She could use it as a weapon, though. It was heavy enough to knock out even a muscular man like him. But that would require he get close enough that she could swing it at his head, which was something she wanted to avoid.
“Dr. Claire Oliver?” he asked. His voice gave no hint of his intentions.
She continued backing away. “Do I know you?”
“No.” As if realizing he’d frightened her, he stopped several feet away and raised his hands, palms out. “But you know a friend of mine. Jean-Luc Cavalier. You met him at the Trinity Sands Resort in Martinique.”
Some of the tension eased out of her spine, but she wasn’t completely ready to trust this man yet. Just about anyone could find out that information if they wanted to. “Tell me something about him only his friend would know.”
His brows arched in surprise, then after a moment, he nodded. “He has two younger sisters and a brother. Marielle, Etienne, and Roseline. He was raised by his grandmother, who died earlier this year, and he’s been off-kilter ever since.”
“Anyone can find that out with an internet search.”
Another lift of the brows. “Okay. He thinks a voodoo priestess cursed him with celibacy on Mardi Gras.”
Now it was her turn to be surprised. “He does?”
The man smirked. “Didn’t tell you that, did he? Yeah, he wouldn’t have. You got to him like no other woman ever has.”
Her cheeks heated up. “I did?”
“He chased you to Nigeria.” He waved a hand at the bustling city around them. “What do you think?”
And now he was dying. Her breath caught in her throat as the weight of the bag on her shoulder seemed to increase. She didn’t have time to stand here quizzing this guy. She had to get back. “What’s your name?”
“Marcus Deangelo.”
She nodded. She’d suspected as much. “He’s been looking for you.”
“You too, Claire.”
She hurried toward him. “We need to go right now. He needs us.”
As she passed, he fell into step beside her. “Where is he?”
“He’s sick.”
He caught her hand and pulled her to a stop. “What?”
She met his gaze. “He’s infected with an unknown hemorrhagic virus. I’m trying to save him.”
“Jesus Christ.” He took the bag off her shoulder. “Let’s move.”
…
“Let me take the shot.”
Mercedes placed her hand on Sebastian’s rifle and pushed it toward the floor. He’d come racing back to her apartment with the weapon ready to go. “No. You kill him now, I’ll lose Dr. Oliver.”
“If I don’t kill him now…” He trailed off at the look on her face. “I want out, Mercy. Killing Deangelo, finishing my mission, gives me a clean break.”
This again. He had to know deep in his heart that wasn’t true. “If you care anything about me, you won’t take that shot—”
“Don’t do that.”
“You want to get away? Well, I want to live and capturing Dr. Oliver is my only chance to keep breathing. I don’t want to end up like Briggs!”
In a rare moment of tenderness, Seb raised his callused hand and cupped her cheek. “I don’t want that either.”
“Then let’s work together. We’ve always made a good team. Please, Seb.”
After a tense moment, he backed away from the window and lowered the rifle. “They’re on the move. Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it now.”
She grabbed her go bag and headed for the door. “We get close enough to bug them with a tracker. Then once I know where Dr. Oliver is holed up, you can have your shot at Deangelo.”
…
Dayo waited next to their rental van, arms crossed over his large chest, a frown dragging down the corners of his lips. He pushed away from the vehicle when he spotted Claire on the busy street.
He was pissed. She couldn’t blame him. He’d taken on the role of her protector and she’d ducked away the first chance she’d had.
“Where were you?” His eyes narrowed in on Marcus. “And who is that?”
She decided to answer the second question because it was easier. “A friend.”
Marcus seemed just as skeptical as Dayo was of him. “Who are you?”
Claire huffed. “Also a friend.” She held out her hands to keep them apart, half afraid they’d start a brawl right here on the street if they got too close to each other. “Guys, can we save the dick measuring contest? We don’t have time. We—”
A skinny teenager smacked into her from behind and she very nearly went sprawling onto the potholed road. Both Dayo and Marcus jumped forward to catch her before she fell flat on her face. She couldn’t say why, but their actions annoyed her. She could take care of herself, dammit. She’d made it this long without bodyguards, and had done just fine for herself.
