Tiger in the Hot Zone (Shifter Agents Book 4)

by Lauren Esker

  I'll give them a little time. They have valid reasons for keeping us in quarantine, after all. She hadn't gotten a close look at the victim that Noah called Patient Zero, but she'd heard the moaning from the back of the plane. If they don't give us our phones back soon though—and my LEG—there's gonna be hell to pay.

  She'd just made her careful one-legged way out into the narrow hallway when she nearly collided with Caine coming out of one of the shower stalls.

  Peri let out a stifled shriek. Caine gave a hoarse yelp, and for the first instant, his eyes were dark to the brim, pools of obsidian blackness with no whites or irises at all.

  Peri recoiled, lost her balance, and started to fall. Caine swooped in and caught her. He propped her against the wall and stepped back to give her space. He was still wearing his scrubs; wherever he'd been, he had been running around dressed like an escaped quarantine patient.

  "What," she panted. She dug her fingers into the wall. It was warm to the touch from the sun beating down on the outside of the trailer. Caine was between her and the exit, between her and Noah, and she was locked in with him. "What are you?"

  "Okay, first, calm down—"

  "I'm not going to calm down. Where did you come from? I know you weren't in here a minute ago. And—" She'd tried to convince herself when he had appeared out of nowhere to attack Julius in the lumberyard that she just hadn't seen him arrive. But Julius hadn't seen him either, and Julius didn't have the excuse that someone was dragging him by the hair. "You got the drop on Julius the same way, didn't you? What do you do, teleport?"

  "If you don't keep your voice down," Caine said between his teeth, "we're going to have a room full of people in a minute."

  "Oh yeah? Maybe that's what I need! You have ten seconds to convince me you're not Valeria, or I'm going to scream—"

  "I'm not Valeria!"

  "—and you can explain yourself to the entire SCB."

  "I can't tell you—"

  "Ten, nine, eight—"

  "For fuck's sake," Caine muttered, running his hand through his hair.

  "Five—"

  "I needed to run a personal errand." The words came out in a rush. "I went to see the widow and child of Cameron Thiessen."

  Peri had been inhaling for a scream. Now she let it out. "Oh."

  She might have disbelieved him, except for his visible anguish. She'd seen his emotional armor crack after Thiessen's death, and he had the same look now. This was a man who was grieving.

  "I'm sorry," she said hesitantly. "You were close to the Thiessens?"

  "Cameron Thiessen was a close friend. You might say blood brother." He gave her a dry, thin-lipped smile. The grief was sealed away again, but some of it lingered in faint lines of stress and pain around his eyes. "I don't have very many friends."

  "Is his wife okay?" Peri ventured.

  "How would you be, in her shoes?" was his sardonic reply. "She has family with her. I didn't stay long."

  "And—how'd you get there?" Peri took a quick peek into the shower stall he'd come out of. There was no door there, no crack or window. He wasn't wet; he hadn't been showering. "How'd you get in and out?"

  "That," he said flatly, "I can't tell you."

  She wanted to press the issue, but just then Delgado appeared in the doorway between the two trailers. Her hair was sleep-tousled, and she looked—

  Scared. She looked scared.

  "Peri," she said, not bothering with a greeting, "how's Noah this morning?"

  "He's still asleep. In there, actually—you could check on him yourself ..." She trailed off. A cold hand wrapped around her heart. "How's Trish?"

  "Sick," Delgado said simply.

  The cold hand clamped down and squeezed.

  The first person she saw when she crutched back into the other trailer was Dawn, sitting up on her cot and looking completely terrified. Trish was also sitting up, hunched over and coughing dryly.

  "I'm not that sick," she complained as Delgado hurried over to her with a paper cup of water. "It's just dry in here—thank you—"

  Peri sat on the edge of Noah's cot. At first glance, he seemed okay. He was still fast asleep, with the blanket pushed down and tangled around his waist. She touched his forehead and jerked her hand away at the dry heat.

  "He's burning up." Noah's parted lips were dry and cracked-looking. "Noah, Noah, wake up." She prodded him desperately. All she managed to get from him was a faint moan.

  "Are you sick?" Caine asked Delgado.

