0373401965 (R)

by Lara Lacombe

  She flipped onto her back with a sigh and burrowed under the down comforter, grateful for the warmth in the chilly room. It was the shock factor, she decided. That was why he’d gotten under her skin again. If she’d known he was here, she could have mentally and emotionally prepared herself to see him. Instead she’d been blindsided by his sudden appearance and hadn’t had time to throw up any mental buffers. Now she knew what to expect.

  She closed her eyes, determined to get at least some sleep tonight. But her brain wouldn’t cooperate. Question after question popped into her mind, preventing her from relaxing. And to her great dismay, most of her curiosity was focused on Grant. Had seeing her again affected him the same way? Did he ever think about her and the baby she’d lost? Or had he jumped into another relationship and put her out of his mind and heart completely?

  The thought stung and she blinked hard against the prickle of incipient tears. “Stop it,” she muttered, taking a deep breath and harnessing her emotions. Grant’s private life wasn’t any of her business, and she needed to remember that. Still, she hadn’t seen a ring on his finger... Did that mean he was single?

  Doesn’t matter, she told herself firmly. She was here to do a job, not reconnect with her old flame. They’d had their chance once. No need to make the same mistake again.

  If only she could get her body to understand that.

  While her mind was busy dealing with unwanted and unwelcome memories, the rest of her had suffered no such troubles. No matter what had happened in the ten years they’d been apart, Grant still looked very much the same. He was a little leaner, a little harder maybe, but those broad shoulders, hazel eyes and long nose hadn’t changed. As soon as she’d seen him her body perked up, all the nerve endings coming to life and making her feel like a live wire.

  Being so close to him in his office hadn’t helped, either. The small room had smelled like him, that familiar combination of soap and a hint of spice that she knew from experience was the scent of his skin. Once upon a time, the smell of him had been enough to make her weak in the knees. She was less affected by it now, but it still made her stomach do a little flip.

  Just ignore it. She couldn’t allow herself to see Grant as a man, or else she would make the mistake of wanting him again. And that was a distraction she simply couldn’t afford.

  Of course, it was easy to tell herself she was going to keep things professional. Quite another to actually follow through. Especially since she had firsthand knowledge of what it was like to be with him... She felt a phantom caress on her thigh and recognized it as the ghost of his touch from long ago. They had been very good together, a fact that her body was all too keen to point out. The few men she had gone on to date after Grant had been nice enough, but they hadn’t been him. And even though he’d broken her heart, he was still the standard to which she compared them all. It wasn’t fair or logical, but feelings generally weren’t, particularly where he was concerned.

  What she wouldn’t give to talk to Olivia or Mallory right now! Her two best friends knew her history with Grant and would know just what to say to help her deal with this unexpected complication. She reached for her phone, trying to calculate the time difference between Antarctica and Washington, DC, where Olivia Sandoval lived. Would her call wake Olivia up?

  “Probably,” she muttered, setting the phone back down. Besides, at this time of night, Olivia was likely snuggled up with her fiancé, Logan. They’d been neighbors for a few years, but things had really developed between them during Olivia’s most recent medical charity trip to Colombia. In a bizarre turn of events, a drug cartel had tried to blackmail Olivia into smuggling cocaine back into the United States. Desperate, Olivia had turned to Logan for help. He and his colleagues at the DEA had hatched a plan to outmaneuver the cartel, and fortunately, their gamble had paid off.

  Avery still couldn’t get over Olivia’s stories, and she was so glad Logan had been there to keep her safe. Even though she hadn’t met the man yet, she had spoken to him over the phone. He seemed like a genuinely good guy, and she’d never heard Olivia sound so happy before.

  Avery didn’t want to dampen Olivia’s joy with her own sob story, so that left her other best friend, Mallory Watkins. Mallory was a little tougher to get in touch with, thanks to her job as ship’s doctor for a major cruise line. It was probably for the best—if she actually spoke to Mallory, it would be too difficult to hide where she was and why. And since Harold had cautioned her to keep the investigation quiet, she probably shouldn’t tell anyone off-base about it. But Mallory did always respond to emails...

  Avery grabbed her phone again, squinting as she stabbed at the maddeningly tiny letters with her fingertip. It took forever, but she managed to type out the most important details, namely that Grant was here and she didn’t know how to deal with him. She pressed Send and leaned back, feeling a weight lift off her shoulders. Of the three of them, Mallory was the most practical. She’d have the perfect advice for dealing with this situation.

  Now Avery just had to find a way to pass the time until she responded.

  Sleep would be the best choice, but her mind refused to cooperate. Now that she had sent Mallory her worries about Grant, she was free to focus on the details of the investigation. And even though her limbs felt heavy with fatigue, Avery knew she wouldn’t be able to rest until she’d at least looked at the patient records. The pathogen was still out there, and she couldn’t afford to waste any time. Too many lives were at stake.

  She sat up and reached out to flip on the small lamp located on the night table, then kicked the blankets off and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Even though she was wearing sweatpants and thick socks, the air in the room was still too cold for her liking. She had cranked the heater in the small, dorm-style room as high as it would go, but she was so used to the warmth of Georgia that the lingering chill in the air was enough to make her shiver. Eyeing the stack of folders sitting on the narrow desk opposite the bed, she decided working under the covers was the only way to stay warm.

