She peeked inside the nearest hut. More bodies, all of them young men. She guessed the oldest of them had been maybe twenty-five, twenty-six. Some of them still clutched guns in their hands as if they could fight off the virus with bullets. Some looked nearly alive, while others had been dead long enough that they no longer appeared human. The smell was horrendous. Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked hard to hold them back.
She didn’t want to see more, but she made herself move methodically from one building to the next, counting the dead and checking for survivors. They could use more survivors like Ebiere, but if there had been any from the camp, they were long gone.
How many other frightened young men had run home sick and dying, carrying the virus to their loved ones like Joyful Solomon had? How many other villages or camps had been wiped out? Had it already spread too far for the medical teams to have any chance of successful containment?
She walked over to the next hut in the line, and was just about to look inside when a commotion on the far end of camp caught her attention. She ran toward the noise and found the police officers wrestling with a fourth man. Definitely not an Egbesu Fighter, or even a local. He was white with blond hair that hung in limp, dirty tangles over his shoulders. His clothes were stained and torn, and he wore no shoes. He held his own against the officers, but he favored one arm and his movements were growing sloppy. It wouldn’t be long before they overpowered him.
The rain picked up, and the blond man slipped in the mud. As he fell, he ripped off one officer’s mask. The officer let out a scream of rage and kicked him. The others joined in.
“Stop!” The downpour drowned out her command. She took a step forward, but suddenly Dayo was there. He put a hand on her shoulder to stop her, then waded in to break up the fight himself. The officers were all skinny, and the three of them together weren’t as big as Dayo. Thankfully, things ended quickly.
Claire rushed to the white man’s side. He hadn’t moved since going down. She set a gloved hand on his shoulder and very carefully rolled him to his back.
Shock sizzled through her. The face was leaner, the angles of his jaw and cheekbones sharper, but she still recognized him. How could she not when his face had haunted her dreams for weeks?
He’d come for her. She hadn’t fully believed he would.
She swept a knotted strand of hair back from his face. “Jean-Luc?”
He opened gunmetal-blue eyes and blinked up at her as rivulets of rain streamed over him. She leaned over, using her body to shield him. He stared at her for a long moment like he couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing, then his lips spread in a grin that was a shadow of the one she remembered.
“If you like piña coladas,” he sang softly, “and getting caught in the rain…”
She laughed around the lump rising in her throat. The first time they’d met two months ago, the night he’d saved her life, she’d scolded him for being off-key while singing that song. “You’re still off-key.”
“Am not. I’ll have you know my mamere always said I’m an excellent singer.” He turned his head to the side and coughed hard. When the fit passed and he smiled at her again, blood stained his lips and teeth.
Her heart nosedived into her stomach.
He was infected.
Chapter Five
Jean-Luc couldn’t believe he’d found her. Okay, technically, she’d found him, but semantics. After weeks of searching, here she was, leaning over him dressed like a spaceman. Wasn’t exactly the reunion he’d pictured, and he certainly hadn’t planned to be flat on his back, feeling like a whole Mardi Gras parade had danced across his body. But still. She was here. He could reach out and touch her, know she was alive and safe.
He did just that, reaching out his good arm and trailing his fingers across the front of the weird mask shielding her pretty face. “What’s with all this, ma belle?”
Then he noticed the tears rolling down her cheeks. He tried to sit up, but the fight had drained the last of his energy. He dropped uselessly back into the mud, which actually felt lovely. He hadn’t realized how hot he was until he felt the cool mud against his back.
“Don’t sit up,” Claire said and placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him still.
A large black man knelt by her side. “Do you know this man?” His accent was musical Nigerian, but his English diction was perfect. Jean-Luc guessed he’d been born here, but educated in either the U.K. or the U.S.
Claire glanced over at the newcomer. “Yes. He’s a friend. We need to move him back to the hospital, but we have to be careful. Keep him quarantined. Can you find something to use as a stretcher?”