  "Not so far." Delgado gave him a weak smile that was more of a grimace. "Well, aside from a whole lot of what I'm pretty sure are psychosomatic symptoms. You okay?"

  Caine jerked his head in a terse nod.

  Peri understood what Delgado meant by psychosomatic symptoms. Her stomach churned, and she felt flushed and hot. But she didn't think it was real. It was knowing that she was sitting in a room with whatever had sickened Noah and Trish, breathing in those germs.

  Dawn came back from the bathroom with cold wet hand towels, her mom side asserting itself. "Maybe it's just a cold," she said hopefully as she handed one of them to Peri.

  "Shifters rarely catch colds," Delgado said.

  "Thank you, morale officer," Trish said, coughing again. She was starting to look a little more alert, her eyes less glassy. "Up in Seattle, we had a bunch of people out sick with the flu last fall. Half the office was down with it. I didn't get it then, and I don't think Noah did either. Maybe it's finally catching up with us. A mean enough flu to get past a shifter's immune system would have to be ..." She broke off in a coughing fit and leaned on Delgado.

  "A pretty nasty flu," Delgado finished for her. "Could be. You're more likely to get sick when you've been healing because it depletes your body, and you've both been hurt lately."

  "We need to get some medical help in here," Dawn said.

  "We're locked in." Peri wiped Noah's damp forehead with the hand towel. I'm literally mopping my boyfriend's brow. It would be almost funny if the whole situation hadn't been so terrifying.

  "Well, yes, but we have people sick in here. What are they going to do, leave us locked in to die?"

  Peri gave Caine a beseeching look. She wished she could take him aside and talk to him, but she didn't want to leave Noah. Still, she tried to telegraph as much as possible with her eyes. I kept your secret. You have a way in and out. Please, for all of us, use it now and get help.

  Caine didn't speak, but—whether in response to her mute pleading or to his own conscience—he turned toward the shower trailer.

  He didn't have a chance to do anything. The outer door slammed, and two quarantine-suited individuals entered the trailer. With their faces shielded, Peri couldn't tell who it was until one of them spoke and she recognized Dr. Lafitte's voice. "I'm sorry you've been kept waiting. How are you doing in here?"

  "Two of us are sick," Delgado said bluntly.

  "There's not a plague out there, is there?" Peri asked. Her voice came out desperately plaintive. She'd seen far too many apocalypse movies in which the hero emerged from a bunker or coma or jail cell to find the entire world dead.

  "No, everyone here at the Arizona office is perfectly fine so far," Lafitte said in a warm, firm tone. She sat on the cot beside Noah's and opened a medical case. The person in the other suit, who Peri was pretty sure was Mavis Begay, went to Trish. "When did the symptoms begin?"

  "They were sick when we woke up this morning," Delgado said.

  "I had a headache last night," Noah reported in a scratchy whisper.

  Peri kissed him on the ear. Germs be damned; if she was going to catch whatever he had, she was already infected. "Welcome back."

  "Now hold still for a minute," Lafitte told him, putting a thermometer in his ear. Peri wrapped her arms around him and held him steady. His heartbeat felt abnormally fast.

  Noah opened his eyes, then squeezed them shut. "Is it just me or are the lights too bright in here?"

  "Light sensitivity is a common flu symptom," Lafitt
e said. "And it's possible that's all you have. The flu last fall at the Seattle office—" She stopped. Peri was close enough to see a rapid parade of emotions cross her face behind the plastic shield: shock, fear, and then a clamped-down, studied calm.

  "What?" Peri asked. "What is it?"

  Caine, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, spoke up suddenly. "You think it was a test run for the real thing?"

  "It ... may have been." Lafitte blew out a breath, fogging the inside of the face shield. As she spoke, she prepped a blood-draw kit. "Flu was highly prevalent in the Seattle shifter population last fall. That's not terribly rare. Every so often a common illness mutates in a way that allows it to slip past our stronger immune systems, and when it does, it tends to hit us hard. But it usually goes along with a corresponding outbreak of the same virus in the human population. In this case, I don't remember unusually high numbers of flu cases in Seattle generally. I'm going to have to look at the CDC records to be sure."

  "Wait, so can we catch it, or can't we?" Peri asked.

