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

by JA Konrath

  A human being’s reaction to a swift violent assault is to freeze. Like a deer in the headlights, the body biologically seeks to hide in plain sight in hopes the predator will pass them by. It takes years of training to shorten this natural reaction. Even then, training wasn’t the same as engaging in the real thing.

  I’d engaged in the real thing more than I liked to think about.

  I was moving before they’d realized the first man was down.

  Grabbing the stainless steel IV pole—a solid bar with some serious heft—I pulled the adjustable portion from the bed and started swinging.

  The second man hadn’t had the chance to turn around, and I hit him hard in back of the neck, connecting with the cervical vertebrae. He went down immediately, leaving me with only two to go.

  The odds were getting better.

  I went after the third.

  He managed to step backward, making my next swing miss. Then threw a right hook. The move was clumsy, the suit slowing him down, and I blocked the blow and retaliated with an elbow strike that dented his face mask and exploded his nose, coating the inside of his visor with blood.

  The fourth man—the oldest of the group—ran from the room.

  The first man had staggered to his feet. He came at me from behind with a bear hug.

  I drilled the back end of the pole into his gut. He doubled over, choking and gasping.

  I went after him again, clanging him in the head with everything I had, putting him out before man number three tackled me from behind.

  I sprawled forward, hitting the floor on hands and knees, the brute landing on top of me. Air was sucked from my lungs. He grabbed my hair, lifted my head with a yank, then smashed my forehead against the tile.

  Sparks of light blossomed behind my eyes.

  I had to get him off me. One more hit to my brain pan and I wouldn’t be able to function.

  Face pressed to the cold floor, I willed the dizziness back and searched for something I could use as a weapon.

  There.

  I reached out my hand, skimming it over the tile until I hit something slick and wet—the remnants of Kirk.

  Then I snaked my arm back to the hand tangled in my hair. The hazmat suit was thick and strong, made in layers to keep out the smallest biological agents, viruses. But the gloves were attached with nothing more than duct tape.

  I sank the bloody IV needle into the meat of his wrist.

  A bellow echoed through the room. He released my hair and scrambled off my back.

  The door opened, and the man who’d fled stepped back inside, a pistol in his gloved hand.

  “Dr. Pembrooke! She put an infected needle in my arm,” the one I stabbed began to scream. He didn’t move, just kept screaming, even as I got to my feet.

  “Stop,” Pembrooke said. “I don’t want to have to shoot you, but I will.”

  The man I’d stabbed with the needle started to sob.

  “Get in the decon shower,” Pembrooke ordered.

  “But she got the last dose of vaccine—”

  “Get. In. The shower. Now.”

  The sobbing man hurried out of the room.

  And then there was one.

  Of course, the one remaining—the doctor himself—had a pistol pointed at me. And even though he looked to be inexperienced with a firearm, a man with a firearm was still a man who had to be respected.

  But only as long as he still held said firearm.

  Careful not to take his eyes or the gun barrel off me, he stooped to pick up one of the syringes from the floor. He tossed it to me. I caught it and stared at the fluid inside.

  “It’s a sedative. You know how to give yourself a shot?”

  I couldn’t suppress a laugh and didn’t try.

  “You expect me to knock myself out so you can, what? Study me?”

  “Study how your body managed to avoid contracting the Ebola. Yes.”

  This guy was a piece of work. People could die all around him, and all that mattered were the next tests he might be able to perform.

  I supposed it was handy for a scientist who worked on biological weapons to also be a psychopath.

  An awful scenario washed through my mind.

  “Am I a carrier now?”

  “With biology, you can never be sure. But, I don’t expect you are. A blood sample should prove it, one way or another.”

  “So test it,” I said.

  “I will, after you give yourself that shot.”

  “I’m not letting you put me under.”

  “You’re not in a position to be making deals.”

  “You’re not very experienced with handguns.”

  A brief flash of uncertainty flinched behind his eyes. He recovered quickly, but he’d told me what I needed to know.

  I took a step forward.

  “I hope your first shot is a good one,” I said softly. “Because you won’t get the chance to take another.”

  He extended the gun, aiming right at my center mass. “I can perform my tests on you whether you’re dead or alive.”

  There was only a meter between us, and he wouldn’t miss. I was fast, but bullets were faster.

  This wasn’t the moment. I had to catch him off guard.

  “Why Julie?” I asked. “Why is she the carrier?”

  Ask a man about something important to him, and he’ll never shut up.

  “She’s one in a million. One in a billion. I theorized that someone with her unique genetic markers might exist. Someone who could carry the virus and remain asymptomatic. You have no idea how much blood we tested, how many false starts we had.”

  “You tried this before,” I stated. “With others.”

  Pembrooke nodded, seemingly proud of the fact.

  “Many others. Those free clinics are funded by tax dollars, but used by those who contribute nothing to this country. It’s about time those freeloaders gave something back.”

  I’d met a few psychos in my time, but never one who looked like someone’s grandfather.

  “How many people have you killed while trying to find a Julie, Pembrooke?”