“He’s infected?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“What?” Jean-Luc tried to sit up again as the big man moved away, but again failed. Merde, he couldn’t remember a time he’d felt this horrible, and he’d had some pretty epic hangovers in his day.
Claire leaned over him. The tears were rolling freely now, dripping onto the inside of her mask. “This is a hot zone. Everyone in this camp died of an unknown hemorrhagic virus and you’ve been exposed. How long have you been here?”
He shook his head. He couldn’t remember exactly. Time had blurred and his brain had just slammed on the brakes at the words “hemorrhagic virus” and “you’ve been exposed.” He was infected?
Well…fuck.
“This is important. Try to think,” Claire urged. “When did you arrive? Before or after these people died?”
He shook his head again and that seemed to clear away some of the fog. “Before. I knew you were here. Because of the virus outbreak, I knew you’d be here and I came looking.”
She gave a tight smile. “That was reckless.”
“Tell me about it.” His teammates had warned he’d die in Bumfuck, Africa, if he went chasing weak intel. Wouldn’t they love to know they’d been right.
And, hell, what about Marcus? Had he been infected when they were separated? Was he dying in agony somewhere in the jungle? Because judging by how Jean-Luc felt now, this was going to be agony.
He suppressed a cough and turned his head to scan the camp. “I figured if I found the nearest WHO or MSF field hospital, I’d find you, but these assholes ambushed our vehicle. They thought they were going to ransom us to some big oil company for money.”
“Us?”
“Marcus Deangelo. A teammate. A friend. He came with me. He wanted to find you, too.”
He saw her brow crinkle, and couldn’t blame her confusion. She’d never met Marcus, so why would he risk his life to save a stranger?
“Marcus has his own reasons,” he added before she could ask.
She nodded as if that was explanation enough for her. “Then what happened?”
“We were separated during the ambush. I need to find him. If he’s sick, too…”
She covered his bad hand with her gloved one. “I’ll ask around as soon as we’re back to the hospital. What happened after the ambush?”
“They put me in a cell.” He pointed to the building with his good arm. Claire turned to look. The dead guard had started rotting in the heat and rain and had ballooned. Just the memory of the smell had bile rising up in Jean-Luc’s throat. “Then they started dying. Just dropping like flies. The guard…he was sick—coughing blood all over everything, his nose bleeding. He was delirious, but he kept talking to me, taunting me, telling me about how much money I was going to make them. Then he just slumped over and he was gone.”
“How did you get free?” Claire asked, still staring at the guard’s body.
It had to be obvious. “I dug under the bars enough to reach him and pulled him over.” A lump of sickness rose in his throat and he had to look away. He could still feel the man’s dead flesh sloughing away under his hand with each tug. “I got him close enough to take the key.”
He’d vomited in the mud once he was free, but he left that part out. It wasn’t exactly sexy. Then again, neither was dying of a hemorrhagic virus.
Huh. He’d lived his entire adult life a man-whore, and now he was going to die celibate thanks to that curse the voodoo queen had laid on him. Now he’d never get the chance to break it.
He’d never get a chance with Claire.
Merde. He’d really, really wanted that chance.
The big man returned with a makeshift stretcher, which basically amounted to a tarp attached to two questionably sturdy pieces of wood.
Claire gazed up at the guy. “Thank you, Dayo.” Then she leaned over and tried to smile. It was strained. “Your ride is here.”
He took one look at it and sat up. “Nope. I’ll walk.”
“Don’t be stubborn,” Claire chided. “You need to conserve your energy. You haven’t had any proper nutrition in days. You’re dehydrated, you vomited—”
So she had noticed that. Damn.
“—and your body is fighting a war right now,” she finished. “You’re not walking anywhere. You’re getting on that stretcher.”
He grinned at her, even though he felt like screaming. But his mamere had always said that humor could relieve any ailment, and he didn’t have much else to cling to at the moment. “I love it when you go all Dr. Dominatrix. It’s hot.”