She pushed them both away and straightened, checking her pockets. She’d had about ten thousand naira, the equivalent of about twenty-eight U.S. dollars, folded up in her side pocket, but the bills were gone. Figures. She searched for the little thief, but he was long gone.
Didn’t matter. She turned back to the guys. “We have to go.”
Dayo stepped back to block the door of the van. “We don’t know him. He’s not going back with us.”
She looked at him, silently pleading. They were wasting time. Every second they stood here arguing was a second closer Jean-Luc slipped toward death.
After a hesitant moment, Dayo stepped aside. “I don’t like this.”
She touched his hand as she climbed into the seat. “Please, trust me.”
…
Mercedes peeled off the equivalent of twenty U.S. dollars and handed it over to the kid, who grinned up at her with yellow teeth. She had no doubt he’d also pick-pocketed Dr. Oliver while planting the bug, but that was okay. The street kid would be eating well for the next week on this one job. In fact, she kind of wanted to give him more. She’d been in his position once, and knew what real hunger felt like.
Ah, what the hell. Not like it was going to break her. She gave him what amounted to another twenty and his eyes rounded in shock. He’d likely never had so much money in his life.
“You use this well,” she told him. “Get yourself food, shoes.”
Tears sparkled in his eyes. “I will, I will. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
She jerked her chin, afraid she’d tear up if he continued thanking her. “Go on. Get outta here.”
She walked a block to where Seb waited in his car. He smiled as she slid into the passenger seat. “You’re a softie, Merce.”
When she glared at him, his grin only spread. “Not saying it’s a bad thing. It’s one of the many things I love about you.”
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. He’d been dropping the L-bomb a lot lately and she was never sure what to say in response. He seemed pretty sure the thing they had was love, but how was she supposed to know?
Before Sebastian, the only thing she’d ever had resembling a loving relationship was with Defion and Harrison Stead, but that was always with the caveat that she do as she was told and always return successful from a mission. She suspected that’s not how love, fatherly or otherwise, was supposed to work. Of course she’d heard the love songs, watched the rom coms, read the books and poems, and in them love was always given freely, without qualifications or restrictions, but she couldn’t help but see that as fantasy and nothing more. It made her wonder what Seb wanted from her besides sex.
She cleared her throat. “Are we good to go?”
Seb opened his mouth to say something, but then just shook his head and hit a few keys on the computer sitting on the dashboard between them. A map popped up with a blinking red beacon. “We have her,” he said and handed the laptop to her before shifting the car into gear.
Mercedes stared at the map, watched the beacon move toward the airport. Love or not, she’d never failed a mission for Harrison, and she wasn’t about to start now.
I’m coming for you, Dr. Oliver. There’s no place to hide now.
Chapter Twelve
Marcus Deangelo had seen a metric ton of bad shit in his life. With his father’s half of the family firmly entrenched in the mafia, he’d seen more death and destruction before his tenth birthday than most people saw in a lifetime.
But this…
This was next level horror. The body bags were piled two and three deep in some places. His stomach turned over, but whether that was from the gruesome sight or the copious amount of alcohol he’d consumed last night was anyone’s guess. He should lay off the drinking. He knew he was slipping over the edge, but couldn’t seem to sleep anymore without the dulling effects of booze.
Claire noticed him staring at the bodies. “We’re running out of locals willing to help. All we can do is remove the dead from the hospital to open up beds for new patients.”
“How many have died?” His voice came out like a croak, and he cleared his throat. “How do you stop it?”
“At last count, the death toll was nearly one thousand, but the government still refuses to acknowledge the problem. At this point, the only way to stop it is to contain it,” Claire said as she led him through the maze of white tents that made up the hospital. “I used to work with the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and contacted several former colleagues. Along with the WHO and CDC, USAMRIID will put pressure on the Nigerian government to throw money at the problem, but until then, we’re working with limited resources. It’s like trying to contain a flood with a strainer.”
