Sleight of Hand (Outbreak Task Force)

by Julie Rowe

  Ketner and his friend wore identical expressions of guarded suspicion. It looked like Dozer was right, and the FBI agent wanted them off the investigation. The real question was why.

  At that moment, Ketner met her gaze and sneered.

  Sneered? How fabulous. Starting a meeting like this with open distrust did not bode well.

  The FBI agent stood, fiddled with a black device siting in the middle of the table, then pressed a button on a small camera sitting on a tripod.

  A few seconds later, Rodrigues appeared on the screen. Joy recognized the office window behind her. A good old-fashioned video conference.

  Rodrigues nodded and said, “Good morning everyone.”

  “Good morning,” the people around the table murmured back to her.

  “After receiving conflicting reports from yesterday’s investigation, I met with representatives from Homeland Security, the FBI, and the CDC to decide on a coordinated response to this biological attack.”

  She smiled, and if you weren’t careful, it would cut you to the bone. “These instructions apply to all of you, so listen closely. Stop whining and work like a team. Anyone who can’t do that will find themselves without work.”

  She paused. “Dr. Gunner Anderson and nurse Joy Ashiro are experts in disease detection and investigation. If they ask you to do something, don’t argue, do it. We’re trying to prevent the spread of a deadly E.coli outbreak that has jumped from Atlanta to New Orleans. At this time, we believe the source of the pathogen is contaminated beer from Frank Creek brewery based in Atlanta. We need to track down the last few kegs of beer before the spring break parties get started all over the city. If we don’t, potentially hundreds of students could become ill. Many of those could die.”

  Dozer cleared his throat.

  Joy looked at him. What was he up to?

  “Agent Dozer, you have a question?”

  “Dr. Gunner and Ms. Ashiro were within the blast radius of the explosion two days ago at a storage unit in Atlanta and sustained injuries. They’ve also had little sleep in the past three days.” He smiled an apology at Joy and Gunner, then at Rodrigues. “Perhaps a fresh team of investigators from the CDC could replace them?”

  Didn’t he just tell Gunner he thought they could continue working?

  “Your concern for my people’s well-being is appreciated, Agent Dozer. Especially given your own injuries from the same explosion.”

  “A slight concussion.” He flashed a little-boy smile, but Rodrigues wasn’t buying it. “As agreed, I’m limiting my role to an advisory and reporting role.”

  “Good to hear,” she said with that sharp flash of her teeth. “Unfortunately, the CDC has every team available out on active investigations. A first for us. We have a large number of disease hotspots and confirmed outbreaks domestically and internationally. Dr. Gunner and Ms. Ashiro are well enough to cope with this investigation if they have enough support from you and our other law enforcement partners.”

  She looked at everyone in the room. “Play nicely with each other,” she ordered. She didn’t say or else, but the add-on phrase was definitely implied. Unfortunately for these guys, they didn’t know how bad or else could get.

  The screen went blank.

  Joy studied the faces of the men in the room. None of them looked happy. Ketner and his pal looked angry and frustrated. Guess no one got what they wanted out of Rodrigues’s orders.

  One corner of Ketner’s mouth curled upward in a smug smile. A second later it was gone, but she’d seen it.

  What was that about?

  “While we have everyone in one room, can we have a quick debrief?” she asked before anyone else could speak. “Do we know how many more kegs are floating around out there?”

  Ketner’s expression iced over with disdain, but he leaned forward a fraction and said, “Thanks to the USB stick Agent Dozer found, our tech guys were able to access the password-protected files on the stick about thirty minutes ago. Those files contained sales information from the craft beer store. The store sold four additional kegs that are unaccounted for at this time. The files did have addresses for three of the buyers, but the fourth one”—he shrugged—“no name, no address, no nothing.”

  Dozer cleared his throat. “For the record, I didn’t find the stick, Dr. Gunner did.”

  Ketner pinched his lips together but didn’t say anything.

