Her Last Defense

by Vickie Taylor

  The captain’s cell phone rang. He answered it, listened for a moment, then said, “Excellent,” and flipped the phone closed. “We’re good to go,” he told Clint and Del.

  She wanted to blurt out that Clint wasn’t good to go. The look on his face said he expected her to tell his friends he didn’t belong on the mission, but she couldn’t. He needed to decide that for himself.

  She could only hope she didn’t regret her choice to keep silent later. Like at his funeral.

  When he had his gear on—about fifty pounds of Kevlar, an assault rifle and extra ammunition—he pulled her aside.

  “Thanks,” he said tersely, as if it hurt him to talk about it.

  “Thank me by getting yourself out of there in one piece.”

  “I always do.” He smiled, but she saw through it.

  “We need to talk about this later,” she said softly.

  “We will.” He pulled his helmet down. “Right now we have a plot to destroy the world to foil.”

  Plot foiling took a lot longer than she expected. She’d thought it would be like the movies. Lots of shouting, pounding feet. Maybe a battering ram on the door.

  Instead, men crawled around the foundation of the old frame house on their bellies, inserting gadgets. Listening devices and cameras, a deputy told her. They wanted to know what they were walking into.

  Minutes dragged into hours, and Macy began to sweat, though the autumn sun was weak and the sky overcast. Macy looked at the matching rocking chairs on the wide front porch and wondered who lived there. The chairs made her think it was a couple. Retired, maybe. Her stomach churned at the image of them sitting together with their gray hair, laugh lines around the eyes. She saw them holding hands, sipping lemonade and watching the sun set.

  She shook her head to clear it. Man, her imagination was way too active. She had to stop thinking like that, thinking the worst. Yet still the images persisted in her mind.

  Her stomach, however, had moved on, and begun to growl for its lunch by the time Clint walked back to her, his helmet in his hand. “The house is clear,” he said. “But there’s something you need to see.”

  She followed him until the county road turned into a gravel drive. He bent low then and quickened his pace. “Stay down and stay behind me.”

  “I thought the house was clear?”

  “You’re the one who’s usually lecturing on precautions.”

  “Point made.” She did as he said and wound up at the east wall of the house, beneath what appeared to be a bedroom window.

  A man dressed similarly to Clint, but with FBI in big, block letters across his bullet-resistant vest, handed her a miniature monitor. A tiny ribbed tube led from the device to the window, where it was connected to a piece of plastic as flat as a credit card inserted beneath the sill.

  “Use the buttons to angle the camera left or right, up and down,” the agent explained. “Like a video game.”

  Clint leaned over her shoulder. “Pan left, to the bed. Stop. That’s it.”

  When the image cleared up, she flinched as if she’d been hit. “Oh, God.”

  A man lay on the bed in the corner, his arms and legs flung wide. His shirt was plastered to his body as if he were soaking wet, and blood trickled from his nose and the corners of his mouth. The man was Ty Jeffries.

  “Audio,” the agent said, and tucked a bud in her ear. The man’s breath sputtered and coughed like an old engine.

  She’d heard that sound before. It was the sound of a man whose lungs were full of blood.

  A man dying of ARFIS.

  She put the monitor back in the agent’s hand and tore the bud from her ear. “Get everyone back. Now. Call the CDC and tell them I need a Level Four team back out here, and have someone get me a bio suit. Fast.”

  “Make that two bio suits,” Clint said, and his tone brooked no argument. “You’re not going in there alone.”

  “Stay behind me,” Clint ordered Macy, and prayed to God she’d obey. He hadn’t realized how clumsy the full bio suits were. How the hell did she work like this every day? How did she handle lethal viruses as though she was plucking wildflowers? He would go insane. At least he didn’t need a microscope to see the killers he dealt with. And he sure as hell didn’t have to wear a spacesuit.

  He needed to be looking for trip wires, checking for explosives, watching for motion sensors, feeling for pressure pads. The whole house could be one big booby trap. It wouldn’t be the first time terrorists had sacrificed one of their own to kill a few infidels. But it was all he could do to keep from falling on his face in the clunky rubber boots sewn into pant legs that were too short for him.