  He shrugged. “You know the saying. To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. Now inject yourself.”

  I shook my head. “No way.”

  “Either you let me sedate you, or I kill you.”

  I held the syringe in both hands—

  —then snapped it in half.

  “That did nothing. I have more.”

  “So go get it. I promise I’ll stay here and wait for you.”

  I could see him working it out in his head, wondering what to do next.

  I was wondering the same thing.

  Then the obvious hit me.

  Pembrooke wasn’t a pro. So I didn’t have to treat him like one.

  I looked over his shoulder at someone who wasn’t there and made my eyes wide.

  “Do it!” I yelled at my imaginary savior. “Now!”

  I sold it well. And like any amateur, Pembrooke bought the act, craning his neck around to see who was there.

  I moved forward, to the side of the gun, putting my palm on the hammer and squeezing so Pembrooke couldn’t fire, then twisting my body around and snapping my elbow against Pembrooke’s faceplate.

  He went down, falling onto his ass as he released the gun.

  I pointed it at his head.

  “How many people are at this facility?”

  “What?”

  “Who else is here?”

  “No one. Just us.”

  “No guards?”

  Pembrooke motioned to the men on the floor behind me. “Those were the guards. Them and Johnson, in the decon shower.”

  “If you’re lying to me—”

  “I’m not lying. The full team won’t be here until tomorrow. We have to take steps to make sure there are no accidents, like there were last time.”

  I searched his face, judged him sincere.

  “Where’s Julie?”

  “The other side of the facil
ity. She’s sedated.”

  “Thanks. That’s all I need from you.”

  His eye went wide, and I had to admit to some base satisfaction watching him piss himself.

  “Please! You can’t kill me. Our country needs me! I’m the only one who can protect us! I’m a brilliant man!”

  “You’re not brilliant, Pembrooke. You want to know what you are?” I put the gun to his eye, let him see his own death down the barrel. “You’re an omelet. And I’m about to break a few eggs.”

  “NO!”

  I raised the gun, then clubbed him across the side of the head. He collapsed onto his side.

  I checked the two men I’d put down earlier. They were both gone. I searched them, found some plastic zip ties.

  I pulled Pembrooke over to Kirk’s bed, and bound his wrists to the railing.

  Then I took Kirk’s hand—the one that an hour ago was touching me—and jammed the blood-soaked fingers into Pembrooke’s mouth.

  “There you go, Kirk,” I said. “I didn’t have to kill him. You did it yourself.”

  I found Julie where Pembrooke said she’d be. As he’d also stated, there didn’t seem to be anyone else at the facility. By the time I found Johnson, in the decontamination shower, he was already starting to hemorrhage from the virus.

  I put a bullet in his head to ease his passing.

  Then I went back to Pembrooke.

  He was awake. And unlike Kirk, he despaired. He complained. He cried.

  He also had two last words.

  “Kill me.”

  “Doctor,” I said. “Heal thyself.”

  I stayed until he crashed and bled out.

  My phone was in Pembrooke’s office, along with my clothing. I took a decon shower before dressing, and then got to work. I was apparently immune to Ebola, but I didn’t want to spread the disease to anyone else.

  It took me less than an hour to do what needed to be done.

  There was only one final loose end.

  Julie.

  I tugged my purse over my shoulder. My purse, with the wire garrote in the strap.

  Not such a bad way to go, being strangled while under sedation.

  I went to her, stood at the foot of her bed.

  And I did the only thing I could do.

  “When an operation goes wrong, thorough cleanup is a must,” The Instructor said. “Your value to the program depends on few people knowing you exist. If you can’t preserve this secrecy, others will be called in to clean up for you, and you will be part of the mess to be cleaned.”

  My phone rang when I had the MH-60M Black Hawk helicopter in the air over the island. I connected it to my headset and answered the call.

  “May I speak to Sheila, please?”

  “Sheila is visiting her sister in Pensacola. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Jesus, Chandler. You’re okay. You scared the hell out of me.”

  I smiled at the relief evident in Jacob’s slightly robotic tones. “Did you expect anything less?”

  “I obviously shouldn’t have.”

  I gave him the Cliff’s Notes version of all that had happened since I’d last talked to him back at the West 30th Street Heliport.

  After I’d finished, he was silent for several beats. “Do you have the vaccine?”

  “I am the vaccine,” I said. “From what I could gather, Pembrooke believed he could use my blood to vaccinate others.”

  “I’ve got an eye in the sky on Plum Island. Is that you in the chopper?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “The director?”

  “Dead.”

  “Any survivors?”

  “Negative.”

  “You have the medical records?”

  “I destroyed them.”

  “The computers?”

  “Likewise. What’s left is going to burn.”

  I stared down at the facility, smoke already beginning to leak out of the roof. With all of the flammable chemicals on the premises, the firefighters were going to have a helluva job putting this one out.

  “Ebola is a horrible weapon,” Jacob said. “One that can’t be controlled, no matter what people like Pembrooke believed.”

  “I’m glad we’re on the same page.” I hesitated, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

  “How about the girl?”