Unease rippled through him. If she contacted all of those people, it was only a matter of time until Defion found her. He knew Jean-Luc would want him to whisk her as far away from here as possible, but he couldn’t. Not until the Cajun was on the mend. If the Cajun could be saved at all…
No. He slammed the mental doors on those dark thoughts, and instead refocused on his surroundings. “Is it always like…” He waved an arm at the body bags. “This?”
“Unfortunately, it’s not unusual,” Claire said with a sigh. “Civil war, a lack of resources, and political corruption are endemic in the kinds of places these outbreaks happen. The thing that’s unusual about this situation is how completely unconcerned the government is. They probably think that because it’s hitting the Niger Delta, it’s solving their problem with the oil pirates and militant groups in the region. But they’re making a huge miscalculation. If they don’t act soon, the virus will spread beyond the Delta and into their cities, and from there, we’ll end up with a worldwide pandemic. It’s highly infectious and has a nearly one hundred percent mortality rate.”
He drew a shaky breath. “And Jean-Luc…?” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He’d already lost one of his best friends this summer. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing the other.
“Yes,” she said in a clipped tone that was meant to mask her emotion. It didn’t. She really cared for the guy, and that knowledge sent a bolt of guilt through Marcus’s gut. If she succeeded in saving Jean-Luc, he’d stick around for a while, but it wouldn’t last. The Ragin’ Cajun just wasn’t the kind of guy who stuck. It was one of the things Marcus had always liked about him. While the rest of their teammates were pairing off, getting engaged, married, and becoming family men, he and Jean-Luc were the confirmed lifetime bachelors.
Jean-Luc would break her heart.
Marcus opened his mouth to tell her to guard that particular organ, but she didn’t give him the chance.
“In here.” She held open a flap on one of the tents. “If you want to see him, we have to suit up. And hurry. Sunday says he’s running out of time.”
Marcus had never worn a full biohazard containment suit before. It was a process to get on. They changed into scrubs then donned white coveralls with hoods. Claire used duct tape to secure his boots to the legs of his suit. Next came latex gloves and a second pair of rubber gloves, which were again tapped securely to the suit. The respirator felt suffocating until the airflow started. It had a faintly plastic scent. Claire taped his hood to his mask, and then he stood there, sweating, while a nurse helped her through the same process.
Finally they crossed into the first of the containment units, what Claire called the “warm zone.”
“Usually,” Claire said, “this area would be full of patients recovering from the virus.”
He looked around at the empty space. There was one bed, and a skinny girl sat on it, watching them with apprehension. “Is she the survivor you told me about?”
“We don’t have her test results yet, so it’s premature to call her a survivor. We don’t know that she ever had the virus. But, yes, that’s Ebiere.” She lifted a hand and waved. Ebiere hesitated, then waved back.
Claire paused before they crossed though an airlock into the next tent. “This is the hot zone. If you catch your suit on anything, even if you don’t think it ripped, be sure to tell me right away. We’ll have to leave and decontaminate.”
He nodded.
Claire moved forward, but stopped when he didn’t immediately follow. She glanced back. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
He looked at the airlock separating them from the hot zone, and for the first time in his adult life, he knew real fear. It was a sour taste on the back of his tongue, a roiling in his stomach, a cold sweat dripping down his spine. He didn’t want to go in, but… “Jean-Luc is in there?”
“Yes.”
He thought of Danny dying in his arms on that Martinique beach and drew a sharp breath of plastic-scented air. He was already more than half broken by the experience, and it’d likely shatter him to watch Jean-Luc die, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to let the guy die alone, surrounded by strangers.
Claire touched his arm, drawing his gaze to her. He could only see her blue eyes through the mask, but they were fierce, intelligent. She was the furthest thing from Jean-Luc’s usual airhead type.