  Gunner nodded at Dozer, then said, “Okay, so, let’s move on the known buyers while the FBI keeps mining the USB stick for where that last keg might have gone. The sooner we get this done, the sooner all of us can go home.” He glanced at Dozer and said much too calmly, “A word with you outside?” Then he said to the room at large, “Please don’t leave. Since we have three addresses, I’d like to coordinate our response before anyone accidentally infects themselves.”

  He didn’t seem angry, and Dozer didn’t appear too worried, but she doubted either would show how they really felt in a room containing people who weren’t all getting along.

  Joy followed them out of the room and down the hall a short distance.

  When they stopped Dozer spoke before Gunner could. “I brought up that complaint, so Ketner couldn’t. If he brought it up again, he’d look like a dick, so…”

  His words rocked Joy back on her heels.

  Gunner’s frown lost some of its steam. “Is Ketner the reason the meeting was called in the first place?”

  “Oh yeah. He called his boss, who called my boss, who called me, the shit gathering steam as it rolled along.”

  Gunner stared hard at Dozer. “And your reaction was to call Rodrigues and plan to put a speed bump in front of his desire to get us off the investigation?”

  “Yeah. Like I said on the way here, you’re weird, but you’re good at your job.”

  “I don’t think the problem is gone,” Joy said with a shake of her head. “Whatever Ketner wanted…” She paused. “He thinks he got it. Or part of it.”

  Both men looked at her.

  “How so?” Dozer asked.

  “I was watching him right after Rodrigues hung up. He was way too happy.”

  “Yeah,” Gunner agreed. “I caught that, too.” He raised his eyebrows at Dozer. “What’s your take?”

  Dozer stood a little straighter. “I don’t have a clue. Ketner called in more FBI hands to help. The guy sitting next to him is his unit chief. I get the feeling that they want to run point, but until the biological danger has been ameliorated, this is a CDC investigation.”

  “So, the only thing that’s changed is we know for certain the FBI don’t like us and might stab us in the back. Wonderful.” She spun on her heel and walked back into the conference room.

  The men in the room turned to watch her enter. Gunner and Dozer were right behind her.

  She made sure to show her teeth when she smiled. “So we’ve got the GPS on three more kegs and at least one in the wind? Right?”

  Gunner and Dozer took their seats.

  “That’s the latest information,” Ketner said. He made a valiant effort to look professional but didn’t quite manage to get rid of the self-satisfied set of his shoulders. “How would you like to proceed?”

  Oh, so now, since there were lots of witnesses and not enough time to go to each address one at a time, he was all about cooperation.

  “We need three teams, one for each known location,” Gunner said. “Who bring the kegs to a central location for field testing.”

  “We have room to accommodate those needs here,” Ketner said with the friendliest expression on his face to date.

  “But not the facilities,” Gunner said with a sad shake of his head. “We’ll require a space that can handle hazardous biological materials.” He made a show of looking around. “This won’t do.”

  Ketner’s expression soured.

  MacDougall sat forward. “What about a hospital morgue or something like that?”

  “That would work,” Gunner said with a genuine smile for the officer. “Could you see
if there’s any space available in any of the health care facilities in the city?”

  “Absolutely.” He pulled out his cell phone.

  Gunner looked at the FBI agents. Joy watched them stare back at him like they were expecting bad news. Everyone else appeared interested and attentive.

  “Three teams,” Gunner said. “All of them need to be wearing proper biohazard gear. I don’t think anyone wants to accidentally infect themselves with these bugs.”

  “No,” the guy with Ketner said. “Do you have that gear with you?”

  “We brought extra,” Joy said with a smile. “You’re going to love the color.”

  No one looked excited, and that made her chuckle.

  It took about an hour for the additional agents to arrive at the office, receive a quick tutorial on dealing with biohazardous Level Two pathogens, and put on their bright orange biohazard suits.

