Exposed - A Thriller Novella (Chandler Series) by J.A. Konrath & Ann Voss Peterson

by JA Konrath

  He groaned and tried to lift his head, already coming around.

  Traffic moved around us, horns blaring from behind, a few idiots even having the nerve to yell obscenities. I tugged my Ruger from the holster and set it on the dashboard. The driver from the car we’d back-ended stepped out onto the street, glimpsed the gun, and climbed back behind the wheel.

  I shifted into drive and veered into the parking lane. Steam rose from under our hood, accompanied by the odor of scorched coolant. I doubted the Town Car would be running for long.

  Ahead, traffic stopped again.

  Iranians and cops would be on us any second. Disappearing was my first priority, getting Julie out of here as fast as we could. But if I hoped to find out what was really going on and why I had been lied to, I would have to take Kirk with us.

  I assessed the surrounding cityscape. We weren’t far from Lincoln Center.

  “Come on. We’re taking the subway.”

  I shoved the car into park and climbed out, pulling Julie with me. Opening the back door, I yanked Kirk to his feet, keeping the gun on his head.

  “You, too.”

  We made it to the sidewalk, him dragging his feet the whole way.

  “Faster, Kirk.”

  “She shot me.”

  He was gimpy, but he could still walk. I had no sympathy.

  “Suck it up, unless you want me to shoot you this time. I won’t aim for your leg.”

  “And I thought we liked each other.”

  He moved a little faster, grunting as he hobbled, sweat beading on his brow.

  I didn’t know if he was working with the men I’d seen in the SUV or not, so I kept my mouth shut. We’d covered about a block when I caught my next glimpse, three of them, running up the sidewalk. They weren’t holding guns, but I saw bulges under their sports coats.

  We needed to hurry.

  We reached the next crosswalk, the Iranians closing the distance behind us disturbingly fast.

  Sirens cut through the air, and a squad rounded the corner, probably sent to check out the disturbance we’d caused. The car stopped just twenty feet from where we stood.

  As much as I’d like reinforcements to deal with my Iranian problem, I couldn’t let police complicate my operation, and that included letting them take Kirk to the hospital for his injury or me to jail for the Ruger I had in a death grip.

  I eyed Julie. “Quiet, hear?”

  To my relief, she nodded.

  I circled my arms around Kirk and gazed up at him in obvious adoration, the gun to the back of his head.

  “If you signal them in any way, you’re dead.”

  He returned my loving smile with one of his own.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I want the cops involved about as much as you do.”

  Halfway down the block, the Iranians slowed to a walk, noticed the police car, and then ducked into a bistro with outdoor seating.

  The light changed, and the cops passed by.

  We continued across the street with the other pedestrians. I kept one arm around Kirk, both helping and steering him, his hands still bound in front of him with the twist tie. We moved quickly, coming as close to a run as Kirk could manage. As soon as the officers drove by the bistro, the Iranians would be back on the street and in pursuit. I had to take advantage of the short delay.

  We reached Lincoln Center, rushing by the famous fountain in front of the Metropolitan Opera House without a sideways glance, then plunged down into the oppressive heat of the subway.

  I bought three fare cards, and we pushed through the turnstiles. The Iranians had been delayed, but they had to guess we’d make for the train. They would catch up within minutes, maybe seconds. I had to make sure we were not where they expected by the time they came calling.

  The Lincoln Center station was accessible to those with disabilities, and while Kirk was still mobile, handrails and ramps made navigating much faster than it would be in some of the less accessible stations. But though we reached the platform in record time, no train was waiting, and I couldn’t detect any rumble to suggest one would be approaching in the next few seconds.

  The blood on his leg was obvious, but those who noticed purposely turned their backs to it. I kept a watchful eye out for Good Samaritans. None attempted to get involved.

  I needed to find a place to hide. A place the Iranians would be unlikely to expect me to go. A place I could extract some answers.

  I steered Kirk and Julie into a men’s restroom.

  The place smelled like piss, mildew and those sweet pink deodorizing cakes that never really seemed to work. The bank of urinals and sinks weren’t being used. Dipping low, I noticed one pair of feet under a door. I directed Julie into the large stall on the end and pushed Kirk in after her. After depositing Kirk on the toilet, I flattened him to the tile wall behind him, my forearm snug up under his chin, and waited for the lone man to finish up and leave.

  Kirk wisely stayed silent, watching me. Although his skin was pale and sweat beaded on his brow, he was still giving off that calm, deadly vibe.

  Too bad for him I was now immune to his charm. Trying to kill me tended to dampen my ardor.

  I held the gun against his forehead. When I actually decided to end him, I would opt for the garrote in my purse strap, but there was nothing quite like the barrel of a gun to convey you mean business.

  “You killed Morrissey.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then who did?”

  “My employers. I was brought in to take his place, rendezvous with you and get the girl. I’m just the hired help.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “An interested party from Moscow.”

  I narrowed my eyes on his. “Try Iran.”

  “The Iranians? I wondered how long it would take them to catch up. Have the Venezuelans rejoined the party yet?”