Claire was not amused. Her lips thinned as she stood up and pointed at the “stretcher.”
He pushed to his feet and walked over to the tarp like a good boy. And, okay, she was right. He wasn’t as strong as he wanted to be. By the time he lay down, his head swam with dizziness. Claire must have noticed the sudden sheen of sweat on his forehead, but she said nothing, only made sure he was tucked into the tarp then nodded to the big guy. He felt them lift him and closed his eyes. All this time, he’d thought the weakness plaguing him was due to a lack of food and water. He’d found both after his escape, but he hadn’t been able to keep anything down.
No wonder, since he was dying and all.
Fuck.
Chapter Six
When Claire said “hospital,” Jean-Luc had foolishly assumed an actual hospital, where he’d receive the best care money could buy.
But, no. Not this time. This wasn’t a sanctioned HORNET mission, and he didn’t have billionaire philanthropist Tuc Quentin, the big boss-man, footing the medical bills here.
The hospital consisted of a series of white tents connected by passageways and segregated by temporary fencing. He couldn’t see much of it from his prone position within the “stretcher”—which, by the way, was killing his back—but he saw enough to know this wasn’t a hospital so much as a place the infected went to die. Although Claire tried to hide it from his view, he clearly saw the line of body bags behind one of the fences. All of them were full, marked with biohazard symbols. The dead lying there in a line, in the rain, waiting for a disposal team.
So many dead.
If all those people couldn’t survive it, how could he?
For the first time since this adventure started, panic reared its ugly head. No, he wasn’t ready. He couldn’t die yet. He had so much left to do. So many languages yet to learn. And he still had to make his mamere proud of him. He never had while she was alive, always too busy drinking and fucking and chasing some kind of fulfillment he never found. He’d promised over her grave he’d do at least one thing to make her proud before he died.
And now he was running out of time.
Jean-Luc watched the top of the tent pass in sections. Every few feet, they stopped to pass through another layer of containment. Finally, they set him down on a creaky bed.
Claire stood at the foot in white and yellow protective gear and nodded her thanks at the two men who had carried him. “Dayo, make sure Uzoma is also quarantined. We have no way of knowing whether he was exposed when his mask came off.”
Jean-Luc groaned inwardly. The mask hadn’t just fallen off—he’d pulled the damn thing off. When the three men came at him, he’d had no idea who they were or what they wanted. He’d just fought, and hoped like hell he could take them in his weakened state. He hoped to God he hadn’t doomed the poor guy.
Claire must have read his expression because she said, “Uzoma should be fine. We’ve seen no indication this is airborne. It’s likely spread through bodily fluids.” She nodded toward the raw meat of his forearm. “You have an open wound. You were probably infected by your guard.”
He gave a humorless laugh and sat up on the edge of the bed to pull the wet tarp out from under him. “Of all the things I thought would eventually kill me, Ebola was nowhere on the list.”
“It’s not Ebola,” Claire said. “I’m starting to believe it’s not hanta either. We don’t know what it is, but it’s interesting. Almost like—”
He sent her a dry look.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m…not very good at this bedside manner stuff. I’m usually the behind-the-scenes guy—the researcher. There’s a reason I never went into medical practice.” She paused, drew a breath that moved her shoulders. “So let’s get some fluids into you, and we’ll take a look at your arm. I don’t want you any more dehydrated.”
She rolled a cart over by his bed and picked up a bag of fluids. He held out his good arm cooperatively, and studied the room as she poked at him. Beds lined the cavernous space, and most of them were full with people of all ages. Some writhed in pain. Others lay deathly still, staring at nothing.
This was his future.
He shut his eyes at the pinch of the needle sliding into his skin. Not because it hurt, but because he couldn’t bear to look at the dying anymore.
“Almost done,” Claire said soothingly.
“Has anyone survived?” He focused on her, but could only see her eyes under her goggles. Sapphire-blue eyes, red from crying.
