Cassie nodded and straightened the menu cards in the rack. “Karen was wonderful with children, and Daniela loved her.” Another wistful smile pulled at Cassie’s lips. “My happiest memories are of time I spent with the two of them. There was one day that we took Daniela on a picnic. She must have been three. She was determined to feed crusts of bread to the ducklings, but there were some geese guarding the bank. The damn birds were bigger than she was and she was terrified.” She chuckled. “She was such a tiny little thing.”
“Just like you.”
“Yes. She looked a lot like me. Same coloring and everything.”
“I saw the pictures. She was a beautiful child.”
“Thank you.” Maternal pride lit Cassie’s face. “Anyway, she was trying to feed these geese and they were flapping their wings and hissing at her, but she was so brave. She walked right up to the riverbank and threw the crusts as far as she could for the little baby ducks. The geese got most of it, but one of the little ducklings managed to get one of them, and Daniela’s little face lit up.” Cassie wiped the corner of her eye. “She was so proud of herself for feeding that one little baby.”
“Gutsy kid.”
“Yeah, she was. But she was pretty quiet, you know? Happy with her picture books, and coloring, and learning her letters. I still have a card she made me for mother’s day. Karen helped her, but she wrote it herself. The e in Daniela was back to front, and the stick on the a was a good half inch away from the circle of it, but she was so proud of it. Oh God, I’m sorry.” She grabbed a fistful of napkins and wiped the tears from her eyes. “You must think I’m pathetic.” She hid her face in the tissue.
“Not at all.” Bailey’s voice was thick with emotion of her own. “I’m struggling not to grab a couple of those napkins myself, but that wouldn’t be good for my reputation.”
Cassie snorted. “And what reputation would that be? I already know you’re a big softie.”
“Hey, who told?” Bailey managed to suppress the urge to wipe the final tear from Cassie’s cheek and tried to ignore just how beautiful her eyes were after she’d cried.
“Jazz.”
“I knew I needed to muzzle that dog.”
“Aw, never. You couldn’t do that to someone as sweet as Jazz.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The waitress delivered their orders and left them to enjoy their meal. Bailey licked her lips while she doctored her burger.
“Ketchup and mustard?”
“It’s a taste sensation, baby.” She tore off a huge bite before offering Cassie a bite.
“No, thanks. I think I’ll stick with mayo.”
“Boring.” Bailey spoke around a mouthful.
“I’m sorry. I think I’m losing my mind. I could have sworn a half masticated burger just tried to speak to me.”
Bailey swallowed. “Sorry. I’m starving, and this is a really good burger.”
“They always are when you’re hungry.”
“True.”
“So what about you?”
“What about me?”
“I know you live alone. How come?”
Bailey choked on her burger. She spluttered and coughed, before sipping some water and wiping her eyes. “Isn’t that a little bit personal?”
Cassie quirked her eyebrow. “Are you kidding me?”
“What?”
“You’ve asked me far more personal questions and know more about me than almost anyone on the planet. And you think that’s a bit personal?”
“I ask for professional reasons.”
Cassie just continued to stare at her, clearly not buying her explanation.
“I’m a private detective. You hired me to find your kid. I have to ask questions.”
“And how does asking about my dead partner help you in finding Daniela?”
“Well…” Shit.
“So, Ms. Nosey Parker, it’s your turn to answer a few questions.”
“I guess turnabout is fair play.”
“Indeed. So?”
“Cassie, I don’t think I’m up to it…”
“Bailey, hey, no worries.” Cassie’s expression was gentle. “It doesn’t matter.” She picked up a fry and blew on it.
Bailey put her burger back on her plate and wiped her hands. I’m such a fucking chicken shit. She’s right. She’s shared far more than I needed to know for the investigation. Yes, I know there’s far more to it, stuff she can’t tell me. Not that she won’t—can’t. She has genuine reasons to be terrified of sharing anything, yet she is. I need to suck it up and be as brave as I pretend to be.
“I’m not good with people.”
Cassie frowned. “Sorry?”
“When I’m working, I am. I have to be. But just me, without the badge, or the investigation to hide behind? I’m just not good with people. I get tongue-tied, and I don’t know what to say, or I babble on and on, with no end in sight. I don’t know why. It’s just how I am.”
“Have you always thought that?”
Bailey nodded.
“Well, I think you’re wrong.”
“Cassie, I’ve got forty-nine years of history to back me up. You’re the scientist. Doesn’t that count as proof?”
“Nope. It’s faulty data.”
Bailey picked up a fry and pointed it at Cassie. “Okay, Madam Scientist, explain.”
“You entered into the study with a faulty preposition, which fatally flawed your results from the outset.”
“Did you just speak English?”
Cassie laughed. “Yes.”
Bailey scratched her head and picked up her burger again. “Well, Professor, I’m a simple gumshoe, so you better explain it in more elementary terms.”
“With subjective experiments, if you expect a certain outcome, nine times out of ten you’ll get it.”
“Ah, so it’s my own negative expectations that led me to a life of lonely spinsterhood?”
“Something like that.”