  MacDougall had obtained permission for Gunner and her to work from the morgue in the Lafayette Hospital. The teams headed out to hunt down and collect the three kegs for which they had locations, while she and Gunner were driven to the morgue.

  They were shown to a mostly empty room down a hall from the autopsy room.

  They prepared space on the available counters for the kegs to be set up.

  “Do you think Rodrigues will split us up?” she asked after a couple of minutes. She’d meant for it to sound casual, but even she could hear the stress in her voice.

  His head jerked up. “What?”

  Joy paused. “Someone complained. How many more complaints would it take for Rodrigues to have to do something like firing one or both of us?”

  “I think it would take more than a couple of complaints for us from asshole agents in other agencies to get fired.”

  An anxious noise escaped her. “Our relationship has gotten very personal.”

  “We’re not in the Army. There aren’t any written rules against fraternization.”

  That didn’t help. Written rules or not, most people looked at an office romance with a jaundiced eye.

  She tried to take in a breath, breathe out some stress, but a tight, heavy ball had been sitting on her chest since she’d shot Mike Creek’s fall guy. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Harder to keep focused on her work, surroundings, what her hands were doing. “I’m scared,” she said in a small voice.

  “Scared?” he asked. “You?”

  There was no reason for him to sound that surprised. “Why is that so shocking?”

  “You never get scared.” He said it like it was a statement of fact.

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded. That hot, heavy knot enlarged into her stomach. “I’m scared all the fucking time.” Her last two words echoed around the room. When had she started yelling? She was losing control.

  Breathe, you stupid woman, breathe.

  Oh, holy Jesus, were those tears running down her face? She stared at her hands. Damn it, she couldn’t even wipe them away, she was wearing gloves.

  “Scared of what?” Gunner demanded. “Name the specific things you’re scared about every day.” He shook his head rapidly. “Names of assholes, that’s what I mean.”

  The knot twisted, constricting air flow, making it almost impossible to take in enough to speak. She stood there, trembling, sweating, and hyperventilating. No names surfaced out of the sea of anxiety she was drowning in.

  She couldn’t even look at Gunner, for fear of seeing pity on his face.

  “It’s not someone or something else, is it?” he asked very quietly.

  She met his gaze and discovered not pity, but understanding on his face.

  “You’re scared of yourself.” It wasn’t a question.

  He knew. He knew.

  Images from the shooting incident at the brewery flashed through her mind as if she were flipping through a photo album, one picture at a time.

  The expression on the man’s face as he locked his gaze on her hands.

  The gun in her hands.

  Gunner’s focused rage, as he calculated what he was going to have to do to disarm the man.

  During all of that, she’d felt…nothing. Not worry or anger or fear, just a rock solid knowledge there was a lethal threat. A threat to her and her partner, and it was up to her to take care of it.

  She’d squeezed the trigger.

  “I shot a man, Gunner,” she said, very, very quietly. “Not an insurgent, a fellow American citizen. Someone I protected for eight years in the Army.” She sighed. “I’m afraid I don’t know who the enemy is anymore.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Wednesday 12:14 p.m.

  Gunner took in Joy’s clenched fists, wet face, and haunted gaze, and he let his gut do his talking for him. “Bullshit.”

  She reared back like he’d hit her.

  He got in her personal space until she had to back up or be pressed against him. “Don’t castigate yourself because you did the right thing.”

  She kept backing up. “The right thing? I shot a man. We’re not in battle conditions. He was a civilian.” Her words were a demand and a plea.

  “He thought he was wearing a suicide vest full of explosives.” Gunner took her by the shoulders, halting her retreat, and lowered his head until they were nose to nose. “He would have detonated them, killing you, me, and anyone else in that building if they’d been real. He intended to do harm. You did the only thing reasonable.”