“I am going to save him,” she said. “I just have to have his consent first.”
She was so determined, and so unafraid to walk into a place where one tiny tear in her suit could mean death. He felt like a coward next to her. He straightened his spine, and told himself to man up. “Let’s do this.”
Claire led the way, and even with the mental pep talk he gave himself as they crossed from the warm into the hot zone, he was woefully underprepared for the sight that greeted him. People…everywhere. Some were laid out on stretchers on the floor. Sheets stained with blood and who knew what else covered the ones who had passed.
Jean-Luc was here. He was one of these people crying out in agony. Marcus’s heart had climbed into his throat by the time Claire stopped at the foot of a bed. He didn’t want to look. He couldn’t look. And he couldn’t not look.
Dark bruise-like splotches covered Jean-Luc’s arms and chest. He seemed to be struggling to breathe, each inhale-exhale shuddering his wide chest. Christ, he looked like Danny had in those final moments.
Claire moved around to the side of his bed and took his limp hand. “Jean-Luc? Look who I found.”
He didn’t stir. Didn’t even open his eyes. Just continued with the pained breathing.
Claire gazed up. “Talk to him. Maybe hearing your voice will bring him around.”
Marcus opened his mouth, but nothing but an odd croaking sound came out at first. He tried again. “Hey, man. You got yourself into some shit this time.”
Still nothing.
Claire shook her head and flagged down a passing nurse. “Has he regained consciousness since I left this morning?”
“He hasn’t. I’m sorry, Dr. Oliver.”
“No…” She leaned over Jean-Luc and pried open one of his eyes. “We can’t be too late. We can’t…”
Marcus was no medical professional but even he knew the lack of reaction to her penlight was a bad sign. A wave of dizziness washed over him and he gripped the end of the bed so hard the frame creaked.
Claire gra
bbed Jean-Luc’s shoulder and shook him. “C’mon, you need to wake up. I can’t save you if you don’t wake up and talk to me. Please…” Her voice broke. Tears streamed from her eyes, and her facemask fogged.
“If we don’t do anything, he’ll die?” he asked hoarsely.
She was openly sobbing now and weaved her fingers through Jean-Luc’s. “Nobody’s recovered yet.”
“And if you give him the antiviral drug you’ve been working on, he’ll be a guinea pig.”
“Yes.”
“But without it, he’s dead anyway.” He made up his mind. “Do it.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“I’m his healthcare proxy.” Everyone on the team had chosen one last year after their leader, Gabe, was shot during a mission and had nearly died. At the time he’d thought it an unnecessary precaution, but now he was grateful Jesse, their medic, had pushed for it. He couldn’t lose another friend. “I say do it. Give him Akeso.”
Claire straightened and stared at him for a beat. There was no mistaking the hope in her tear-filled eyes. “Are you sure? This is absolutely a shot in the dark. I don’t know the correct dosage or…anything, really, except it worked in the lab tests. You do understand this could kill him? Or worse.”
He waved a hand at the bed. “What could be worse than this? Yes, I’m fucking sure. I’ll sign anything you need me to. I’ll take the heat if things go wrong. I’ll say I forced you.” Even he heard the hysterical edge to his voice, but this was too much. Danny and Jean-Luc were both on the short list of people he loved most in this world. “Please, Claire. He’s like a brother to me. I can’t—lose him. Work your magic.”
“It’s not magic.” She chewed on her lower lip and gazed down at the small red cooler she’d brought in with them, then looked at Jean-Luc’s still form on the bed.
He followed her gaze to the only true friend he had left. It wasn’t right, seeing Jean-Luc like this. The man was so full of life, light, laughter. The epitome of laissez les bons temps rouler, as Jean-Luc himself would say.
Claire finally moved. She released her grip on Jean-Luc’s hand and grabbed the cooler. “This is crazy,” she muttered as she opened it and removed a package of dry ice.
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