  “How do these people stay here for months on end?” she muttered. It hadn’t been a full twenty-four hours yet, and she already felt like a Popsicle. She couldn’t imagine staying for months, the way most of the researchers did. But she might have to do just that if it turned out there was a new strain of influenza here. Better to be a little cold than risk introducing this disease into the wider world. Still, she hoped it didn’t come to that.

  She grabbed the folders and snuggled back under the blankets. It wasn’t worth wasting energy worrying about a possibility that might not happen. First, she had to isolate and identify the bug. Then they could deal with the repercussions, whatever they may be.

  It only took a few minutes for Avery to get sucked into the work, her tiredness and concerns about Grant fading into the background as she lost herself in the clinical language of the medical records. There was a lot of information in the files, including detailed descriptions of symptoms, medications administered and patient responses. She was immediately struck by the severity of the symptoms and the rapid speed of decline for some of the patients. Avery was used to the realities of diseases, but even the dry, dispassionate medical vocabulary couldn’t disguise the horror of what these patients had suffered. Whatever this pathogen was, it didn’t pull any punches.

  But where had it come from? Pathogens didn’t just materialize out of thin air. If this really was a new strain of influenza, her best bet was to look at the birds of Antarctica. Normally, such viruses circulated through migratory bird populations such as geese and other waterfowl, and in urban settings it was often found in chickens and pigs. But none of those creatures lived on this continent, which meant she’d have to go beyond the normal understanding of the virus. Antarctica had penguins. Was it possible the virus was native to those birds?

  The more she considered the idea, the more it made sense. Penguins were an isolated group—since there wasn’t a lot of regular human interaction, the virus might have b
een circulating through the population for years before making the jump to a hapless researcher. And if the virus didn’t cause disease in the birds themselves, no one would think to make a connection between a sick researcher and his study subjects...

  Her fingers flying, Avery flipped through the medical records, searching for background information on each patient. The first page of each file was a basic biographical sketch, and she skimmed through them all, hoping to find that at least one patient was a biologist of some kind who interacted with penguins or any other type of bird on Antarctica.

  A moment later, she leaned back with a sigh, disappointment settling in her stomach like a small lead weight. None of the patients appeared to have had contact with any type of wildlife, at least not according to their histories. The patients ranged from astrophysicists to support staff, and the one thing they had in common was that their job duties were all localized on-base. Since Antarctica wasn’t exactly teeming with points of interest, it was unlikely any of the men had ventured away from the comforts of civilization. How, then, had they become infected?

  A biologist could still be involved, she mused. Perhaps someone had contracted the virus and exhibited a mild infection, or no symptoms at all. It wasn’t unheard of for some pathogens to remain quiet in a host, effectively turning a person into a silent spreader of the disease—Typhoid Mary, the woman who had unwittingly spread typhoid fever throughout New York City in the early 1900s, was perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon. But given the severity of symptoms displayed by the ten patients, she rather doubted that was the case here. This virus—if it really was a virus causing the infections—seemed incredibly aggressive. Based on the medical records, this appeared to be more of a scorched-earth type of pathogen rather than a live-and-let-live bug.

  “So we have a dangerous, unknown pathogen on the hunt for new hosts and a base full of potential victims,” she muttered. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  And who else is infected? It was tempting to think that three days without a new patient meant the outbreak was over, but Avery refused to fall into that trap. Without knowing the incubation period of this pathogen, she had no way to determine if other people had been infected and had yet to develop symptoms. Even the virulence of the pathogen didn’t necessarily provide any clues. Until she knew the identity of the pathogen, it might be better to assume more patients were forthcoming. She made a mental note to talk to Grant about it in the morning—perhaps they could put out a base-wide notice, informing people to come to the hospital at the first sign of illness no matter how mild the symptoms. Better to be inundated with cases of a seasonal cold than miss one or two patients with a more serious condition...

  Stifling a yawn, Avery rubbed her eyes and rested her head against the frame of the bed. She should really try to get some sleep if she wanted to be at all useful tomorrow. It was tempting to spend the night working, but logically she knew she had reached the limits of what she could accomplish with the information she had. Tomorrow she’d interview the surviving patients and talk to Jennifer, the lab technician, about any preliminary results she’d obtained.

  And as for Grant?

  She shook her head, frustration rising as she pictured his face, still handsome after all these years. It wasn’t fair that he looked good to her now, in spite of everything that had happened between them.

  But the thing that bothered her the most was the hold he retained on her. One of the things Avery liked best about her job was the logic behind it—disease outbreaks had a cause, and by working methodically, she could usually identify the source and respond accordingly. No emotion required. But the situation with Grant wasn’t like that. He complicated things, made her feel when she didn’t want to. No matter how much she wished otherwise, he’d gotten under her skin again.

  She just couldn’t let him know.

  *

  “Higher, Daddy!”