  "If this was engineered specifically to affect shifters, the answer is probably no—"

  "I want to talk to a lawyer," Dawn said.

  "Calm down, everyone." From Mavis's tone, she sensed the mood in the room was moving rapidly toward rebellion. "We never meant to keep you here as long as we have. We needed time to set up a secure quarantine area in the lab, and that's ready now. We've got clothes for you to wear there, too."

  "Someone better bring me my leg," Peri said.

  "We also need shoes," Dawn added. "In case you've forgotten, we're barefoot."

  As far as Peri could tell, they had forgotten, but at least they were prompt at bringing clean clothing and, to her vast relief, her leg. Noah and Trish were taken away on stretchers while the rest of them got dressed.

  As much as Peri didn't want to be separated from Noah—given current circumstances, she had no confidence whatsoever that she'd be allowed to see him afterward—she took advantage of the opportunity to corner Caine as the others filed gratefully out of the trailer. "Did you infect Agent Thiessen's entire family with whatever we've all got?" she demanded in a fierce whisper.

  "No," was his terse reply.

  When he didn't seem inclined to elaborate, she pressed it. "What do you mean, no? No because you're not sick, no because you're just that confident, no why?"

  The answer came in a gravelly whisper between his teeth. "Because I can't catch it. I doubt if I can carry it either."

  "What?" She drew back, too puzzled to stay angry. "So, if you can't catch it, why are you in quarantine with us?"

  He lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug. "Do you really think they'd let me out if I just told them that?"

  Before Peri could figure out how to answer that, Mavis Begay called through the doorway, "Are you two planning on leaving, or do you want to stay here?"

  A technician gave them both respirator-style masks to wear, after which they were allowed out of the plastic-sheeted entry into the clear desert morning. The lab complex was much closer than Peri had realized the night before in the dark. The trailers were parked not more than a five-minute walk from it. In a group, escorted by quarantine-suited agents, they crossed the trampled, sandy ground, went past a dry-climate garden flanking the building, and through a door that Mavis opened with a key-card swipe.

  It seemed forever since they'd been issued their cards in the computer lab. And a whole world of forever, Peri thought, since the last day she woke up in her old bed, in her old apartment, before her life changed in ways she could never take back.

  "Are you taking us to Noah and Trish?" she asked. "I want to see Noah."

  "You can see him," Mavis said. "But first, I assume you'll want to eat. Let's get you into the secure facility and we'll have some food brought down."

  The "secure facility" was a windowless, white-painted room. Sinks and tables with vent hoods along the walls indicated that, up until very recently, it had been a chemical lab. Now there was a depressingly familiar row of cots down the middle of the otherwise empty room. The sound of a ventilation system thrummed softly overhead.

  From one prison to another. Peri wanted to cry. Dawn looked mutinous. Delgado merely looked tired, Caine inscrutable.

  "We thought this would work well, since it has a contained ventilation system and adjoining bathroom and shower," Mavis explained.

  "And how long are you planning to keep us here?" Dawn's voice was still soft, but there was an angry undercurrent. It seemed the paint store clerk was reaching her breaking point.

  "That's not a question I can answer. It's not up to me."

  "I have a teenage daughter and an elderly parent who both depend on me. I can't be out of touch this long. I need my phone."

  "We'll have food and your phones and other things brought to you," Mavis promised. "Any special dietary restrictions? No? Then you'll have your breakfast shortly."

  "What about me?" Dawn demanded. "I didn't even get a chance to pack so much as a toothbrush in Flagstaff. I have a child. Let me out or I'm going to contact a lawyer."

  "I'll talk to the Chief. That's all I can promise."

  Alert to the growing whiff of mutiny in the room, the SCB agents were back promptly with trays from the cafeteria—Peri's stomach growled at the tantalizing smell of eggs and bacon—and Ziploc bags containing wallets, phones, keys, and other personal effects, as well as cheap travel kits with toothbrushes and toiletries. Some bag-swapping ensued as they determined whose items were whose. Peri fingered her Grand Canyon keychain with the emergency whistle. She'd completely forgotten that she had it. I guess that might've come in handy in the lumberyard, if I'd remembered ... She tucked it into her pocket.

  Dawn was checking her phone for reception. She began cursing softly when she realized it didn't have any.

