough time to yank out the bottom of her stomach before she hit the ground.
Something grabbed her, so she landed only partially on the unforgiving pavement, her left elbow and hip cushioned on the resilient elastic of muscle and man.
River.
He simply didn’t know when to quit, did he?
The heat wave continued to roll over them, the force of the blast tossing smaller objects like paper and soda cans through the air.
River covered her body with his, tucked her head into his chest, and held it there protectively.
She wanted to punch him for taking all the risks and wiggled to get free. He released her far too slowly.
“Are you okay?” he asked as he finally allowed her to inch out from the shelter of his body.
“I’m fine.” She had to work to unclench her teeth. “For someone who’s been blown up twice today.” She got to her feet and brushed herself off.
His gaze searching, he took a step toward her, his hands reaching for her.
She waved him off. “No, no, I’m fine. You, however…” She looked him over. He’d taken the brunt of the blast for her. “Are you injured?”
“I don’t think so.” He spun around and showed her his backside. “Anything?”
“No, you appear to be completely intact.” She looked past him at the obliterated building. A ring of fires burned in a wide circle around what used to be the home of over fifty people.
The total devastation sent a shiver over her. River had been right about how large a blast those grenades would cause.
“That,” she said, her voice rising, “is how I define ‘unacceptable.’” She smacked him on the side of his head. “If you’d taken just a minute or two longer, you’d have been in there.”
He stared at the remains of the building.
The roof was completely gone, most of the walls, too. All that was left were bits of the steel rebar used in the support beams and framing. “That explosion was way more powerful than it should have been.”
His observation stopped her from ranting further. “What do you mean?”
“I only saw six grenades. Even if they all went off at the same time, they wouldn’t have been able to cause an explosion that big. Destroy the apartment they were in and maybe the ones surrounding it, but not the whole building.”
“Are you suggesting something else caused the explosion?”
“Or added to its power.”
“Like gas? I didn’t smell any, did you?”
“No.”
“What does that leave us with?”
“Deliberate sabotage with either additional explosives or some other flammable something extra.”
Someone planned this? “Why would anyone want to blow up a dorm?”
“I can think of two reasons.” He turned to regard her. Gone was the joker, the good old boy who didn’t take anything too seriously. In his place stood a confident, experienced soldier capable of doing whatever it took to reach his mission goals.
Lord help anyone who got in his way.
“What two reasons?”
“The main reason terrorists attack—to inspire fear and panic. Secondly, to destroy evidence of whatever they’re doing and who might be involved.”
She glanced at the burning debris. “I’d say they accomplished all of that.”
“Maybe not.” His eyes narrowed in a way that changed his face from dangerous to outright scary.
“You found something?” she asked, lowering her voice.
“I found Geer,” he corrected. “Before I handed him over to medical, I may have helped myself to a couple of items from his tool bag. Things I think he found in Squires’s apartment.”
“Things Homeland Security is looking for?”
“Probably, but I’m not feeling the need to share at the moment. I’m not sure their goals are the same as ours. They seem pretty tight-lipped about too many things, and they’re more uncooperative than usual.”
“That’s an understatement,” Ava agreed without reservation. Geer and then Toland had both become pretty big pains in the ass very quickly.
The wailing of fire trucks and police vehicles blared, getting closer and closer.
“Oh no.” She sighed. “What are the chances all these people have the proper infection control gear on?”
“Not a fucking chance in hell.”
She glanced around, looking for the law-enforcement members of her team. “We don’t have enough people to keep all these students separated from the incoming personnel and the sick ones from everyone else.”
“I’ll see if I can talk to the fire captain,” River said in a tone that made it a suggestion rather than an order. “You worry about the students and the sick. Broadcast what you want everyone to do. Make your orders simple, and solve one problem at a time. In a situation this fluid, it’s a bad idea to try to assume how things are going to go.”
She nodded. “Be ready to zig, not zag.”
His grin bolstered her flagging confidence. “Exactly.”
