Although every muscle in his body and every cell in his brain urged him to hurry, Kyle ambled at a leisurely pace down the road that led from the house to the laboratory.
LAURA SAT BEHIND her father’s desk in his office at the laboratory building and struggled not to cry. In the small dark hours of the previous night, while Kyle had faced the terrorist bomb, she had finally admitted that she’d fallen helplessly, hopelessly and irretrievably in love with him. When he’d returned her feelings and made love to her with a passion that took her breath and left her weak with pleasure, she’d feared she’d die of happiness.
Now she was afraid she’d die of misery.
What cut to her core was not just Kyle’s accusations against her father but that he had hidden them from her. If Josiah had been simply one of many suspects on Kyle’s long list, surely he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to keep his suspicions secret. He truly believed her father guilty.
He believes everyone’s guilty for now, a tiny voice niggled in her ear. He even suspects Wayne Pritchard because someone got his eye color wrong on an old application.
Emotionally exhausted, she shook away her conflicting feelings and refused to think about Kyle for now. The stacks of paperwork on her father’s desk, too long neglected, needed her immediate attention.
A few minutes later, she strode down the hall. Through the glass door of the staff lounge, she spotted Dr. Potter, Dr. Kwan, Gary Bowen and C.J. gathered around a table for their afternoon break. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee permeated the room, and Bowen was munching a pastry the size of a Frisbee.
“Grab a cup and join us,” C.J. called when Laura entered the room. “Tell us about the excitement in Washington.”
“Can’t,” Laura said with an apologetic shrug. “I’m looking for Wayne. There’s a discrepancy on this supply requisition I need clarified right away.”
“He was working in Lab One a few minutes ago,” Dr. Potter said, “but he’s probably already left.”
“Left?” Laura asked. “It’s only three o’clock.”
Potter flashed his congenial smile, an affectionate expression that usually lifted her spirits, but today Laura felt too low to respond. “Said he had a headache,” Potter explained, “and was going home early.”
“I’ll see if I can catch him.” Laura slipped out the door and headed down the long hall toward Lab One at the other end of the building. Her low-heeled boots made no sound on the cushioned vinyl flooring. When the laboratory building had been designed, her dad insisted his scientists have optimum quiet in order to concentrate on their work.
She entered the wide double doors to Lab One, a huge room with cheerful sunlight pouring in the southern wall of glass, efficient rows of shelves and counters on the other three sides. Microscopes, centrifuges and a myriad of the latest scientific equipment, including small isolation chambers accessible only by impermeable latex gloves, covered the stainless steel-topped island that ran down the center of the room.
No sign of Wayne Pritchard.
She was turning to leave, when Wayne suddenly straightened behind the end of an island by the undercounter refrigerator where the scientists stored working samples. Unaware of her presence, he slipped a vial into the pocket of his lab coat and started toward the door. When he spotted her, he stopped, his expression a mixture of guilt and surprise.
“Laura, I thought you were in Washington.”
“We came back early. What’s in your pocket?” The hair on the back of her neck rose. Was Wayne leaving the lab with a sample? Was he their traitor?
With apparent nonchalance, he pulled the vial from his coat and placed it on the counter. “It’s a sample of a new strain of D-5.”
“A new strain?”
“D-5A. An airborne version of the virus. Dr. Potter asked me to prepare a few slides for some tests he’s ready to run on the antidote C.J.’s working on.”
“I thought you had a headache.”
He smiled, flashing a handsome grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Took some aspirin. I’m fine now. You wanted to see me about something?”
She handed him the requisition form. “Your request for petrie dishes. The writing’s smudged and I can’t make out the quantity. Is that a two or a seven?”
He glanced at the sheet and handed it back to her. “A seven. One hundred and seventy-five.”
He seemed edgy, not his usual self. Curious, she moved a little closer, trying for a better look at his eyes. “You like working here?”
“You bet. The staff are like family.” In spite of his apparent nervousness, he met her gaze head-on.
