Germ

listened.

Blood bubbled out of the patient's mouth. His arm dropped off the table.

Parker looked around. The trauma team was busy; no one was looking, no one had heard.

'Who is this man?' he called above the cacophony. 'Does anyone know?'

'A cop,' someone said. 'His partner is outside.'

He gazed at the devastated face. He lowered his head again, turning his ear back toward the man. As he did, the electrocardiogram ceased its slow, rhythmic beeping to hum in endless, monotonous finality. The patient's heart had stopped.

'He's PEA!' somebody yelled out. Pulseless electrical activity, the condition that usually precedes asystole, or flatline. No one moved; everyone knew resuscitation was hopeless. They watched as Parker, still with his ear pressed to the man's mouth, gripped the patient's tattered shirt. He gave it a little shake, as if to rattle some words out of him. Then, slowly, Parker stood, staring at nothing, deep in thought.

'Doctor?' a nurse said. 'Dr. Parker, are you all right?'

'Yes . . . of course.' He rubbed his ear, smearing blood. 'Uh . . . mark the time.' He looked at the wall clock. 'Seventeen-oh-nine.'

Nurses began stripping off gloves, shutting down machines, collecting gore-encrusted instruments. The various clamps, tubes, and lines still in the body would remain with the corpse until a forensic pathologist conducted an autopsy and declared the cause of death.

Parker tugged down his face mask and pushed through the doors to find Julia Matheson.

She was gone.

fourteen

Two minutes earlier, She had watched Goody die. Gazing through the small windows in the trauma room doors, she had known there was nothing the doctors, nurses, and technicians could do to repair the injuries she'd seen. As soon as she had heard the cardiac monitor drop into a flat tone and someone call out, 'PEA!' she felt a heavy weight drop in her stomach. Blood rushed to her head. The edges of her vision darkened. She felt herself sway, and she reached out, found something steady, and held herself up.

'Ma'am?' a voice asked.

She was gripping a young nurse's arm.

'Can I get you something?'

'Restroom?' Julia managed.

'Around the corner, down the hall, on the right.'

The nurse raised her voice for the last three words—Julia was already around the corner, out of sight.

She barely reached the toilet when the contents of her stomach came up. She rose and leaned against the wall of the toilet stall, her cheek pressed to the cold steel, and wept. Her body hitched violently whenever she tried to stop, so for now, she let the tears flow. Images of Goody, of Jodi and the kids, kept swimming up from her memory, fueling her wracking sobs.

After a long time—ten minutes, maybe fifteen—the worst of it was over. Slowly, sadness gave way to anger; she felt it and seized on it. If emotions were drugs, sadness would be a depressant, anger a stimulant. She needed a heavy dose of drive to get through the next few hours, and eventually to find Goody's killers. If anger helped dull the pain of losing him and spurred her on, so be it.

She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She hardly recognized herself in the mirror. She was pale, her hair disheveled, her eyes red. Somewhere along the way, her lip biting had drawn blood. A dark brown layer of it had formed on her lower lip. She splashed cold water on her face and tried to appear at least somewhat less homeless.

When she left the bathroom, her stride was strong, her shoulders square: she was on a mission to find whoever had slaughtered Goody, and why.

When she reached the ER, the trauma room doors were still closed. She pushed one open enough to peer in. The room looked like a battleground. Blood was everywhere, as were discarded gauze wrappers, bloody sponges, rubber gloves, strips of paper, and soiled towels. On a table in the center of the room, Goody's body lay under a stained white sheet, awaiting transport to a refrigerated cell, an autopsy room, then the ground. She thought she should slip in, touch his hand, but she couldn't do it.

I'm sorry, Goody. I'm sorry.

She wanted to continue talking to him like that, sending words like a prayer to wherever he was, but she understood the damage it would do to her composure, her resolve. She moved her hand and let the door close.

She heard a noise and looked through a series of glass doors to see the physician who had worked on Goody. Dr. Parker, she remembered. She strode through the doors, not noticing until she stood before him that he had stripped down to his underwear. He was holding the gray pants she had seen him wearing earlier, but they were stained with blood. It had soaked through to his underwear and stomach. The image of a battlefield returned; this man was one of the combatants, away from the front, grateful to find that the blood all over him wasn't his.

For a brief moment, surprise contorted his face. Then he smiled, that same smile she'd caught before.

She spun around, saying, 'Sorry . . . sorry . . .'

'Job hazard, I guess,' he said calmly. 'The blood, I mean, not being caught with my pants down by a pretty woman. That doesn't happen enough, I'm afraid.'

She heard the snap of elastic and assumed that he had just removed his underwear.

'Do you . . .' she started, getting over her initial shock through the realization that he was flirting with her. His lack of humility riled her, especially considering what had just happened, whose blood he was ridding himself of. 'Do you always take your clothes off in public?'

'Only after surgery. It's kind of a ritual we surgeons have.'

'I need to talk with you. The person you worked on, the one who died—'

'He was your partner, I know.'

'He was my friend.'

'I'm sorry.'

'What can you tell me about his injuries?'

She heard the rustle of clothes.

'You can look now,' he said.

She turned apprehensively, not convinced his invitation to look meant he was decent. To her relief, he had donned surgical pants.

'Actually,' he said, 'these scrub rooms are usually fairly private. I'd go up to the locker rooms, but they're on the sixth floor and, well, this is just more convenient.' He opened a drawer, pulled out a folded smock, and handed it to her. 'You'd better play doctor until you can change.'

She looked down at her blood-soaked clothes. 'Thank you.'

'Are you a cop here in Chattanooga?'

'Federal. Out of Atlanta.' She pulled out her identification and held it up to him.

He looked at it closely. 'Centers for Disease Control,' he said slowly.

His face paled, but she decided it was a trick of the light.

'I didn't know they had a law enforcement division.'

'Part of Homeland Security. Mostly we're FBI special agents on permanent reassignment.' She removed her business card from behind the ID card, jotted her mobile number on the back, and handed it to him.

'I see.' He picked up a smock from a shelf, thinking hard about something. 'So you investigate . . . what? Threats involving diseases, viruses?'

'Among other things. Doctor, what killed my partner?'

Parker shook his head. 'Well, that's up to the medical examiner to decide, but an educated guess? Couple dozen razor-sharp disks, probably shot into his body from a large-bore firearm, like a shotgun.'

'Disks?'

'Wait here.' He walked through a glass door she had not seen before, which led directly into the trauma room. He picked up a small metal pan and returned.

Julia looked in and inhaled sharply.

'My thoughts exactly,' said Parker. 'Some of the disks were penetrating. That is, they entered his body and