  Grant smiled and gave a little push, just enough to make the swing rise a few more inches. His little girl was turning out to be quite the daredevil, and while he appreciated her sense of adventure, he couldn’t shake the ever-present fear that it was going to get her hurt someday. He knew he couldn’t protect her forever, but he wasn’t ready to let her go just yet...

  She laughed, and the joyous sound burrowed into his chest and made his heart swell. She was so perfect he ached every time he looked at her. With her long blond hair and bright blue eyes, she was the very picture of her mother. But he was in there, too—she had his nose, and he recognized his stubborn streak in some of her more difficult moments. His daughter was a force to be reckoned with, and he knew without a doubt she was going to change the world.

  She’d definitely changed his world.

  “Can I go on the slide now?”

  She let her feet trail along the ground, slowing the arc of the swing with each pass. Without waiting for his response, she launched herself from the seat as the swing made another upward trek, her long, lean body flying through the air, hair trailing behind her like a golden kite. His heart shot into his throat as he watched her come down, his arms already reaching for her, though he was too far away.

  He needn’t have worried. She landed on her feet, graceful as a cat. She shot him a triumphant grin he recognized all too well, then took off for the slide, confident he would follow.

  “Grant!”

  He turned to find Avery standing at the fence. He waved, and she gestured for him to come to her. The slide was only a few feet away, so he walked over to meet Avery, wondering why she didn’t just come into the playground to talk to him.

  He was halfway to the fence when he heard his daughter’s cry. “Daddy!”

  The panic in her voice froze his blood and he whirled around, his eyes scanning the area for her. Gray mist rose from the ground, shrouding the playground and turning the once-bright day into a realm of shadows.

  She screamed again, this time in pain. Grant ran over to the slide, but she wasn’t there. She began to sob, the wrenching cries filling his ears and tearing out his guts. He searched the playground, trying to wave away the fog as he moved from one station to the next. But there was no sign of her. Desperation clawed up his spine as he explored, and he had the sudden, horrible thought that she was gone.

  Still, her words echoed all around, calling out to him as he moved. Where was she? Why couldn’t he see her?

  “Grant!”

  Avery’s voice cut through their daughter’s cries. He turned back to the fence to find Avery clutching the little girl to her chest, one hand on her head, the other supporting her body. Avery’s eyes bored into him, bright and accusing. What had he done? He took a step toward them, but she jerked back, taking their daughter with her.

  “No,” he said, reaching out for them. “Please, let me see her.”

  But his words fell on deaf ears. For every step he took, Avery retreated, carrying the little girl farther and farther away. He stopped moving, but Avery didn’t. She held his gaze as she continued to back up, her pace measured and unhurried. Grant could only stand there, helpless, as the two people he loved most in the world were swallowed up by the swirling fog.

  Just before they vanished from sight, his daughter turned to look at him. Even from a distance, he could see the tear tracks on her cheeks, and his heart clenched with the need to touch her, to soothe her worries and make everything okay again. The look she gave him was one of confusion, as if she was trying to figure out who he was and why he was standing there. She opened her mouth, and the wind carried her whispered question back to him.

  “Daddy?”

  *

  Grant shot up in bed with a gasp, his arms outstretched, reaching for the little girl who wasn’t there.

  Had never been there.

  His breath gusted out in a loud sigh and he lay down again, the pillow damp against the skin of his neck. He kicked the covers off, welcoming the relief of the cool air on his sweaty body. The dream lingered like a greasy film on his skin, a coatin
g that covered him from head to toe in a claustrophobic embrace.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d dreamed about Avery and their child. Sometimes he saw her holding a baby. Other times, the child was older, like tonight’s encounter. But he always pictured a girl.

  There was no way to tell if the baby had been a girl or a boy—the miscarriage had happened too early in the pregnancy for them to know the sex. But deep in his heart, Grant thought it was a daughter they had lost.

  And it was their loss.

  He didn’t pretend to know what it had been like for Avery. He could imagine how she had felt: the pain, both physical and emotional, knowing the life inside her was dying. At the time, he’d still been adjusting to the news that she was pregnant. He hadn’t yet formed any kind of attachment. But she had. And he’d known from the look in her eyes that she’d lost a piece of her soul along with the baby.

  It had taken him longer to feel the ache. At first, he’d been so overcome with the pain of losing Avery that he hadn’t really thought about the miscarriage. But the knowledge of it had stayed with him, quietly eating away at his heart like water dripping on a stone.

  In his darker moments, he liked to torture himself with thoughts of what their daughter would have been like. It would have been her tenth birthday this year. There would have been a party, of course, complete with cake and balloons. He could picture it now, Avery carrying in the frosted confection, topped with two rows of glowing candles. Mary—he’d always liked the name Mary—would lean forward, closing her eyes tight to make a wish before blowing out the candles. It would have been a wonderful day, full of laughter and love. The kind of day he hadn’t had in...well, forever, it seemed.

  Did Avery ever think about the what-ifs? Of course she did, he realized immediately, shaking his head at the absurdity of the question. How could she not? But did the road not taken haunt her like it did him, or had she made her peace with the future they’d never have?