His irises were a deep, murky brown, just as she’d remembered, but today she noted something else reflected there. Cold, menacing malice. An involuntary shiver shook her body.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
Afraid she’d given her suspicions away, she shook her head. “The air conditioning’s always too cold in the labs.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You were looking at me funny, like you’d never seen me before.”
“I was just thinking about your comment on family. We’ve lost two of our staff in the past month. I’m having trouble coming to terms with their deaths.”
“We all are.” His declaration rang false. “Anything else? I really need to get to work on these slides. Dr. Potter’s expecting them.”
“He thinks you’ve gone home.”
“Then he’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
KYLE REACHED the lab building and stopped at the reception desk. “Is Wayne Pritchard still in the building?”
The security guard checked his roster. “He hasn’t signed out yet. Most of the staff meets in the lounge this time of the afternoon for a coffee break. You’ll probably find him there.”
Kyle hurried to the lounge. He found the entire staff assembled around a table—all except Pritchard.
“Anyone know where Wayne is?” Kyle asked.
“He said he was going home with a headache,” Dr. Potter said.
Kyle shook his head. “He hasn’t signed out with security.”
“Find Laura and she can probably tell you,” C.J. said. “She was in here just minutes ago looking for him, too.”
“Last time I saw him,” Potter added, “he was working in Lab One.”
“Thanks.” Kyle, heart pounding with apprehension, left the lounge and strode down the corridor toward the lab. He hoped Laura hadn’t found Pritchard. His confrontation with the terrorist wasn’t going to be friendly, and the last thing Kyle wanted was Laura caught in the crossfire.
He swung open the doors to Lab One. In the center of the long, narrow room Laura stood beside Pritchard. Her eyes widened with surprise when she spotted Kyle in the doorway.
“Are you looking for me?”
“Yeah,” Kyle lied. “There’s a phone call for you. You’d better take it in the office.”
Laura started toward him, but Wayne grabbed her and jerked her back. Kyle wanted to rush him, but he noted the angle of Wayne’s hold. With his arm around her throat, the slightest increase in pressure could crush her windpipe.
“What the hell are you doing, Pritchard?” Kyle fought to keep calm and pretend surprise. “Is this some kind of joke? Let my wife go.”
“Wife! Don’t make me laugh.” Wayne’s face contorted in a snarl. “She’s no more your wife than you’re a research scientist. You’re a cop. And she’s my ticket out of here.”
“What makes you think I’m after you?” Kyle asked reasonably. “Have you done something you shouldn’t?”
“Don’t play games with me, Foster. You know who I am. Laura should never play poker. Her suspicions were written all over her face.”
Kyle tamped down his fear. He wanted Pritchard in custody, but first he wanted Laura safe. The color had bled from her complexion, and her blue eyes had darkened with fear, but courage was evident in the tilt of her head and the set of her jaw. He caught her gaze and tried to reassure her with his eyes.
&nbs
p; “Laura’s done nothing to harm you,” he said to Wayne. “Let her go. Take me hostage instead.”
Kyle’s mind was working a mile a minute. There was a leak in the agency. Somehow Wayne knew about Kyle’s background and the pretend marriage. But Kyle doubted the terrorist knew about the helicopter full of Montana Confidential agents who’d be landing at the Institute within minutes, waiting for him when he left the building. If Kyle could persuade Wayne to exchange Laura for himself, he could use his hand-to-hand combat skills to take him down once Laura was a safe distance away.
Wayne seemed to read his mind. “You’re a trained fighter, Foster. Laura suits my purposes better.”
In a lightning move, Kyle reached behind him and whipped out his gun. “I’m also an expert marksman. I can put a bullet between your eyes before you take another breath. Now let her go.”
Wayne swung Laura to cover his face, and at his sudden movement, the sleeve of his lab coat swept a vial from the countertop. It crashed to the floor and shattered, sending a pale gold liquid splattering across the floor, the counter and over Laura’s feet.
Wayne’s face paled, and he cursed in Arabic, but he didn’t lessen his grip on Laura’s throat. Laura stared at Kyle in panic.