  I hadn’t seen Hawk Nose and his boys since the tunnel incident, but I felt no need to answer. Knowledge was power, as they say, and right now Kirk had all the answers. I wasn’t about to let him start asking the questions.

  “You expect me to believe you don’t work for them?”

  “I work for whoever pays. Sometimes it’s even Uncle Sam. Today it happens to be the Russians.”

  “Then how did they find us? Manhattan is a big place.”

  “Who? The Iranians or the Venezuelans?”

  I gave him a cold stare.

  “You want me to guess?” he asked.

  “Give it your best shot.”

  “The Venezuelans have a passion for police scanners.”

  I thought of the scanner I’d heard at the house on Long Island. Great. If they were using the police scanner to find us, after our street shooting, they might just be on their way, too.

  “And the Iranians?”

  He gave a shrug. “If they found me, my best guess is they had the same intel that you do. Eyes on the street. Or maybe in the sky.”

  Satellites. I liked that answer a little better. If it was true, we could lose them in the maze that was the New York subway system.

  “How about the Russians?”

  “They don’t have anyone else in the game. I’m it. That’s part of my deal.”

  I considered this for a moment. I didn’t want to trust Kirk, and yet every sign he was giving suggested he was telling the truth, that he was a gun for hire and had no stake in any game other than a paycheck. As a bonus, the story jived with the profile Jacob had dug up on him.

  “And what are the Russians paying you to do?”

  “Same thing as you’re being paid to do.”

  “My job is to protect Julie.”

  I shot her a glance. She leaned against the stall wall, her eyes large and sunken, a child who’d witnessed more trauma than she could absorb. Graffiti etched the paint behind her.

  “Protect her,” Kirk continued. “Deliver her unharmed. Bingo.”

  “Why would the Russians care if Julie is harmed? What value does she have to them?�
�

  “Ask what value she has to you.” He shook his head. “Scratch that. I can see you’re the protective type, at least where she’s concerned. So instead, ask what value she has to your employer.”

  A fair question.

  “She knows something.”

  It was a complete guess on my part. Since I had no idea who the VIP was or even if there was a VIP, a shot in the dark was all I could manage. I looked Julie’s way, this time in question.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know anything. I swear.”

  When I brought my focus back to Kirk, he was smiling.

  “Okay, spill,” I said. “What does she know?”

  “She doesn’t know anything. She told you herself.”

  “So what are you getting at?” I gave him a hard stare, waiting for the punch line.

  “It’s not what she knows. It’s what she is.”

  Now I was really confused. “What she is?”

  “I’m going to be on the level with you, Chandler. Okay? This is just a job to me. I don’t have anything to hide. If it matters, I wasn’t trying to kill you. I could have shot you at any time. I was simply knocking you out.”

  “Just spill it, Kirk.”

  He took a deep breath, let it out slow. “Ever heard of an asymptomatic carrier?”

  Where the hell did that come from?

  “It’s someone who has a disease and can spread it but never actually gets sick,” he said.

  “What?” Julie not only looked in shock now, she appeared as confused as I was.

  “And you’re telling me Julie is an asymptomatic carrier?” I asked Kirk.

  He nodded.

  Julie shook her head. “I am not. What are you talking about?”

  Kirk’s gaze flicked to her. “You really have no idea, do you?”

  “Idea of what?”

  The girl was getting distressed now. I could hear it in the rising pitch of her voice.

  “Don’t cry,” Kirk warned. “Do not cry.”

  Julie’s chin trembled, but she held back the tears. “Chandler?”

  I pressed the gun barrel against his temple, hard enough to leave a bruise.

  “You have two seconds to explain.”

  He spent his first second frowning at me, his next uttering a single word.

  “Ebola.”

  “Many things can happen in the field, developments no amount of training can help you understand or absorb,” said The Instructor. “In the face of such trauma, knowing how to compartmentalize extraneous thought and emotion can save your life.”

  Heat rushed to my face, and I felt lightheaded. I lowered my arm from his throat, freeing him to sit normally, and rocked back on my heels. I wanted to believe it wasn’t true, that Kirk was lying, but it all added up. It all made sense.

  A laugh bubbled up inside me, but I held it back. I felt giddy, on the edge of hysteria. This girl I’d been protecting—who I’d thought of as a younger me and even started to care about—was the host of a disease that could wipe out all of Manhattan.

  Hell, it could wipe out the entire world.

  Ebola was known as a filovirus, and it was probably the deadliest and most virulent little critter on the planet. Also known as hemorrhagic fever, Ebola basically invaded cells and chopped them into bits. Victims bled internally—and ultimately externally—through every opening in their body, including pores.

  All bodily fluids leaked by someone with Ebola were highly infectious. Including tears.

  If Julie was a carrier, she could spread the disease without getting ill herself.

  She cannot be harmed in any way, not even slightly.

  I took a step back, fear making my shoulders bunch up.

  Every moment I’d been with Julie, I’d been on the verge of disaster. The bullet wound on my shoulder was like a wide open door. Add in all the cuts and scrapes I’d sustained, and I was just begging to be infected.

  “How did she contract the virus in the first place?”

  Kirk looked at Julie.

