by April Hunt
He hadn’t wanted her to see his amputation. Maybe because he’d dreaded her reaction to it, or maybe the apprehension was all on his own. Either way, it was obvious that the steel-spined Roman Steele wasn’t as hard as he wanted people around him to believe…and damn it if that didn’t make her like him all the more.
“It’ll be kinda hard to eat all this food from all the way over there.” Roman slid a crispy mound of bacon from the pan and onto a plate.
As his appreciative gaze slid down his oversized shirt and her bare legs, a lock of loose hair fell over his eye. Her fingers itched to brush it away, but instead, she helped herself to a piece of bacon and the waiting glass of juice.
She grinned. “You play cornhole with the big guys, own a collection of classic romances, and kick asses. I shouldn’t be surprised that you can cook, and yet here I am.”
He snorted. “If I don’t cook I don’t eat.”
“There’s always takeout, and that new-fangled app where you can order yourself a breakfast burrito and someone brings it right to your door.” At his look of abject horror, she chuckled. “Not that I know anything about it.”
Roman’s lips twitched, making her stomach drop. A smile. An almost smile. Its fleeting presence made her want to see another one, and as she debated on the best way to make it happen, he propped his spatula on the pan and tugged her flush against his chest.
The same heated look he’d worn before each of last night’s sexual romps was back. Her body shivered reflexively as if it remembered what came next.
“I’m not real big on people invading my personal space.” Roman’s gaze dropped to her mouth. “Unless they’re tall, sexy brunettes with a penchant for telling me off.”
“I haven’t done that for at least an hour.” Isa nibbled his bottom lip, chuckling when he groaned. “How easy is it to warm up breakfast?”
“I think we should find out.” He turned off the burner and backed her up against the counter, taking her mouth in a hot kiss before pulling back and doing it all over again. He had her panting in need in a matter of seconds, her fingers diving into his hair to prevent him from moving away.
Seconds from sliding her hands beneath the waistband of Roman’s pants, the Who’s the Boss theme song echoed from somewhere in the apartment. It stopped and started again a few seconds later.
“Is Tony Danza about to walk into my apartment or something?” Roman murmured against her lips.
“My cell.” Who’s the Boss? “Crap. I can’t ignore that call. Hold that thought.”
They both groaned as she pulled away and hustled into the other room, where her phone vibrated with each ring. Isa frowned down at the screen. A half dozen missed calls, even more texts, and a few emails—all from the Global Health Organization.
Her phone rang again, and this time, she answered. “Hello?”
“Isa? Bloody hell.” Anthony Winter, her one-time mentor cursed. “Why haven’t you returned any of my calls?”
“Because I was sleeping.” Isa dished out the half lie easily. The sixty-three-year-old epidemiologist didn’t need to know about her marathon night of crazy sex. “Do you want to harp on me for being human—unlike some people who shall not remain nameless—or do you want to tell me why you’re filling up my inbox?”
“If you’re not near a computer, get near one and check your email. I’ll wait.”
“How is it you always make orders sound like polite suggestions? Is it the English accent?” Isa teased.
“Isabel…now.”
The smile melted off her face. Tony never used her full name.
Roman half watched from the kitchen as she sat on the couch and booted up her laptop. “What exactly am I looking for?”
“You’ll know it the second you see it,” Tony said, voice grim.
Isa counted eight emails from him in the last seven hours. “Am I supposed to open up anything particular first?”
“Start with the oldest one and go right down the line. And Isa?”
“Yeah?”
“I hope you haven’t eaten breakfast yet.”
Isa’s post-sex glow immediately evaporated. “I hate it when you say cryptic shit like that.”
At the click of the first attached photo file, Isa’s stomach rolled. The single strip of bacon she’d had curdled in her stomach, threatening to make a reappearance.
In each email, Tony sent four or more pictures, each one more disturbing than the next. Zoomed images physically documented open sores and enflamed petechiae—reddened dots—that indicated bleeding at the capillary level. The last few showcased broken blood vessels in the white of eyes and, in the last photograph, nail beds.
