Sleight of Hand (Outbreak Task Force)

by Julie Rowe

  “Yes, sir,” the cop said to Gunner. He addressed the university guy next. “The faster we get all this done, the sooner it can get cleaned up.”

  University guy wasn’t happy, but he went with the cop without arguing. At least, not verbally.

  If looks could kill, though…

  Shaking his head, Gunner went into the house.

  “Would you like to borrow my sledgehammer for the next one?” Joy asked, subtle humor in her tone.

  He frowned at her. Irritation made his voice sharper than he intended. “What?”

  “It’s a really big, heavy hammer used mostly to knock sense into other people who are annoying you.”

  He snorted. “Funny.” It shouldn’t be, but he’d discovered that her sneaky sense of humor managed to find the funny in all kinds of things. “EMS?”

  “On their way.” And just like that, she was all business. “You’d know that if you’d checked your phone.” Her ability to switch from one mindset to another was something he admired. “I’ve counted fifteen on this floor,” she continued. “I sent a couple of the cops who have masks and gloves on upstairs to see how many more casualties there are.”

  Casualties. Despite being out of the Army a couple of years, she often used military terms. “Good. Carry on.”

  The mask prevented him from seeing much more of her face than her eyes, and hers were laughing at him. Nope, not going to ask why.

  Off in the distance, sirens wailed. EMS was definitely on its way.

  Gunner went into the kitchen and paused in the doorway. If he’d thought the front end of the house was a mess, this was the aftermath of an earthquake. Empty bottles and cans of beer and coolers littered the counters and floor. There was also trash, food, and clothing strewn around. Two sneakers, not a pair, hung off of a suspended light over the sink.

  A large metallic beer keg sat on a large table just off the kitchen. Two additional steps into the room revealed a mound of garbage up against a waist-high counter and cupboards. An empty can lying on its side nearby explained the trash.

  Gunner toed the pile of refuse and discovered a shoe attached to a leg. He swept his foot over the pile, revealing a person, facedown, on the floor. The young man had managed to partially crawl into a cupboard. Gunner observed him for a moment.

  Something was off. He was too still.

  The guy wasn’t breathing.

  Gunner leaned down and searched for a carotid pulse, but couldn’t find one. The body was cool to the touch, so he’d died some time ago. He was also covered in body fluids.

  This wasn’t good. A gear inside his chest twisted and tightened, serving notice to the rest of him that trouble was on the horizon.

  Two gravely sick at the hospital and one dead here told him a shit storm was brewing that would add lawyers and more bureaucrats to the already overcrowded circus of interested parties.

  He hated bureaucrats and lawyers.

  “Joy,” he called out.

  A couple of seconds later, she appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Gunner?”

  He nodded at the body. “We have our first real casualty. We’ll need an autopsy.”

  “Autopsy?” someone behind Joy asked with a panic-induced squeak. The university’s man pushed past her. “What do you mean, autopsy?”

  Gunner pointed at the kid on the floor. “He’s dead. And what are you doing in here? You’re not wearing proper Personal Protective Equipment.”

  The man’s eyes bugged out as he stared at the body. “Aren’t you going to try to resuscitate him?”

  “He’s cool to the touch,” Gunner said, trying to be patient when he’d much rather tell the asshole to do it himself, if he didn’t want to believe a doctor. “There’s no point. He’s been dead for a while.”

  Voices, several of them, joined the cacophony of sound in the frat house.

  “That’s EMS,” Joy said. “I’ll get them organized and ask for the coroner.” She disappeared.

  The university guy couldn’t seem to rip his gaze off the corpse, his chest billowing in and out so fast he was going to make himself pass out. “The university can’t be responsible for this.”

  “That’s probably true,” Gunner said in an unfriendly tone. “But someone is.”

  The cop who’d stepped up to keep the paper-pusher busy earlier entered the kitchen, saw the dead kid, and muttered, “Aw, shit.”

  Gunner addressed the cop. “Please escort this gentleman and anyone else from the university or fraternity who wasn’t here for the party outside to wait until they can be interviewed by the CDC and police.”

  “Outside?” university man said, alarmed. “No. I need to oversee this investigation. Ensure no mistakes are made.”

  “The CDC is now responsible for that. This,” Gunner said, looking at the body, “changes things by an order of magnitude.” Death always did.

  The cop put a hand on the man’s shoulder and guided him, still protesting, out of the kitchen.

  Gunner went to the doorway and observed Joy explaining the change of status of the investigation to everyone else who needed to know.

  From possible problem to lethal pathogen.

  Chapter Four

  Sunday 11:00 a.m.

  Joy had to work hard to inject a cooperative, professional tone into her voice as she, once again, explained why everyone but CDC and EMS personnel had to leave the building.

  Senseless death made her angry.

  No, not angry, furious.

  Tearing someone like the whiny official, who thought he could intimidate the CDC, into pieces might help her achieve a Zen status, but it wouldn’t be enough. She swallowed down all the aggression, disgust, and contempt attempting to corrupt her vocabulary and worked on clearing the room of all nonessential people.