  It took several seconds before she opened her mouth. “The free clinic.”

  He nodded like an encouraging teacher whose student had found the right answer.

  “I just went there to get some antibiotics, you know? They took a blood test and then they gave me a shot, and I woke up in a hospital, only …”

  Her eyebrows dipped low, and worry dug lines in her forehead.

  “Only what?” I prompted.

  She focused on the grimy floor, her hands clasped.

  “It wasn’t a hospital. It was some kind of … warehouse. On an island.”

  “Plum Island,” Kirk said.

  I knew Plum Island, AKA Plum Island Animal Disease Center, off the coasts of Long Island and Connecticut. There were actually several facilities on the island, and there had been rumors for decades it was a front for US biological weapons research.

  “What happened there, Julie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I studied her, the way her fingers fidgeted, the flush to her skin, and I had to wonder if she couldn’t remember or just didn’t want to.

  “You must know something. How did you wind up at the mansion?”

  “I got up out of bed … and … and … there were doctors and nurses …”

  “Only,” Kirk filled in, “the nurses and doctors were dead.”

  Julie’s face crumpled. “They were beat up and shot. Murdered.”

  “No crying.” Kirk ordered.

  She looked to the ceiling and fluttered her eyes, trying to drive back tears.

  Kirk continued. “It might have looked like that to you, skin purple with bruising, blood everywhere.”

  Julie nodded.

  “They were infected by the virus. They got sick, crashed and bled out within hours.”

  I almost choked. “That fast?”

  A chill moved through me, chasing the heat. I was somewhat familiar with the symptoms of Ebola. The red eyes, the way the virus replicated and ate away at a person’s body until nothing was left but a bloody soup of more and more virus. But hours?

  “I thought it took days.”

  “Not this particular strain. It had some help. A little genetic tinkering.”

  I let the new snip of information sink in.

  “So I’m sick?” Julie said. She hiccupped a little.

  “You’re not sick, but you can kill others.”

  “Typhoid Mary,” I said.

  “Exactly. Your body is a factory for a powerful biological weapon, a virus that couldn’t be produced without killing its host … until now.”

  Julie slumped against the stall wall. She looked stunned, almost catatonic. But to her credit, she didn’t cry.

  I had to report this to Jacob, only I was afraid what he’d say. It was probably a tossup; finish the op by delivering her to the government, or destroy her.

  What the hell was I going to do?

  I now understood why the defense department was concerned about Julie. If she was a living, breathing, hot zone capable of killing people within a few hours, every government and terrorist group on the planet would want her. She’d be worth billions.

  Because she could kill billions.

  Kirk cocked his head to the side and looked at me as if he’d just finished discussing a Broadway play or a film he’d seen at the local multiplex.

  “So, where are we off to now?”

  “We?”

  I struggled to shut away the voice in the back of my mind that was screaming Ebola, Ebola, holy shit, Ebola, and focus on my surroundings.

  If possible, the smells of mildew and urine had gotten worse, mixing with the scent of stress emanating from the three of us. One of the faucets dripped, and somewhere in the walls I heard a clunk in the pipes.

  Something inside me shifted, as if I could physically feel myself locking away the shock and fitting back into my skin.

  “Morrissey has a personal car. I can take you to it.” Kirk raised his brows, trying to sell the sug
gestion.

  I answered with an emotionless frown. “Actually, this is where we part ways.”

  He didn’t seem surprised. He answered with a sideways sort of smile, of all things.

  “You made me run all this way on a bum leg just to kill me?”

  “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Do I get a last request?”

  “Depends. What is it?”

  “Kiss me.”

  I hadn’t seen that one coming. Facing death, and still flirting. Had to hand it to him.

  “Seriously?”

  “Ever since I laid eyes on you, I’ve thought about kissing you. Could I ask, out of professional courtesy, for one kiss before you kill me?”

  A kiss. After handing Julie off to him at Columbus Circle, that’s precisely the path my thoughts had taken. A kiss. Hot sex. That seemed like forever ago.

  Now I was bodyguard to a biological weapon, and I had to single-handedly keep her away from Iranians and South Americans who wanted to use her blood to wipe out their enemies.

  “How about it, Chandler?”

  I blinked, bringing my thoughts back to Kirk, an idea starting to form.

  “How much did they pay you?” I asked. “The Russians?”

  “Fifty grand. Twenty-five up front. If I don’t deliver, I have to return it.”

  Killing him was no doubt the safer move, but I didn’t kill unless I had a very good reason for it. So far, Kirk appeared to have been upfront about everything.

  Besides, I could use some help.

  “Tell you what. You return the money, come back to working for us, and Uncle Sam will give you sixty.”

  Kirk smiled, full out this time. “I like that deal.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “You think you can trust me?”

  “I think you’re a whore for the money. You’ll serve whoever’s paying you.”

  “True. So what about the kiss?”

  Cocky bastard. “If we get out of this alive, I’ll give you more than a kiss.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  “Now where’s Morrissey’s car?” I remembered what Jacob had told me about the murdered spy. “Staten Island?”

  He nodded. “The St. George ferry terminal. Just need to take the number one train to the ferry.”