  I hesitated, feeling sick in the pit of my stomach, unsure of what to say.

  I trusted Jacob.

  But more importantly, I needed him.

  “She’s with me.”

  “She’s alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Chandler. This needs to end.”

  My conscience was telling me the same thing. As the Typhoid Mary of Ebola, Julie was too dangerous to exist.

  But that didn’t mean I wanted to listen.

  Silence stretched so long, I was beginning to think he’d hung up. Finally he answered.

  “There’s the ocean.”

  I closed my eyes. I was a trained killer. I lived with death every day. I dealt it out to others like a losing hand of poker. As traumatic and horrible as Kirk’s death had been, that was his reality, too. Kill or be killed. Every day balanced on the edge of a knife.

  It was what we did. It was who we were.

  But Julie wasn’t from that world.

  She’d never signed up for this. She’d had this horror forced upon her. Did she really deserve to be cast into the ocean for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

  Could I be the one who pushed her from the aircraft?

  “I won’t do it, Jacob. I won’t let them turn her into a biological weapon, but I won’t kill her either.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll have to send someone else to do it.”

  “They’ll have to kill me, too. Do you have anyone that good?”

  “She can never be a part of society.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s no way for a young girl to live.”

  “I know.”

  I stared at Julie, sleeping in the back seat.

  “The ocean may be the most humane thing to do.”

  “I know,” I said, trying to swallow the giant lump in my throat. “I know.”

  Six Weeks Later

  “Sometimes,” the Instructor said, “you’ll do things that will be hard to live with. You might never be able to forgive yourself. There’s no advice I can give you for when this happens. I’m sorry.”

  The wind off the coast of Maine was as cold as the water was rough. Between the blue sky, autumn leaves, gray rock, white lighthouse, and adjoining red keeper’s house, the place looked as colorful as an image from a postcard.

  Picturesque but lonely.

  Maine had over sixty lighthouses along its shores and nearby islands, some so remote that even tourists and photographers hadn’t discovered them.

  This was one.

  I hefted box after box out of the fishing boat I’d rented and set them in the trolley next to the dock. Rails ran to up the steep, rocky face to the lighthouse and keeper’s house, an efficient system of delivering supplies that had been in place for a hundred years. It took me nearly a half hour, but finally the trolley car was full and my boat was empty.

  Except for one box I would deliver myself.

  I lugged it to my hip and started up the narrow path. The first time I’d been to the lighthouse had been the summer night after Plum Island. Now the ocean wind carried with it the crisp slap of fall.

  I reached the crest of the hill, my back slick with sweat and the muscles in my legs pleasantly warm. The countless blood tests I’d had since contracting Ebola had all shown I was virus free, and every day since I’d fully appreciated how alive I felt, how strong.

  This had been Jacob’s idea. He and I were only two of three people in the whole world who knew about it.

  The third person opened the screen door and skipped down the steps, running toward me.

  “I didn’t expect you until Saturday,” Julie said, all smiles.

&nbs
p; I set my box on the ground and took her in my arms. She felt good, and when we finally ended the hug, I had to blink back a few tears.

  Julie looked me over. “Your hair looks great.”

  I raised a hand to my head, still a little surprised that my tresses no longer reached my shoulders.

  “I’m still getting used to it.”

  She eyed the box. “You brought me presents?”

  “I have a whole trolley load waiting to be hauled up.”

  Her eyes widened like a little kid at Christmas. “What did you bring?”

  “Supplies, of course. Food, toiletries, that kind of thing.”

  “Anything fun?”

  “Of course.”

  “Movies? Books?”

  I nodded. Loading up boxes of the thrillers and romantic suspense novels Julie loved had just about broken my back. I couldn’t wait for the time when e-readers were common and buying a new book would be as easy as pushing a button.

  “I’ve started writing, too. You wouldn’t believe how fast time flies when I’m busy making up stories.”

  It was a relief to see Julie was adapting so well to her limited life. After our escape, I’d spent two weeks here with her, helping her adjust. Since then, I’d spent many sleepless nights worrying about my decision to hide her rather than cast her into the sea. Now I felt like I could finally breathe a little deeper.

  “I can’t wait to read your stories.”

  She grinned. “Maybe I’ll publish them someday.”

  A tentative scratching noise came from the box at my feet.

  “Okay, Chandler. What’s in the box?”

  “You really want to know?”

  She gave me a pointed look. “Duh.”

  “Okay. Open it. Gently.”

  She popped open the lid in two seconds flat.

  “Oh my God.” She pulled out the little brown pup and squeezed him to her chest. “What kind is he?”

  “A mutt. He’s a rescue dog.”

  “Like me.” She beamed, then the smile faded. “He won’t get sick, will he?”

  “No. Dogs who have been exposed to Ebola produce antibodies and become immune. Epidemiologists test the blood of dogs in some areas in the world to trace areas of virus outbreak.”

  I could tell her more, having reassured myself before bringing the pet to Julie, but she didn’t care. She was too busy petting the little guy and keeping him from nipping her fingers.