  "I don't think that part is their fault," Delgado spoke up. She still looked very tired, with gray shadows under her eyes, and Peri wondered if it was just the worry they all shared, or if Delgado was starting to feel sick as well. "We're deep in the building here."

  "I don't care! I'm so tired of being jerked around by these—these jerks."

  Dawn looked on the verge of tears. Peri was too, but she dug a fork into the plate of eggs and bacon wordlessly.

  What Dawn didn't seem to understand was that they were prisoners, and therefore, all the power was in their captors' hands. Right now, she mainly just wanted to find out where Noah was being held and see him. Beyond that, well ... if escape became necessary, she would have to figure out a way. In the short term, she planned to be a model prisoner until she got an opportunity to send a message out.

  Look at me, learning self-control.

  After eating, she took a turn in the bathroom. It was cramped, but there was a small mirror and she took the time to brush her teeth and used the little comb in the travel kit to get her hair into some semblance of order. The dyed color was beginning to fade, and her roots were showing. Under the harsh lights in the bathroom she looked as gray and tired as Delgado.

  She hadn't slept well last night, jerking awake from nightmares of Thiessen crumpling in a pool of blood. Sometimes, even worse, Thiessen was replaced by Noah.

  At least if they're holding us prisoner here, we're all safe from Julius.

  For now.

  She came out of the bathroom freshly fired up to demand to see Noah, but it turned out that two techs had just arrived to take them there. They were asked to don scrubs and gloves over the top of their clothes, as well as masks and little slippers that fit over their shoes. One of the techs escorted Dawn off to look for a part of the building with phone reception, while Delgado and Peri went with the other to the medical facility, which turned out to be next door. Peri wondered idly if Caine was going to take advantage of their absence to pop out again on another errand—however he was doing it—but that thought fled from her mind at the sight of Noah.

  He was in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and a bunch of monitors. His eye
s opened when she sat down beside him and he gave her a wan smile. He looked exhausted and grayish, but he certainly wasn't as bad off as Patient Zero.

  "Hey," he whispered.

  "Hey yourself." She took his hand and folded it between both of hers, wishing she could feel his skin without gloves in the way. If they'd been alone, she would have risked pulling down her mask to kiss him, but Trish was in the next bed over—now with Delgado hovering over her—and several techs were around, as well as Lafitte. None of them were wearing full quarantine suits anymore. Instead they wore the same scrub-mask-gloves combo that Peri and Delgado had been put into.

  "How are they doing?" Delgado asked from her seat on the edge of Trish's bed.

  "So far? No worse than the flu, which it closely resembles." As she spoke, Lafitte was prepping a blood draw; she moved in on Peri first. "We're keeping them hydrated and pumping them full of antivirals. Which is probably contributing to how lousy they're feeling, but most diseases are easier to arrest in the early stages than after they've developed into a full-blown case."

  Peri laced her fingers through Noah's while the needle went into her vein; he squeezed her hand weakly. She was starting to feel like a human pincushion. "If they were sick in Seattle, hasn't the whole office been exposed?" she asked.

  Lafitte took a breath and hesitated before speaking. "Right now both the Seattle and Arizona offices are on lockdown. There are some agents in the Seattle bureau displaying mild flulike symptoms who are in quarantine. We also have a possible case in Buffalo. No one here is showing symptoms yet."

  Horrifying possibilities spun through Peri's mind, each worse than the last. If Trish and Noah had been contagious when they'd flown from Seattle, everyone on the plane had been exposed—heck, everyone in the airport too. Not to mention the staff at every business they'd visited, in Washington and here, from the gas station clerk in the Cascades to the Flagstaff hotel workers. The "possible case in Buffalo" probably meant Cho. It really was an epidemic.

  "Do we know where they caught it from yet?" Delgado asked, with a level of calm that Peri found impressive under the circumstances.

  "Since Noah and Trish are sick, but no one else here is showing symptoms, we're assuming the most likely point of contact for both of them was the morgue. However, there are other possible vectors, such as Noah catching it from Julius and spreading it to Trish, or Jen Cho as the original vector to both of them. Given the uncertainty, we're guessing the incubation period is somewhere between four and seven days."