“And what happens the tenth time?”
“Exceptional variables leading to exceptional results.” Cassie’s eyes met hers and Bailey was trapped. She watched Cassie’s pupils dilate and knew her own had probably done the same. Her pulse pounded in her ears, and the air that surrounded her felt like a caress upon her overly sensitive skin. Cassie’s lips parted, her tongue darted out to wet them, and Bailey’s gaze shifted to those full, beautiful lips. She felt herself being pulled toward her, she wanted to feel how soft they were, how plump they’d feel beneath her mouth, against her skin.
“I haven’t been lucky enough to find that one,” Bailey whispered, unsure where the words had come from.
“You will.” Cassie cleared her throat. “It’s a statistical probability.” She blinked and leaned back in her chair, breaking the spell.
Bailey shook her head and took another bite as she tried to dislodge the image of Cassie’s face from her mind as she anticipated Bailey’s kiss. “Is that what Karen was for you? A statistical improbability?”
“I never said I wasn’t good with people.” Cassie winked.
Bailey snorted. “Oh, so your statistics are different, right?”
“Exactly. See, you do speak professor.”
“Thanks.” Bailey wasn’t sure how it had happened, but she felt comfortable with Cassie again. They moved on to lighter topics and laughed their way through the rest of the meal, until they decided it was time to turn in. Bailey crossed the road and tried not to think about the flash of lace she’d seen as Cassie had tucked her sleepwear under her pillow when she’d unpacked.
Chapter Twenty-three
Finn tucked her legs under her bottom and turned the page of the magazine she was pretending to read. She couldn’t focus on any of the articles in Scientific American, and she wasn’t sure why she was even bothering with the pretense, but it kept her hands busy at least. Her mind, however, was a blur of nonstop questions and problems, and every answer she found only compounded the issue. The problem was—and would always be—time. There simply wasn
’t going to be enough time to make the antidote and give it a chance to work effectively through normal channels. That would take months, maybe years, and there was no way to keep it quiet for that long.
“You do know you’re holding that magazine upside down don’t you, honey?” Charles Zuckerman squatted in front of her, a huge grin on his handsome, clean-shaven face. His blue eyes twinkled with a mixture of amusement and concern, and she wasted no time in dropping the unread magazine to the sofa and throwing her arms around his neck.
“I didn’t know you were coming. I thought it was just AJ.”
“Well, it sounded like Billy had bitten off more than he could chew trying to keep you all in line so I figured I’d come down and laugh at him.” Charlie squeezed her tightly, and she could feel the muscles in his strong arms bunching against her back. She didn’t know why, but she and Charlie had clicked from the first moment they met, and there had been more than a few times over the past few months where she had turned to him for advice, cried on his shoulder, and vented her frustrations. He had become a father figure to her in a way her own father never had been, and never would be.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“Well, I couldn’t let you guys have all the fun.”
“How did you get away from the base?”
“It took a little finessing and a little ego stroking, but I managed to make this a Navy task force that I’m heading up while I let my XO get some valuable experience in charge. He’s up for promotion next year and he needs a taste of what it’ll be like in the firing line.”
“You’re taking over from Billy?”
“Like hell he is.” Billy came in with an armload of backpacks.
Charlie winked. “Once my big brother screws up, I’ll swoop in and save the day. Don’t you worry.”
Finn giggled. “I wasn’t.”
He pointed to the magazine. “Then why were you reading that upside down? Feel like you need to add another talent to your repertoire?”
She shrugged. “I was just thinking. I can’t seem to get my mind to rest.”
“About this mission?”
“About Lugh.” She glanced around the room until she was satisfied everyone else was busy, then she lowered her voice. “That’s what we’ve been calling it. What I’ve engineered is an antidote and a vaccine, Charlie. Not a magic cure. It will be most effective in those who get the vaccine before they are exposed to the toxin. People who are exposed to the toxin before Lugh has run its course will still get sick. They could still die if they don’t get the antidote. They’ll suffer from weakness or paralysis to different extents depending on how long the toxin was in their system before they’re exposed to the Lugh.”
Charlie frowned as he listened and worked to understand what she was telling him. “So if they get the antidote at the same time as they’re exposed to the toxin, what happens?”
“Depends a little on their body chemistry, but in most cases they’ll probably suffer something like a really bad stomach flu. Vomiting, diarrhea, headache, fever, and so on.”
“So not good, but not lethal?”
“Correct. Basically they’d contract the cold symptoms from Lugh, the vaccine I’ve created, as well as the vomiting and diarrhea as the body expels Balor.”
“Nice.”
“Just keeping it real.”
“And the longer the antidote is delayed, the worse the outcome will be for the victim, up to the point of death.”
“Correct.”
“So what’s the best way to make this work?”
“Vaccination prior to exposure. Then each person will have the antibodies to Balor already in their systems and they’ll react as soon as the protein marker is detected by the body’s own immune system. It will be as effective as anyone can make it.”
“So, one hundred percent?”