  He reached up to wipe his face, remembered he couldn’t when his hand thunked the face shield.

  “You okay?” Macy asked.

  “Yeah.” Just getting a taste of what you deal with every day.

  Working meticulously, they made their way back to the bedroom where Macy confirmed the diagnosis. It took another hour to get Jeffries ready for transport to the same hospital in Houston that Brinker had been taken to, the only one in the area with adequate isolation facilities.

  When it was over, a team waiting out front hosed off their bio suits, then they stepped behind hastily hung curtains, stripped and scrubbed their skin until it hurt.

  Bull was waiting for them when they’d dressed and rejoined the troops. “I had ten men around that house. What’s their risk of exposure?”

  That was the Bull, concerned about his troops first.

  “Low to non-existent,” Macy said, and Bull’s shoulders relaxed visibly. “The house was closed up tight and no one went inside. We’ll keep an eye on everyone, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

  He nodded. “Did Jeffries say anything?”

  “He was out of it.” Clint rubbed absently at his shoulder. He saw Macy watching him and stopped.

  Bull swore under his breath. “The monkey was clean and the virus on the plane was secure. How the hell did he get ARFIS?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Macy said, already walking back to the vehicles, shaking her head and fingering her long, wet hair. “Get him well enough to talk, and ask him.”

  “Ty, can you hear me?” Macy sat beside the bed David had occupied—had it only been two days ago?—in the isolation unit of Houston Community Hospital. David had been flown to a VA hospital in Virginia where he could recover under the watchful eye of the military, and Ty lay where he had been.

  Outfitted in another full environmental suit, Macy held his hand as she had David’s. On the other side of the bed, Clint, also in protective gear, watched with a wary eye. The Ranger captain, Kat and Del listened in from the other side of the observation window.

  “Ty, it’s Macy. Can you talk to me?”

  They’d pumped fluids into him and given him stimulants to bring him around so the Rangers could question him. They were only going to get one shot. Soon he would have to be intubated to provide respiratory support, and he wouldn’t be able to talk. After that…despite the fact that doctors are trained never to give up hope, Macy didn’t think there would be an ‘after that’ for Ty Jeffries.

  She squeezed his hand. “Ty, please. We need to talk to you.”

  He moaned. His eyelids flickered. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

  She dabbed blood from his lips, for once glad to have the double barrier of latex and rubber gloves to protect her.

  “ARFIS,” he mumbled.

  “I know.” Her chest tightened. It hurt her to see another human suffer, no matter what he was accused of. “Do you know how you got the virus, Ty? Where did it come from?”

  “Bastards. Bastards!” His throat convulsed. “They gave it to me.”

  “Who?”

  He mumbled again, and Macy couldn’t make out what he said. With any luck the tape recorder running on the table would capture enough that they could figure it out later.

  “Where did they get the virus, Ty?”

  “
Brought it with ’em.”

  “From where?”

  His eyes were open now, wide and bloodshot. “Everywhere. They got people everywhere.”

  “Ask him what the name of their organization is,” Clint said in a low voice.

  “Ty, does their organization have a name? Who are they?”

  “Secret. Secret. Don’t tell me anything. I just take orders. Deliver things. But I figured it out. Know what they’re doing.”

  “ARFIS. Malaysia was a—” He fell into a coughing fit. “Malaysia was a test.”

  Macy’s heart lurched into her throat. Her gaze locked on to Clint’s. His was filled with rage.

  “A—” She could hardly say it. “A test?”

  “See how fast it spreads. Vaccinate some. Infect some. See who dies. Dress rehearsal, they called it.”

  Clint leaned over, rested a gloved hand on Jeffries’s shoulder. “Dress rehearsal for what?”

  “Main event.” His fevered eyes shone brightly under the harsh hospital lights. “Big city.”

  “In the U.S.?”