She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “One girl from a local village. She said she was sick, but until we run tests…”
“One?” His voice came out choked. “Just one. So I’m fucked,” he said softly and wiped away the sweat gathering on his brow. “What’s going to happen?”
Claire finished taping the IV to his arm and hooked up the saline drip. Then she rested a gloved hand on his knee and finally met his eyes. “You just focus on resting. Healing. If you dwell on—”
“That bad?” He squeezed her hand, wished he could feel her skin instead of the rubber of her glove. “Tell me, f’true. I need to know.”
She said nothing for a long time.
“Claire. Please.”
She drew a breath. When she spoke again, it was like a med school professor lecturing to a class and he was okay with that. It somehow made it less…real to hear everything in such clinical terms.
“The virus interferes with the blood’s clotting ability and breaks down the walls of blood vessels, causing uncontrolled hemorrhaging. It attacks the lungs and the kidneys, so if a victim survives the hemorrhagic phase, they ultimately die of pneumonia or acute renal failure, but most don’t survive that long. We can offer supportive care, but there isn’t a cure.”
Putain! This was going to be even worse than he expected. “What are the symptoms? What should I expect?”
“Fatigue, muscle aches, back ache, fever. Nausea, vomiting. Uncontrolled bleeding can lead to bruising, a rash. Fluid builds up in the lungs, causing difficult breathing, coughing blood.”
Hadn’t he already felt like he was suffocating over the last day or so? He’d been coughing a lot, and had coughed up blood on more than one occasion. He’d thought the bruises all over his body were from the ambush and subsequent imprisonment, but now he looked at them in a much more ominous light. His arms were covered with deep purple blotches. He was bleeding out under his skin.
Holy fuck.
His stomach flipped over and he tore his gaze away from his arm. “How long do I have, doc?”
She shook her head. “I won’t know until we run more tests.”
“In general?”
“A week from the first onset of symptoms. Maybe ten days.”
He’d started coughing yesterday—no, two da
ys ago, when his guard was still alive. The bruising had started yesterday. Which meant, at best, he was looking at a week. Likely less. “You need to find Marcus.”
She nodded. “I’ve already asked Dayo to put out feelers. If Marcus is anywhere in the region, we’ll find out where.”
“Once you find him, if he’s not sick, you need to leave with him.”
“What?”
“You can’t stay here. If I found you—”
“I found you,” she reminded.
He waved his good hand dismissively. “Semantics. I knew where to look, and that means Defion will, too. They won’t be far behind me.”
“Defion?”
“The mercenary group that was hired to kidnap you in Martinique. We made coullions of them, and now their professional reputation is staked on finding you for their client. They’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on your research. You’re not safe here.”
Behind the protective goggles, her eyes snapped blue fire. “I’m not safe anywhere! And people are dying here. People I can help.”
Mon dieu, he’d been dreading this moment since he started looking for her. He reached for her hand and waited until she met his gaze. ”Claire, they killed Tiffany in Martinique. I couldn’t save her.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I saw the news reports.”
“I’m sorry. I did everything I could—”
“Don’t.” She withdrew her hand and started rummaging through the cart of supplies, but he saw the glimmer of tears. “Don’t blame yourself. It was an impossible situation. Tiffany knew that. It’s why she told me to run instead of letting me walk into their hands.” She stopped with the busywork. “We were like sisters,” she whispered in a choked voice.
“They didn’t get her portion of your research. My team made sure of that.”
“That’s good.” She straightened and continued gathering supplies off her cart. “Let’s take a look at your arm.”
”Claire.” He caught her hand again and made her face him. “You need to leave. Oui, people are dying here, but think of how many more will die in the years to come if you don’t finish your research.” He indicated the room with a sweep of his good arm. “Akeso will change so many lives, especially in places like this. If Defion gets hold of you, they’ll pass you off to Bioteric Pharmaceuticals. Do you think Bioteric has any interest in helping people in a poor third-world country?”
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