“What the fuck is that?” Roman cursed from over her shoulder.
She’d been so busy mentally registering what she saw that she hadn’t heard him approach. “That’s what I’m about to find out.” She put Tony on speaker phone and shifted one more time through the pictures. “Is this Marburg, Lassa fever, or Ebola?”
“None of the above.”
“You know I think you’re nothing short of a genius, but are you sure?” Isa hated second-guessing her old friend. “These images—”
“Are from here, Isa.” Tony paused, and she could practically see him tugging on his scraggly white beard as he often did when stressed.
“What do you mean here?”
“Those pictures were taken from a handful of patients in Beaver Ridge, Alaska. It’s definitely a hemorrhagic disease, but it’s not Marburg, Lassa, or Ebola. It’s something a hell of a lot worse.”
Isa was already shaking her head. Dread balled up in her stomach like a rock. “Please tell me it’s not.”
“I wish I could rule it out, kid. I need your confirmation, but I’m about eighty percent certain I found your missing FC-5 virus.”
Isa closed her eyes on a sigh. “That’s not what I wanted to hear, Tony.”
“Then you’ll really hate this…but I need you, Isa. This town’s not capable of handling something like this. They’re remote and closed off from the world. Hell, they don’t even have a functioning hospital. If this isn’t contained—and soon—it’ll rip through this town before we can even blink.”
“The GHO—”
“Will take their sweet ass time sending out anyone, much less a full investigative team. At the rate of transmission, Beaver Ridge will be wiped out before the first plane touches down. You know I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t need help, Isa. I need you.”
Tony was one of few people who knew why she’d abandoned bedside medicine and switched to research, and for him to ask this of her, or to ask for help at all, was a big deal.
The man strutted into pandemic areas like Superman with a cape. He scoffed at things that would give most people nightmares for life, and he never admitted needing help because there wasn’t anything that he couldn’t handle.
Except this.
“Isa?” Tony asked when she’d gone silent.
“Yeah. No. Okay.” Isabel took a breath and tried to rein in all her thoughts at once. “I’ll see what supplies I can wrestle away from Carmichael. Email me as much information as you can about what you’re seeing, and I’ll try to get caught up while I’m in the air.”
“Thank you.”
“Why are you thanking me? This is why we do what we do. I’ll let you know when I’ll be arriving.” Isa hung up and turned to Roman, her next words dying on her lips.
The easygoing, horny man who’d almost smiled had been completely replaced with the stubborn former Special Forces soldier she first met in the Legion lab.
* * *
Funny how a damn good morning could go all to shit in a snap—or a phone call. Roman should’ve been prepared for the other shoe to drop, and now that it had, he wouldn’t be caught off guard again. At least now he had backup.
And an enemy—one pissed off and determined Isabel Santiago.
At Steele Ops command, everyone sat around the table, and the haggling hadn’t stopped for the last
thirty minutes. Opinions and thoughts were hurtled back and forth, but none on which anyone could agree.
Knox pinched the bridge of his nose, looking as shitty as Roman felt, and Ryder tried—and failed—to settle a tiff between Jaz and Tank. Liam was the only one who looked relatively calm, but only because he was probably plotting something in that crazy smart brain of his.
“I get this isn’t ideal, for anyone,” Isa announced to the group, “but it is necessary.”
“Says you,” Roman muttered under his breath, but not quietly enough.
Isa shot him a glare. “That’s right, me, the only one who’s qualified to say what’s necessary in this scenario…unless one of you has a medical or biology background I’m not aware of.” She looked around the room. “No? No one? Then yep, I’m the only one.”
Knox leaned back in his chair and leveled her with a heavy stare. “You said your friend already has boots on the ground, right?”
“Tony, yes. He was on vacation on some ice fishing adventure when he got wind of something happening in Beaver Ridge. As per typical Tony fashion, he went right into work mode.”
“What makes him think this is FC-5?”
