I hadn’t seen Hawk Nose and his boys since the tunnel incident, but I felt no need to answer. Knowledge was power, as they say, and right now Kirk had all the answers. I wasn’t about to let him start asking the questions.
“You expect me to believe you don’t work for them?”
“I work for whoever pays. Sometimes it’s even Uncle Sam. Today it happens to be the Russians.”
“Then how did they find us? Manhattan is a big place.”
“Who? The Iranians or the Venezuelans?”
I gave him a cold stare.
“You want me to guess?” he asked.
“Give it your best shot.”
“The Venezuelans have a passion for police scanners.”
I thought of the scanner I’d heard at the house on Long Island. Great. If they were using the police scanner to find us, after our street shooting, they might just be on their way, too.
“And the Iranians?”
He gave a shrug. “If they found me, my best guess is they had the same intel that you do. Eyes on the street. Or maybe in the sky.”
Satellites. I liked that answer a little better. If it was true, we could lose them in the maze that was the New York subway system.
“How about the Russians?”
“They don’t have anyone else in the game. I’m it. That’s part of my deal.”
I considered this for a moment. I didn’t want to trust Kirk, and yet every sign he was giving suggested he was telling the truth, that he was a gun for hire and had no stake in any game other than a paycheck. As a bonus, the story jived with the profile Jacob had dug up on him.
“And what are the Russians paying you to do?”
“Same thing as you’re being paid to do.”
“My job is to protect Julie.”
I shot her a glance. She leaned against the stall wall, her eyes large and sunken, a child who’d witnessed more trauma than she could absorb. Graffiti etched the paint behind her.
“Protect her,” Kirk continued. “Deliver her unharmed. Bingo.”
“Why would the Russians care if Julie is harmed? What value does she have to them?”
“Ask what value she has to you.” He shook his head. “Scratch that. I can see you’re the protective type, at least where she’s concerned. So instead, ask what value she has to your employer.”
A fair question.
“She knows something.”
It was a complete guess on my part. Since I had no idea who the VIP was or even if there was a VIP, a shot in the dark was all I could manage. I looked Julie’s way, this time in question.
She shook her head. “I don’t know anything. I swear.”
When I brought my focus back to Kirk, he was smiling.
“Okay, spill,” I said. “What does she know?”
“She doesn’t know anything. She told you herself.”
“So what are you getting at?” I gave him a hard stare, waiting for the punch line.
“It’s not what she
Now I was really confused. “What she is?”
“I’m going to be on the level with you, Chandler. Okay? This is just a job to me. I don’t have anything to hide. If it matters, I wasn’t trying to kill you. I could have shot you at any time. I was simply knocking you out.”
“Just spill it, Kirk.”
He took a deep breath, let it out slow. “Ever heard of an asymptomatic carrier?”
Where the hell did that come from?
“It’s someone who has a disease and can spread it but never actually gets sick,” he said.
“What?” Julie not only looked in shock now, she appeared as confused as I was.
“And you’re telling me Julie is an asymptomatic carrier?” I asked Kirk.
He nodded.
Julie shook her head. “I am not. What are you talking about?”
Kirk’s gaze flicked to her. “You really have no idea, do you?”
“Idea of what?”
The girl was getting distressed now. I could hear it in the rising pitch of her voice.
“Don’t cry,” Kirk warned. “Do not cry.”
Julie’s chin trembled, but she held back the tears. “Chandler?”
I pressed the gun barrel against his temple, hard enough to leave a bruise.
“You have two seconds to explain.”
He spent his first second frowning at me, his next uttering a single word.
“Ebola.”
“
Heat rushed to my face, and I felt lightheaded. I lowered my arm from his throat, freeing him to sit normally, and rocked back on my heels. I wanted to believe it wasn’t true, that Kirk was lying, but it all added up. It all made sense.
A laugh bubbled up inside me, but I held it back. I felt giddy, on the edge of hysteria. This girl I’d been protecting—who I’d thought of as a younger me and even started to care about—was the host of a disease that could wipe out all of Manhattan.
Hell, it could wipe out the entire world.
Ebola was known as a filovirus, and it was probably the deadliest and most virulent little critter on the planet. Also known as hemorrhagic fever, Ebola basically invaded cells and chopped them into bits. Victims bled internally —and ultimately externally—through every opening in their body, including pores.
All bodily fluids leaked by someone with Ebola were highly infectious. Including tears.
If Julie was a carrier, she could spread the disease without getting ill herself.
I took a step back, fear making my shoulders bunch up.
Every moment I’d been with Julie, I’d been on the verge of disaster. The bullet wound on my shoulder was like a wide open door. Add in all the cuts and scrapes I’d sustained, and I was just begging to be infected.
“How did she contract the virus in the first place?”
Kirk looked at Julie.
It took several seconds before she opened her mouth. “The free clinic.”
He nodded like an encouraging teacher whose student had found the right answer.
“I just went there to get some antibiotics, you know? They took a blood test and then they gave me a shot, and I woke up in a hospital, only …”
Her eyebrows dipped low, and worry dug lines in her forehead.
“Only what?” I prompted.
She focused on the grimy floor, her hands clasped.
“It wasn’t a hospital. It was some kind of … warehouse. On an island.”
“Plum Island,” Kirk said.
I knew Plum Island, AKA
“What happened there, Julie?”
“I don’t know.”