“What was in the vial?” Kyle asked. He could tell from her expression something terrible had just been released.
“D-5A,” Laura said. “An airborne virus. You might as well let me go, Wayne. We’re all dead anyway.”
Chapter Thirteen
Immediately, Kyle reached to the wall beside him and hit the large red panic button, one of six scattered around the room. A Klaxon blared throughout the building, its high-pitched screech jolting Kyle to the bone. Within seconds, a huge shutter descended over the window, blocking out the sun and preventing the virus from escaping to the outside. Above him, the ventilation system shifted into high gear, and he heard the reassuring whir of scrubbers, sucking the air from the room to disinfect it.
But the scrubbers were too late to help Laura. Too late to help any of them.
“Let her go,” Kyle ordered Wayne, who still held Laura in a stranglehold. “None of us is going anywhere with the lab locked down, and she’s no protection to you now.”
Pritchard dropped his arm from around Laura’s neck and raced to a sink at the end of the lab. With frantic motions, he peeled off his shoes, socks and lab coat, and began scrubbing his exposed skin with antiseptic soap.
“Washing’s no use.” Laura leaned weakly against the counter. “You’ve already inhaled the virus. Antiseptic won’t help.”
In shock, Wayne turned, slid to the floor in a crouch and sat, hugging his knees. Kyle ignored him and raced to Laura.
“The virus works fast,” she said with an apologetic smile. “I can’t stay on my feet much longer.”
Kyle swept her into his arms, then sat on the lab floor and cradled her against his chest. He refused to admit they were dying, in spite of what she’d told Pritchard. The other scientists would come for them. There had to be an antidote. Laura had made him want to live again after the tragedies in his life. She had bonded with Molly, becoming the mother his little girl so desperately needed. He couldn’t lose her now that he’d come to love her so deeply. They could overcome their differences, their misunderstandings.
But he couldn’t overcome death.
He wanted to throw back his head and howl at the universe, but he contained his rage and grief, exhibiting only tenderness to the woman in his arms.
“I’m sorry.” She leaned her head against his chest, and he threaded his fingers through her dark hair, defying death to take her from his grasp.
He could barely speak through the sorrow that clogged his throat. “The spill wasn’t your fault.”
She shook her head, and the effort seemed to take all her strength. “I’m sorry for being angry at you about investigating Daddy.”
“It’s okay.” He could almost see the life seeping from her. “Save your strength. Don’t talk.”
“I have to tell you.” She struggled for breath. “I understand…just doing your job. I love you.”
She went slack in his arms. “No, Laura! Hang on. Stay with me. Help’s on the way.”
He glared at Pritchard, cringing against the counter on the other side of the room. “If she dies, I swear to you, if the virus doesn’t kill you, I will.”
Pritchard managed a sneer. “This stuff is lethal, man. None of us is getting out of here alive.”
Behind Kyle, the double doors opened with a bang, and three figures dressed in anticontamination suits with helmets and self-contained breathing units bore down on them, reminding Kyle of extraterrestrials in an old sci-fi movie. The first person approached and bent down over Laura. Through the Plexiglas faceplate, he recognized C.J.
“What happened?” The breathing filter distorted C.J.’s voice, making it sound as scratchy and indistinct as an old record played on a bad sound system.
Kyle pointed to the broken glass in the puddle on the floor. “D-5A. It splashed over Laura. Where’s the antidote?”
From the look in C.J.’s eyes, he knew the answer before she spoke.
“There is none. Not yet.”
“But, Laura…”
The other suited figures moved C.J. aside, and Dr. Potter and Gary Bowen reached for Laura and gently lifted her from Kyle’s arms.
“We’re taking her to the infirmary,” Potter said. He nodded to Bowen, who carried Laura out the door, then turned back to Kyle. “Can you walk?”
“I’m fine,” Kyle said. “Pritchard should go to the infirmary, too, but he’s not going without me. He’s the one who killed Dr. Tyson.”