“Okay,” she said, not entirely sure she was, in fact, okay. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t see him again for thirty-five minutes.
During that time, Ava managed to get all the students sorted out into three separate camps.
One, the obviously sick. Thirteen men and women sent to the hospital in a transit bus commandeered for that purpose.
Two, the largest group, forty-seven people with direct contact with the sick, but showing no symptoms. They were in the process of being sent to one of the university’s gymnasiums, where they would stay under observation for the next twenty-four hours. Minimum.
Three people under suspicion of being involved in the terror plot. They were rushed off by two of the Homeland Security agents. Ava didn’t get their names, but she did take a couple of pictures of the group with her phone.
River kept most of the newly-arrived fire and police personnel from coming into contact with any of the students. The firefighters working to put out the fire put on their sealed facemasks and breathed oxygen from tanks. Had River suggested that?
The biggest nuisance now was the media, TV crews, journalists, and photographers. They started showing up only minutes behind the fire trucks, getting in the way, asking everyone questions, and trying to physically investigate what remained of the dorm.
Ava hadn’t spoken with any of them yet, but she’d seen River and a couple of their policemen herding them away. Somewhat forcibly, with his rifle held in such a way that no one could mistake his willingness to use it.
With the last of the students getting on to the bus, she’d better check in with River. Before he shot someone.
She found him with a man wearing a respirator—Homeland Security Agent Dozer. The two were talking quietly about twenty feet away from them, but keeping an eye on the gathered media people.
She approached River, the clipboard she had been using to keep track of people in her hands. She needed to find someone with a complete list of who lived in the building that no longer existed.
He caught sight of her and waved her over. “Agent Dozer has information for us.”
The bald man resembled a rough-cut granite boulder and looked just as friendly.
“Agent Dozer,” Ava said.
“Doctor.” The agent nodded respectfully to her. His voice was deep, but had a sharpness to it that told her something was wrong.
“Dozer was just telling me that he’s unaware of any orders Geer had specific to searching Roger Squires’s apartment,” River said quietly. “Geer, Toland, and the other two guys were supposed to look for any terroris
t connections, but only if it was deemed safe by the CDC to do so.”
“Unaware?” Ava asked. “Could he have gotten orders you weren’t aware of?”
The agent shrugged. “Geer has political connections here in Texas. It’s possible someone called in a favor.” He said it like it happened often and wasn’t a concern, as if it were nothing more than a simple annoyance.
“A favor?” Ava asked, enraged at the stupidity of it. She wanted to kick someone, punch and scream and shout, but she could do nothing with more than a half-dozen TV reporters watching. Even at a distance, body language spoke volumes.
So did shouting profanities at the top of her voice.
No. No shouting profanities while the media was watching. She could wait until later and attempt to calm down. Then she would tear a strip off several people.
She pasted a smile on her face and said in a suitably professional tone, “Does that burning building behind you look like something that should have resulted from a mere favor? This situation isn’t a simple biology experiment gone wrong or the result of a couple of students attempting to make rocket fuel in their room. None of this was an accident.”
Dozer tilted his head to one side and bowed slightly to her. “I agree. Unfortunately, we can’t ask Geer what he was doing. He hasn’t regained consciousness. He’s at the hospital now, but with the number of sick continuing to rise, every hospital in the city is damn near overrun. We don’t have the people to station someone at his bedside waiting for him to wake up.”
“What about the other agents he was with?” River asked. “Toland has been a pain in the ass, too.”
“He claims he was just following Geer’s orders. Geer was senior. He told him the CDC was trying to cover up the real cause of the outbreak and blame it on a bunch of stupid, but innocent, students.”
“But we didn’t even know about the student connection until Roger Squires showed up at the coffee shop this afternoon.”
“Yeah,” Dozer said, with a weak smile. “I didn’t believe that story, either.”
She glanced at the smoldering building. “And now we’ll never know Roger Squires’s role in all of this.”
“His roommate might have information that can tell us quite a bit,” Dozer said. “I’m going to interview him now.”