Finn shook her head sadly. “No vaccine is ever one hundred percent. Some people will have immune system failure with a vaccine like that, some will have allergic reactions to the vaccine.” She shrugged. “It’s statistically inevitable, but it will be ninety-nine percent. That’s the best I can give you. But only if we can vaccinate before exposure. And the more time we can give before that, the better.”
“Why?”
“I’ve engineered Lugh into the cold virus. To eradicate the threat we need to trigger a pandemic of the common cold.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. In theory, Balor could be released anywhere. If I was him, I’d head for a major population center and put it into several food and water distribution points. The incubation period would make it difficult to track down the source, and by the time patients are symptomatic, not only is it then too late, it’s also too late for anyone they’ve come into contact with in that period. Retro vaccination is reactive and too slow. For this agent anyway. If we release Lugh before Balor is even released, the cold virus will spread and infect the population of a given area within a few days. Basing figures on the spread of the Spanish influenza in 1918, and factoring in the way we can jumpstart the process, if we pick the correct target areas, within a couple of weeks, we will have a pandemic on our hands. Within twelve hours of contracting Lugh, patients will begin to display resistance to Balor, and within forty-eight hours, they will have complete immunity.”
“So you need two and a half weeks to ensure the world is safe?”
She smiled sadly. “No. I need three weeks to ensure the world is safe from Balor. I can’t do anything about the other threats we all face, and I need some time to create the quantities of viral agent required to trigger the pandemic.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it worked out.”
“I haven’t been able to think about anything else, Charlie. I have to stop it.”
“I know.” He held her hand. “So what’s your best plan for release?”
“Airports.”
“Airports?”
“Yes. Major hub airports. If we release the virus in at least two major hub airports on each continent, we should be able to do this in the three weeks. If we use fewer hubs, it will take longer. Ideally, I would suggest more across parts of the world that are less densely populated, such as Africa, Australia, and rural areas of South America. The spread will be slower because of the geographical distance between population centers.”
Charlie scratched his chin. “Okay, and just saying that we can get the virus to this many hub airports, how exactly do you suggest we release this thing? Do we leave an open canister in the departure lounge or something?”
Finn laughed. “No. We need to release it into the air-conditioning systems.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. It’s the only way to infect the whole airport. If you just target the arrivals or the departure lounge you will only get a small proportion of the potential yield.”
Charlie frowned at her. “You do realize that sometimes I don’t understand what you say, don’t you?”
“Sorry. If we release Lugh in the departure lounge, we will infect those leaving the country and traveling elsewhere. But only a very few people staying in the country will be infected and the spread will be slow. If we release in the arrivals, we only get people who are returning and we miss a vital opportunity to spread the infection outward. If we target one gate, we limit the outward spread to only a single destination and so on. By targeting the air-condition systems, we get not only the travelers but everyone who works in the airports too. We get exponential spread across all the travel networks and the start of infection by the thousands of people who work in the airports in each hub zone. Those people go home to their families and infect them, their children infect those in their schools and colleges, their partners infect everyone they work with. Every exposure has a domino effect until everyone will be immunized.”
Charlie nodded. “I get you. But do you have any idea what you’re proposing here, Finn? A worldwide action for reasons we aren’t going to be able to explain to the people on the ground.�
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“I know. That’s why I’m worried. I don’t know if it can be done, and I can’t think of any other way to do it.” Finn knew she looked as miserable as she felt. She was doing all she could, and she knew that everyone around her would do everything in their power to help her, but even one person suffering from Balor was too much for her to bear.
“You don’t know if what can be done, babe?” Oz dropped onto the sofa next to her and slipped an arm around her shoulders.
“Finn has a plan to save the world.”
“Another one?” Oz winked. “Regular little Supergirl you’re turning into, Linda.”
Finn laughed as Oz reminded her of one of their first conversations and the alias she had used in an attempt to fly under her father’s radar. It hadn’t worked, but it was far too late by the time she had learned that fact. Charlie quickly outlined the idea to them as AJ, Junior, and Billy also took seats in the living room.
“How many airports are we talking about?” Junior asked.
“Not a clue,” Charlie said.
“There are over one hundred and sixty hub airports globally,” Finn said and everyone stared at her. She could feel the heat in her cheeks. “I Googled it when I started thinking about this plan.”
Oz laughed and kissed her head. “My little genius.”
“What’s the optimum and minimum number of targets?” Junior watched her with shrewd eyes.
“Minimum given population spread, twenty-eight. Optimum target number would be forty. More would be a bonus.”
AJ whistled. “Wow. Ambitious.”
Junior shrugged. “I thought you were going to say something worse to be honest, like half or something.”
“If we can get that many, it would be amazing, but I think if we can cover forty, we’ll make the three-week target.”
“Question.” Billy leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Is this something we really need to do when we don’t plan on this thing getting out there in the first place?”
“We thought this would die with my dad’s incarceration, but it hasn’t. I don’t want to take chances, Billy.” Finn wasn’t sure how best to convince him it wasn’t only important, but vital. “I can’t. This really is the best way I can think of to eliminate the threat once and for all. If Balor isn’t effective on a vast population, then no one will kill for it or be killed by it.”
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