Germ

leaving two chairs between them at the round table: one facing the street, the other facing the restaurant. She'd have preferred a seat where she could watch both of them at once. She settled for the one facing the street, putting Parker on her left, his brother on her right. She slipped the new gym bag off her shoulder and set it on the ground.

'I'm glad you came,' Parker said, sitting again, scooting his chair close to the table.

She smiled politely and noted that he was wearing brand-new clothes, complete with factory-fold creases. Her new blouse had hanger marks on the shoulders, which her blazer hid. She took in the other man, his brother. He had to be one of the biggest people she'd ever seen. The hairiest too. But he possessed kind eyes and a ready smile. Where Allen was undeniably charming, perhaps a little too slick, this man was utterly and instantly likable. She hoped she wasn't simply needing a kind face and imagining it where it wasn't.

'We couldn't think of anything else to do,' Allen said. 'We had our reservations. I'd just as soon trust the waiter as a cop right now.'

'I know how you feel,' she said.

He gave her an inquisitive look, but she turned away.

'You're Dr. Parker's brother?'

'Stephen.' They shook hands. In his, hers was small and pathetic looking.

'And call me Allen, please.'

'You don't look like brothers.'

'I got the looks,' Allen said. 'He got the . . . hair.'

Stephen winked at her.

'Are you a physician?'

'He almost was,' Allen said, a little harshly, Julia thought. 'He dropped out two months short of graduation. He—'

'Allen, let's not go there.' Stephen turned to Julia, his face softening. 'I'm a pastor, and I have no idea what I'm doing here.'

'Weren't you with Allen last night when he got attacked?'

'Yeah. I still don't know what I'm doing here.'

She got it. What normal person would guess he'd be attacked by assassins and have to run for his life? 'Me too. Allen, you too?'

'I know that everything was fine until your partner wound up on my operating table.'

He was glaring at her, seeming to expect an answer to a question he hadn't asked.

'What are you saying?' she said.

He shifted in his chair. 'I don't like being chased from my home. I don't like being shot at. I don't like my life being disrupted.'

'You're acting like I had something to do with that.'

'Didn't you?'

'No. I don't like it either. I've got a mother at home with multiple sclerosis, and I can't get to her, can't help her. The man you watched die on your table was my partner, yes, but he was also my best friend. He recognized one of the men who killed him. He thought he was a federal agent. So until I find out what's going on, I can't go back to my own agency, and I can't call in the troops. I'm out in the cold, and you're making it colder.'

The confrontational expression remained hard on his face, then it softened and he said, 'You hungry?'

'Famished, I think.'

Allen gestured to the waiter, and all three ordered.

Julia unrolled flatware out of a cloth napkin, shook it out, and dropped it into her lap. As she did, she asked, 'What kind of food do you like, Allen?'

He paused to look at her. 'Steak, mostly. Seafood. Italian. Anything prepared well.'

'I'm partial to Cajun. Blackened catfish, jambalaya, mmm. Where were you born—around here?'

'Chattanooga. Our father's a GP there, as was his father.'

'Family business.'

'Yes,' he said, his eyes on Stephen.

Cool's the word, she thought. Allen didn't fidget. He looked her straight in the eyes. In her experience, the cooler the customer, the easier it was for him to lie. That was her reason for asking unimportant questions—she wanted to witness his behavioral baseline when he wasn't lying. Later, if his behavior changed, she would have cause for suspicion.

'So,' she said, 'what happened yesterday?'

He shook his head, then nodded, glanced at his brother, opened his mouth, shut it again. Clearly he wasn't sure where to start.

'Let me tell you my end,' she offered. She told them about the call to pick up Vero, the hit attempt and escape that separated her from Goody, the loss of the SATD signal, Goody's call, the hospital. She explained how she went to the bar to examine the crime scene, but excluded mention of the memory chip. She didn't want to reveal her entire hand until she knew these men better, knew what part they would play in this situation's resolution, if any. She described her encounter with the assassin and the end he met.

Allen said, 'You said the cops killed him. You think he's the same one who attacked me at home?'

She nodded. 'Big guy, glasses, laser-sighted handgun.'

Allen began his story with Goody's presentation in the ER. He described the wounds and the razor disk he found lodged in Goody's sternum.

As hard as she tried to stay objective and removed, Allen's words sliced her heart, just as those disks had sliced Goody. She was certain the memory always would. To get her mind off the details of his death, she said, 'The only common denominator between us is Goody. So you think the attack against you has to do with him?'

'Absolutely. Just before I was attacked, a police lieutenant called. He said several other people who'd been with Donnelley between when he was shot and when he died in the trauma room were attacked and killed.'

Julia's face expressed the shock she felt. 'The killer must have been looking for something. Or else trying to keep people quiet about what they think Goody might have said. Did he say anything to you?'

'Oh yeah. For one, he said filoviruses are man-made.'

'Man-made? You mean . . . like in a lab?'

Allen nodded. 'And we're talking some nasty stuff. Marburg. Ebola. Severe hemorrhagic fever. Internal organs start to decay as though you're already dead, but you aren't. Your blood loses its ability to clot; then your endothelial cells, which form the lining of the blood vessels, fail to function, so blood leaks through. Soon it oozes from every orifice—the obvious ones and even from your eyes, pores, and under your fingernails. Then you die.'

Julia wasn't hungry anymore.

'Most people think of the outbreaks in Africa,' Allen continued. 'But Ebola has struck in the Philippines, Italy, England. The strain known as Reston takes its name from the town in Virginia where it was first discovered. In 1996, a case of Ebola was reported in Texas. Marburg was first recognized in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany, and Belgrade, Yugoslavia.'

'But man-made? What does that mean?'

'Just that, I guess. Somebody created it. It was genetically engineered. Whenever a terrible new virus is discovered, everyone just assumes it was some kind of natural mutation or that it's been lying around dormant for tens of thousands of years until something— man's encroachment into its territory, presumably—reactivated it or exposed humans to something that was always there.'

'Of course we'd think that,' Stephen interjected. 'After all, who'd want to make something that terrible?'

'But maybe somebody has,' said Allen.

'Is that even possible?' Julia asked.

'With what's going on in genetics these days, anything's possible,' Allen said. 'When Marburg first surfaced, doctors thought they were dealing with a strain of Rhabdoviridae—rabies. Maybe somebody genetically altered a rhabdovirus, I don't know, but on closer inspection they realized what they had on their hands was an entirely new family of virus. Filoviruses . . . Ebola is completely unlike any other known human pathogen. Its physical appearance is long and thin, like a snake—appropriate, considering its stealthy and deadly disposition. And it secretes an