  “I don’t remember pulling the gun out. I don’t remember aiming it at him. All I remember is the surprise and fear on his face…”

  Gunner snorted. “Well, of course he was terrified. It was probably the first time in his miserable life he’d ever met a woman he couldn’t intimidate. Not only were you not scared of him, as soon as his behavior, his expression, and his body language communicated whatever piece of evil he was thinking, you reacted exactly as you were trained.”

  He smiled at her, proud of her ability to accurately read the situation. “You didn’t threaten, taunt, or terrorize. You were calm and offered him options that could have resulted in him walking away, but he didn’t take them. I’d say you did a fantastic job.”

  “But—”

  “You don’t remember pulling out your gun?” He waved that concern away. “That’s just good training in action.”

  “But—”

  He could hear all her objections just fine. “Do you remember every moment of every trip you drive in your car?”

  “No.”

  “Muscle memory is supposed to work like that. That’s what training is for.”

  Joy’s eyebrows were crowding together so low and tight they almost looked like one brow.

  “Give yourself time to think about everything that’s happened over the last few days. Taken as a whole, you’ve handled several tense situations very well.”

  She blinked. “Thank you.”

  Both their phones beeped. Rodrigues with an update.

  The death toll had risen to seventy-nine.

  “If they miss one keg, just one, that number could double,” Gunner said. “Maybe even more.”

  “Stupid way of delivering a bacterial pathogen,” Joy muttered.

  “Poisoning people has a long history, and using biological weapons in order to kill a lot of people is almost as old.”

  “No one is dipping their arrowheads into decomposing bodies or human waste then shooting them at us. Contaminated beer?” She was outraged. “That’s underhanded and dirty.”

  “The definition of terrorism,” Gunner agreed.

  “What’s the definition of terrorism?” Ketner asked as he, followed by two men, one of whom had a Frank Creek keg on a moving dolly, walked into the room. FBI, all three of them.

  Gunner explained their discussion.

  “Hmpf,” Ketner said in surprised agreement. “Sounds about right.” A moment later, the sneer was back on his face. He gestured at the keg. “Do your thing.”

  They took a sample of the beer inside the keg, a
s well as swabbed the outside surface of it. Both tested positive.

  Ketner wrinkled up his nose. “So, there’s bacteria inside the keg and on the outside of it, too?”

  “Looks like someone wanted to be sure whoever used this keg got sick.”

  “Jesus, I drink this brand.” One of the other agents looked like he was going to puke.

  “The FAFO is squawking on social media about masterminding this outbreak, and threatening more,” Ketner said.

  “FAFO has been on our radar for a while,” Joy told him, and watched his face sour further. Did the man even know how to look any other way?

  Footsteps and voices coming from the hall outside announced the arrival of the second team, led by Dozer.

  Gunner and Joy repeated the testing process, with the same results.

  Ketner said, “This is a waste of time. Just treat the sick when they show up at hospital. Use the equivalent of napalm on these bacteria. Easy, right?”

  “Wrong,” Gunner said, “Every time we develop a new antibiotic, bacteria evolve defenses against it. We’ve got resistant strains of Tuberculosis circulating, as well as a bunch of others that are resistant to all the antibiotics in current use. These two strains are resistant.”

  “So, use new antibiotics. The ones pharmaceutical companies develop.”

  “We’d love to, especially in a situation like this, but we can’t start using a drug that hasn’t been tested for adverse reactions and side effects. You wouldn’t want to jump into using it, then discover it also damages your liver.”

  “Also,” Joy added. “Those new antibiotics are hideously expensive. Sometimes as high as the mortgage on your house, for a single treatment.”

  “I hate to interrupt this philosophical discussion,” Dozer said. “But MacDougall is back with the third keg.”

  Gunner shook his head and turned away to inspect the incoming beer keg. He couldn’t see Ketner’s expression because the man was behind him, but Joy was facing them both, and she looked momentarily frightened. The hairs on the back of Gunner’s neck stood up.

  He turned abruptly, but it was still enough time for Ketner to sanitize his expression. Mostly, anyway. Loathing still glittered in his gaze.