  Something had killed one young man and put two more in the hospital in critical condition. That something needed to stay contained, though that might be a fool’s hope, given the number of students who’d probably been in and out of this house during, and since, the party.

  The sick would need to be removed for treatment, the dead boy to the morgue, and samples taken. Identifying the pathogen or chemical that caused all this misery would take meticulous attention to detail.

  Her years in the Army had spoiled her. Had this been an Army investigation, there’d be no question about what would get done, by whom, and when. The world outside the military seemed to enjoy injecting confusion and control freaks who had no business being in a leadership position into any given situation.

  The cops she’d sent upstairs reported there were eight more people there. She thanked them and asked them to finish getting the civilians out—no, not civilians, bystanders—before she moved up to the second floor. She caught one young man in the bathroom, unable to leave thanks to his body evicting…everything, and backed out, saying, “I’m calling paramedics to assist you.”

  “Wait.” His voice was barely audible, but there was an edge of panic in it that made it impossible to ignore. “I’m not the only one. Before my roommate passed out a few hours ago, he had the same thing.”

  “I’ll check on him.”

  “Second door on the left.”

  The roommate was lying under the covers of a twin bed, only the top of his head visible.

  “Hello?”

  No response.

  She nudged the blankets, but there was still no response.

  She whipped off the blankets, and the smell hit her first, knocking her back a step. Decomposition so strong not even her particle mask could protect her from it.

  Just what they needed. Another body.

  How had the cops missed him? Maybe the pile of blankets that didn’t look like a person fooled them.

  Whatever this was, it was killing people, young healthy people, in a place where they congregated.

  Joy quickly checked the rest of the people on the second floor, ensuring no one else was dead, then headed downstairs right behind the paramedics and the kid from the bathroom.


  Gunner was talking with one of the sick kids, the house president.

  “Sir,” she said. She didn’t come to attention and salute, but it was close. Gunner hated it when she did it, and she loved getting a rise out of him. One of these days he was going to get his revenge, and that idea shouldn’t have excited her as much as it did.

  Girl, you have problems.

  He glanced at her, his eyes narrowed in a frown, and barked, “What?”

  It was that reaction that explained why everyone called him Dr. Grumpy. She loved it when he got growly. It made her pulse jump.

  “Another casualty, sir.”

  A lot of people would react to this news with dismay, concern, or fear. Nope, not Gunner. He took bad news personally and got mad at it. He didn’t let it impact his decision-making skills, though.

  “I’ll talk to EMS,” Gunner told her. “Please begin taking samples from the entire house. Food, water, anything that might have been ingested by several people.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She could see the wince wrinkle at the corners of his eyes. “Don’t call me sir, Joy. You’re not in the military anymore.”

  “Of course, sir.” She didn’t actually plan to continually irritate him with the use of sir every time she addressed him, but it was fun to poke the bear. He didn’t disappoint, shaking his head before stomping away.

  The kitchen was a good place to start, so she went there first, sampling everything in the room. Bottles, cans, pizza boxes, chip bags, containers that had held dip and guacamole, Chinese food containers, open milk jugs, and more.

  This was going to take a while.

  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been at it when Gunner came in some time later. “How many samples have you taken?”

  She stopped to count. “Fifty-eight.” Really? Wow, that was a lot, and she wasn’t even close to being done. A glance at her watch told her a couple of hours passed, then she caught sight of Gunner’s face. No wrinkles or lines, just smooth, relaxed skin. He knew something.

  “Did you take a sample from the beer?”

  “No. With its alcohol content, it never occurred to me.”

  “There’s not enough alcohol in it to kill off all bacteria. I’m going to do a field test for E. coli.”

  That’s what he suspected? She’d never heard of an E. coli case causing death in less than forty-eight hours. “But they’re dying so fast.”

  “I just got reports from the two cases at the hospital. They’re showing the classic symptoms of Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. The onset is rapid, very rapid, but stranger things have happened with E. coli.”

  He performed the test, adding a small sample of the beer still left in the keg to the small plastic bag containing the reagent.

  Both of them stared at the positive result.

  That did not make sense. The process of brewing beer made accidental contamination unlikely.

  “It’ll have to be confirmed,” she said softly.

  “Given the speed and severity of symptoms, we could be dealing with a new, more virulent strain,” Gunner said, already texting someone.

  It wasn’t thirty seconds before his cell phone buzzed. So did hers.

  A text from their boss, Dr. Rodrigues.

  Received preliminary E. coli result. More testing to follow. One of the kids at the hospital died.

  Her heart rate went up, preparing her for the fight her hindbrain knew was coming.

  She looked at Gunner. “I’d better get the rest of the samples we need.” It was a big house, and they’d only done the kitchen.

  “I’ll help,” he said. He opened her collection case, stared at the contents, then took a handful of sample containers from the case. “Did you bring extra?”

  “I did an internet search of the building and thought, a house that big with that many people going through it, might need additional resources.”

  He grunted. “Most people would say that’s not their job and not do it, especially when it’s not their job.”