  “They were going to wait. But. Plane crash moved up their plans. Big city. New York. Maybe Los Angeles. Chicago. Dallas.”

  Macy gasped. “My God, we’ve got to stop them.”

  “Too late,” Ty said. “They’re already here. Already here. Told me they were giving me the vaccine. Injected me with the virus instead. Bastards. Bastards.”

  His hands clenched to fists and he beat at the mattress. Tears tinged pink with blood scrolled down his cheeks. “Killed me. Freaking killed me and lied about it.”

  “Do you know any of their names?” Clint asked, his tone urgent. He seemed to sense they weren’t going to get much more time with Ty.

  “No,” Ty sobbed quietly. “No.”

  “What did they look like. How many were there?”

  “Four. Two Middle Eastern. Two with accents I didn’t recognize. Dark-skinned. Like South African, maybe.

  “Where did they go? Do you know how to find them? Contact them?”

  “No.” Ty was fading fast. He struggled to draw a shallow breath. “Too late. Too late.”

  “Macy.” Ty looked up at her, his eyes barely open. “Back door. Heard them say they left a back…” He stopped to wheeze. “Back door to the virus when they created it. A way to kill it. Find it, Macy. Help me, please.” Another wheezing breath. “Please!”

  “Ty, what were they driving? How were they dressed? Come on, give me something!” Clint demanded.

  But Ty couldn’t. His chest heaved, but no sound came out. No words. No raspy breath. No air. Macy waved Clint out of the room and picked up the intubation tray to insert an airway to the man’s swollen lungs, knowing it would sustain his life a little longer, but in the end, it wouldn’t help.

  ARFIS would win.

  Chapter 16

  By that evening Ranger Company G headquarters officially moved into a hotel two blocks down LaGrange Avenue from Houston Community. Clint flicked the light on in room 306 and surveyed the antique reproduction furniture, the thirty-six-inch TV, demure seascape prints on the walls. “Hmph. Practically a palace compared to the Lonesome Pines.”

  “Look,” Macy said, flopping down onto the bed closest to the door. “Two beds.”

  “Wonderful.” Actually he’d rather wake up with her in his arms again. He could use something—someone—to hold on to tonight, with the world spinning out of control. He suspected she could, too.

  As if she’d read his mind, her smile fell and she stared at him through eyes that seemed to grow warmer with each passing second. Womanly eyes.

  “Do you think we’ll find them in time?” she asked, her face soft.

  He would have liked to ease her anxiety with false reassurance, but she deserved the truth. She’d earned it today. “We don’t have a lot to go on.”

  “But the guys who have the virus have got to turn up sooner or later. I mean, every law-enforcement agency in the country is looking for them.”

  “Yeah.” He laid his keys, gun and badge on the shiny walnut-veneer dresser. “Everybody’s looking.”

  He didn’t add that the phrase needle in a haystack had never been more apt. In this case, the haystack was about the size of the continental United States.

  He watched her watching him in the vanity mirror. She eased off the bed and walked up behind him. He turned to stand face to face with her, and caught the scent of her soap.

  “I was thinking,” she said. “Maybe I’ve been taking a lot for granted the last few days.”

  “Like what?” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears. His heart slowed to a heavy clip-clop beat.

  “Time,” she said, looking up at him through a heavy fringe of lashes. “I thought I wanted time to figure out what I wanted. Turns out we might not have all that much time left.”

  “No one knows how much time they have left.”

  “Which is why I’m thinking now that we should live every day as if it might be our last. Because it just might be.”

  With a tentative stroke, she brushed her fingertips over the line of his jaw, down to his pulse, which leaped to her touch. He captured her hand in his, held it to his chest.

  “Let me be real clear on this.” Because he would self-destruct if he started something between them and couldn’t finish it tonight. “Are you saying you’ve changed your mind about us? About me?”

  Her smile was both shy and inviting. “It’s a woman’s prerogative, isn’t it?”