“Everything.” Isa pulled out some of the pages she’d printed off that morning from the files Tony had emailed her but left the pictures in the folder. “There isn’t a doubt it’s some kind of VHF—viral hemorrhagic fever.”
“Some kind of VHF? How many are there?”
“I can list eighteen off the top of my head, but there’s quite a few more.”
Ryder took the paper and read through the list. “I’ve never heard of more than half of these.”
“A lot of people haven’t, and some of them have been all but eradicated off the face of the planet. And before any of you ask, I know it’s none of the ones on that list. Although their basics are the same, there’s significant markers that identify them. Lassa fever is airborne, and Marburg has a very distinct papular rash. And then you compare incubation periods and onset of symptoms.” Isa took a deep breath. “Tony’s right to think this could be FC-5. There are way too many similarities for my liking.”
Roman couldn’t stay quiet anymore. “Then I’ll go and meet your friend, get samples from him or whatever you need to verify, and hop on the next plane home.”
She was already shaking her head. “Won’t work.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because the sample Tony gives you won’t be the same sample I get when you come back. Time, heat, handling…they all change viral properties. By the time you get back to DC, those samples will be worthless. I need to go there. I need to lay eyes on the patients myself, and I need to examine samples at the exact moment they’re collected.”
Roman folded his arms over his chest and met her glare for glare. “If this is FC-5, what’s the likelihood that its popping up in Nowhere, Alaska, is natural selection? Is it fond of cold temps? Does it burrow in glaciers or something?”
For the first time, Isa’s glare wavered. She looked away as he waited for her to answer.
And waited.
“No,” she finally admitted. “If this is FC-5, then it had help getting there.”
“So this missing virus, taken by armed commandoes who’ve already tried nabbing you off the streets in broad daylight once already, pops up somewhere it shouldn’t be, and you’re packing your bags and taking the first flight out?”
“Yes, I am.” Isa, her jaw clenched, reached into the file and tossed the photos on the table.
Muttered curses and gaspes sounded around the room.
“Fucking hell,” Ryder muttered.
Grace winced. “Whoa. That’s…horrible.”
“That’s just the beginning. If this is FC-5, it won’t be long before the people in those pictures are begging for death. People, Roman. Elderly. Children. Entire families. If I prevent even one of them from dying, then that’s what I’ll do. If you don’t like it, then stay the hell here.”
He didn’t like it. One damn bit. But he’d be damned if he’d let her go off on her own.
Knox’s attention bounced from Roman to Isa, who glared at him as if daring him to argue. “If you need to go, then we have to make it work.”
“Then I’ll take her myself,” Roman announced. “There’s no reason to put anyone else at risk.”
“That’s fucking stupid, man.” Tank shook his head. “You go at it alone and you’re putting both of you at risk. This Beaver Ridge is the epitome of seclusion, right?”
Liam nodded toward where he’d brought up the area map. “Only way in or out is by seaplane.”
“Exactly my point. Best-case scenario is if this is our super virus, those lab assholes aren’t far away. Worst case is that they fucking chose this town to lure you the hell out there, counting on the fact that you’re mice trapped in a cage.”
Jaz nodded. “Tank’s right—and you know how much I love admitting that. You need more than one set of eyes.”
Jaz and Tank weren’t telling him anything that he hadn’t told himself multiple times over since Isabel ended her phone call with Tony. Whether these bastards had accidently infected the town by choosing it as a place to lie low or they did it on purpose, they’d have to know Isabel would make an appearance. Roman and anyone who came with them needed to be prepared when they made their move…and in the event Steele Ops needed to go on the offensive, he also needed a tracker.
And he knew just the man. “I’m cashing in a favor that I have with a guy I know, but I’m not telling any of you that you need to come. Between these lab assholes and whatever’s happening in that town, it’s not a low-risk assignment.”
Isa agreed. “We need to minimize the risk of exposure and go with the bare minimum you guys consider safe.”
“Well, you can count me in.” Jaz spoke up first.