  “I’m not most people,” she replied. “If being in the Army taught me anything, it was to never assume you know enough. Up-to-date and accurate information can save lives, including your own.”

  He seemed to think about that for a moment. “Words of wisdom,” he said without a trace of sarcasm.

  Some people offered respect with words, some with actions, Gunner did it with attitude. It shouldn’t have been a turn on, but he treated her like a true partner, equal, valued, and respected.

  It got to her in ways no slick smile ever would. It should not have made her panties damp, but the grumpier he acted, the hotter she got.

  Get your head back in the game.

  She put his sexy voice out of her mind and got back to work.

  “What made you suspect the beer?”

  “It’s the only food or beverage that’s everywhere in this house.”

  When they were done, only six sample containers remained unused. As she packed the active samples up, more vehicles with sirens blaring arrived out front.

  One of the CDC’s lead investigative lab techs, Henry Lee, walked into the kitchen a minute later. “What do you have for me?”

  He didn’t usually show up at the scene of an outbreak. That he was here told her the situation was worrying a lot of people in the upper echelons.

  “This room,” Joy said, giving the kitchen a nod.

  Henry looked into the box of samples. “Jesus Christ.” He shook his head.

  “I’m having difficulty believing the E. coli started out in the keg of beer,” Joy said, finally voicing the concern that had been bothering her since Gunner had gotten the positive result. “Breweries are usually so damn sterile you could operate on the floor, and this particular bug’s pathogenicity appears to be amplified times ten. Could the keg have been contaminated by one of the sick kids at some point after the party started?”

  “Maybe, but finding out means tracing every positive test result back to its source.” Gunner crossed his arms. “No matter how it arrived, this E. coli is causing multi-organ shut down and death faster than I’ve ever heard of before. It’s possible hundreds of kids went through this place during the party and have been exposed. Which means we haven’t seen all the victims yet. We have to be sure.”

  Henry sighed. “Okay, I’m on it.” He picked up the sample case and left.

  Joy rushed to follow him. “You said you’d stock me up.”

  “They’re in my van.” He swung an arm toward his vehicle. “Come on.”

  As soon as they got outside, the van looked an awfully long way off.

  Between the lawn of the house and the street was a line of police and university security holding back a crowd of people. Most of them were reporters, but some, from their worried faces and shouted demands to see their sons, were the parents of the men inside the house.

  The van sat behind the crowd of people.

  Henry spoke to one of the cops. A couple of minutes later, the police line was moved to either side of the van.

  Joy followed Henry to the vehicle, snatched the additional containers from him, and turned to retrace her steps back to the house.

  The air was alive with shouts and cries and screams from the people behind the police line. Her route forward narrowed until it was blocked by bodies yelling at her, but no matter how upset they were, she had to get through, had to get to the wounded…

  No. Her breathing, fast and shallow, echoed in her ears. There were no wounded, and this wasn’t a war zone. The victims weren’t suffering from shrapnel wounds and bleeding out. This was a frat house, not a military checkpoint in any of the countries she’d been deployed to. The crowd of people weren’t touching her, they were behind the yellow tape. She was safe from them, and they were safe from her.

  She didn’t have time to have a nervous breakdown in front of the press and public. People, Gunner, were depending on her to do her job.

  She dashed to the frat house. Gunner was waiting and slammed the door b
ehind them.

  He said with a growl, “I hate reporters. I despise the cocksuckers, all of them.” He gave her a quick once-over. His gaze lingered on her face, and he reached out to her, but aborted the move halfway and settled for asking, “Are you okay?”

  “I think so,” she said in as relaxed a tone as she could manage. Her body was still vibrating, convinced she was back in Afghanistan or Iraq trying to get to wounded men who’d been saved, or not, a long time ago. The iron-rich scent of blood filled her nose, but that wasn’t right. The blood here was mixed with decomposition, and the mask she wore filtered out most smells. Yet the mask seemed to intensify the scent.

  What she smelled wasn’t real. It was part of her memories, that scent, memories trying to transport her to a battle zone a lifetime away.

  Focus on your job, on what needs to be done now. Live in the moment. Be in the moment.

  She cleared her too-tight throat and said, “Let’s get this finished, so the police or a cleanup team can take over.”

  Gunner nodded, his gaze much too intense on her. Had he noticed how close she was to succumbing to the nightmares replaying over and over in her head?

  Did it matter?

  That was an answer she didn’t want.

  Work. Work would keep her focused.

  Since the kitchen was done, they tackled the main living area then spread out to the bedrooms and bathrooms, until they consumed every sample container they had. Having a task helped pull her out of the grip of the past into the embrace of present day.

  When she came downstairs with the last of her samples, Gunner was talking with two Hazmat-suited men in the doorway of the house. As soon as she got a look at their faces, she recognized them from one of the CDC’s biohazard cleanup teams.

  “Do we have a definitive identification?” she asked.

  “No, still the presumptive E. coli,” Gunner answered quietly. “Another kid has died. The university is losing its collective mind, and the news media is blowing it into Hurricane Outbreak.” He sighed. “To make matters worse, Free America From Oppression is claiming responsibility for it.”