Potter’s usually friendly features hardened behind his face mask. “Maybe we should just leave him here.”
Kyle pushed to his feet and shook his head. “He has information we need. I’m going with you to make sure he cooperates.”
Potter’s expression turned puzzled. “I can’t understand why you’re displaying no symptoms.”
Kyle shrugged. “Maybe I have a natural immunity, but, really, I feel fine. Just worried about Laura.”
Kyle crossed to Pritchard and dragged him to his feet. The lab assistant was obviously ill, bathed in sweat and shivering with fever. “Come with me,” Kyle ordered.
“You have to help me,” Wayne begged. “You can’t let me die.”
“Is that what Dr. Tyson asked just before you broke his neck?”
With Potter’s help, Kyle half carried, half dragged Wayne down to the hall to the lab’s infirmary. Filled with four hospital beds, the room had been designed for a contamination crisis. Its pharmacy was stocked with every known antidote to biological weapons.
Except D-5A.
C.J. set down the receiver of a telephone when Kyle and the others entered. Laura was already tucked into a hospital bed with an IV tube inserted into her arm. While Bowen and Potter placed Pritchard in a bed on the other side of the room, C.J. approached Kyle.
“I’ve spoken with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta,” she said. “They’re dispatching a team of specialists immediately.”
“Have you given Laura the antidote?”
The scientist shook her head. “I’ve told you. It isn’t ready. We haven’t run all the testing protocols—”
“What are her chances without it?”
“We’ll know better when the specialists arrive. This virus takes hours to do its worst. Right now, her symptoms are mild.”
“Mild! She’s so weak she can’t move.”
C.J. nodded. “That’s a hopeful sign. Those with early onset of the virus seem to fight it off best. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Me? I keep telling you, I feel fine.”
“We’ll let the specialists be the judge of that. Meanwhile, let me hook you up to a gamma globulin IV and antivirals to help your immune system fight this.”
Kyle glanced at his watch. The Black Order’s forty-eight-hour deadline was ticking away. “Can’t. I h
ave to talk to Pritchard.”
C.J. shook her head. “He needs rest, and so do you.”
“He’s Black Order, and if I don’t find out where the rest of them are hiding and what they’ve done with the D-5 and anthrax, thousands will be dying by this time tomorrow.”
More than anything, Kyle wanted to go to Laura, to hold her and assure her she was going to make it—that they both were going to beat this killer and build a life together with Molly. Even if that wasn’t true, he wanted to spend their last hours together. But he couldn’t go to her. He had a job to do.
He crossed the room to the bed where Pritchard lay shaking with chills while Potter inserted an IV in his arm. Kyle moved the scientist aside and sat on the edge of Pritchard’s bed. “There’s a special team en route from the CDC in Atlanta,” he told Wayne.
“Thank God,” Wayne managed to say through chattering teeth. “Do they have an antidote?”
“Yes,” Kyle lied. “But you’re not getting it.”
“What? But I’m dying.”
“And a horrible death it will be, too. D-5 makes Ebola look like a case of the sniffles.”
Wayne struggled to raise himself on his elbows, his formerly handsome face gray and haggard. “You can’t let me die. That’s murder.”
“Funny,” Kyle said. “You haven’t had a problem with murder up till now. First your buddies killed three innocent people with their bomb. Then you killed Lawrence Tyson.”
“You can’t prove that.” Wayne coughed, fighting for breath. “You can’t prove I’m connected to the Black Order.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But if you cooperate with me, I can make certain you get your share of the antidote before it’s too late.”
“Cooperate?” Wariness filled Wayne’s brown eyes. “How?”
“Start talking. Tell me everything you know about the Black Order—and why you killed Dr. Tyson. Otherwise the only way you’re leaving this room is in a body bag.”
HOURS LATER, Kyle sat by Laura’s bed. The CDC specialists had arrived and examined her, but had verified C.J.’s assessment. There was little anyone could do without an antidote. Only time would tell whether Laura could fight off the dreaded virus on her own.
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