“Me too.” Ryder nodded, face grim. “Plus I have a medic background, so I’ll be able to be a little more hands-on with the patients if it comes to that. Sounds like Beaver Ridge doesn’t exactly have its own level-three trauma center.”
“It’s not,” Isa admitted. “They have a small clinic that’s good for minor aches and pains and preventative care, but that’s about it. They’re totally overwhelmed by all this.”
“Then that’s it.” Roman glanced around the room. “It’ll be me, Jaz, and Ryder, and I’ll talk to my guy. That’ll make four of us and Doc.” He slid his gaze over to Isa. “That okay with you?”
The look she gave him told him no. “Do I have any other choice?”
“No.”
“Then yeah, I’m okay with that.”
Chapter
Nine
Roman pulled his truck onto the lane, knowing with every rotation of his tires that this encounter was doomed to go as well as his attempt to get Isabel alone this morning. Since the meeting the night before, she’d been on the phone, first with Carmichael, and then with her former mentor from the GHO.
He’d hoped to talk her out of this ridiculous idea, appeal to her common sense or, hell, her survival instincts, because after studying Beaver Ridge’s topography for a few hours, Roman identified it for what it was—a clusterfuck waiting to happen.
And that was before factoring in the sick patients.
Nestled between a massive mountain range and a lake, the small town’s only access point was by air—seaplane to be exact. Roads in and around town proper were micro-sized, big enough for side-by-side four-by-fours or a pair of snowmobiles, and anything farther than a few miles outside the perimeter was considered off-roading.
No roads to civilization. No easy extraction.
If those lab assholes were behind this, they’d be fish in a barrel waiting to be picked off one by one. Roman hoped the sucky odds would cater to his old buddy’s love of a challenge.
“A regular Mr. Social Butterfly,” Roman muttered as he brought his truck to a stop at the end of the lane.
Parked cars lined the front and side fields surrounding Ethan King’s cabi
n. Music echoed through the West Virginia mountains, rivaled only by the loud cheers coming from the backyard. Roman stepped through the back gate and right into the thick of Backyard Brawls.
Barefooted and sporting gloves, two men circled each other in the makeshift boxing ring, each looking like he was out for blood. The crowd around them lapped it up with a spoon, cheering when their guy got in a good hit. Judging by the state of both men, they’d been at it for at least a few rounds.
Roman pocketed his keys and spotted Garrett Porter, King’s unofficial bouncer, leaning against the wall.
“Look what the cat dragged in.” Garrett took a long pull on his cigarette. “I’d say it was good to see you, but it’s not. You look like shit, man.”
“Always with the sweet talk. King around?”
Garrett grunted with a nod. “He had to unwind himself from tonight’s side piece to deal with some asswipe trying to place money on matches, so he’s in a mood.”
“Nothing worse than Ethan King getting cock-blocked. The asswipe still have full function of his appendages?”
“Most of them.”
“Then he’s damn lucky.”
Backyard Brawls may look like a free-for-all fight-fest to the casual observer, but Ethan King prided himself on keeping it aboveboard and in line with West Virginia law. That meant no betting or exchange of money of any kind on his property. Anyone who broke that rule was dealt with accordingly, which usually meant getting their ass kicked by King himself.
Garrett’s eyes narrowed. “Well, fuck. I know that face. You’re gonna put the boss man in an even worse mood than he’s already in, aren’t you?”
Roman shrugged but didn’t deny it.
“Don’t get compensated enough for this shit.” Garrett dropped his quickly disappearing cigarette onto the ground and stepped on it with his boot. “Let’s go. Last time I laid eyes on him he was letting some pretty blonde sit on his lap. If you’re lucky, she’ll have improved his mood some.”
When they tracked down King, not only was there not a blonde on his lap, but he had a wire-thin guy pinned against the side of the house. King leaned close, never raising his voice, but judging by the loss of color in the guy’s face, he didn’t need to. Whatever message he was in the middle of delivering was received loud and clear.