  That was all the encouragement he needed. He pulled her into his arms, luxuriating a moment in the slide of her hips, her breasts, against him, and then kissed her, pouring the gamut of emotions they’d experienced today—fear, frustration, disbelief, and yes, love, into each nibble. Each gentle caress.

  He lifted her and carried her to the bed, laid her down and then reared back to turn the lights down low and peel off his shirt.

  “I’m scared, Clint.” The taut skin over her cheeks shone, luminescent in the dim light.

  “Don’t be,” he told her, covering the length of her body with his. “Not tonight. Not with me.”

  Tears stung Macy’s eyes as she pulled Clint closer to her, burrowed into him as if she could slip inside his skin. She needed this tonight. Needed him. Not just because she was scared, but because she’d finally realized what she should have seen a long time ago: she was better with him. She felt more alive than she ever had.

  Maybe it was adrenaline released into her system because of everything that had happened, was happening. Maybe it was fear driving her into the arms of someone bigger, stronger, who could protect her from shadowy terrorists. But she didn’t think so.

  What she felt for Clint felt real. True to her heart.

  Now that she realized that, she regretted every second she’d spent apart from him. Every time she’d pushed him away. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. Not with ARFIS out there in the hands of terrorists. Who knew which day, which minute, which embrace would be their last?

  “Make love to me, Clint?” she asked.

  He lowered his head to the crook of her neck and teased the sensitive skin there. “All night long, darlin’. All night long.”

  He made good on his promise, first undressing her one piece of clothing at a time and worshipping the body he bared. He kissed her breasts, the backs of her knees, her feet. He kindled fire in her blood, skimming his hands from her ribcage, across the dip at her waist, over her hips. He suckled her breasts, tugging on the tight cord of desire that ran from her nipples to her womb. And when he finally parted her thighs and plunged into her, he gave her everything she’d ever wanted in a man—honor, compassion, courage and love.

  She felt his love in every lunge, every rock of his hips against hers, every word of passion whispered in her ear.

  And she felt his heat. Flames licked at her heels. His hands left scorching trails over her breasts, down her abdomen past her navel to the sensitive spot just above where he penetrated her. Her body burned with his
, but this time she wasn’t afraid. He moved his thumb and forefinger in small circles, and she stepped over, let herself go, falling gladly into the fire.

  With the inferno blazing around her and inside her, she struggled to hang on to conscious thought. She wanted to give back as much as he gave her, show him the same love, twofold, so she lifted her head and murmured encouragement. She clasped him while spasms shook her and her breath roared in her ears. She heightened his sensation by sliding her hands as far down his back as she could reach and pulling him close, drawing on his hard, male nipples with her supple lips.

  “Take what you need, Clint,” she told him with what was left of her breath. “Take what you need.”

  As her release faded, his hit hard. He groaned and shuddered. His back went stiff and he buried himself one last time inside her, impossibly deep, impossibly hard. She held him there, stroking the back of his neck and murmuring soothing words, wishing she would never have to let him go.

  But all too soon he levered his weight off her and rolled to the side. In an instant, she missed the contact. She felt as though part of herself was missing, and she reached for him, mewling a needy sound.

  He pulled her on top of him and smiled. “You didn’t think we were done, did you?”

  She toyed with him idly, knowing it was too soon to get much result, but enjoying the pleasure written on his face as clearly as a grade-school teacher’s ABC.

  He pulled her down to his chest and kissed the shells of her ears, her eyelids.

  My, how she loved this man. She just hoped she had time to show him how much. Preferably many years.

  But if that wasn’t to be, she planned to make the most of the few hours she had.

  “Not by a long shot did I think we were done,” she said, and increased the pressure and pace of her stroking. “You promised me all night long, and I plan to hold you to your word.”

  Macy and Clint rose quietly in the morning. They made love against the shower wall without words, the hot water streaming over their bodies, into their eyes, blinding them to everything except sensation. The feel of their bodies joining, slapping together in a perfect rhythm. A perfect union. It was a morning Macy would never forget. One of those idyllic moments in life where all a person’s problems disappear, no matter how grave.