I studied her, the way her fingers fidgeted, the flush to her skin, and I had to wonder if she couldn’t remember or just didn’t want to.
“You must know something. How did you wind up at the mansion?”
“I got up out of bed … and … and … there were doctors and nurses …”
“Only,” Kirk filled in, “the nurses and doctors were dead.”
Julie’s face crumpled. “They were beat up and shot. Murdered.”
“No crying.” Kirk ordered.
She looked to the ceiling and fluttered her eyes, trying to drive back tears.
Kirk continued. “It might have looked like that to you, skin purple with bruising, blood everywhere.”
Julie nodded.
“They were infected by the virus. They got sick, crashed and bled out within hours.”
I almost choked. “That fast?”
A chill moved through me, chasing the heat. I was somewhat familiar with the symptoms of Ebola. The red eyes, the way the virus replicated and ate away at a person’s body until nothing was left but a bloody soup of more and more virus. But hours?
“I thought it took days.”
“Not this particular strain. It had some help. A little genetic tinkering.”
I let the new snip of information sink in.
“So I’m sick?” Julie said. She hiccupped a little.
“You’re not sick, but you can kill others.”
“Typhoid Mary,” I said.
“Exactly. Your body is a factory for a powerful biological weapon, a virus that couldn’t be produced without killing its host … until now.”
Julie slumped against the stall wall. She looked stunned, almost catatonic. But to her credit, she didn’t cry.
I had to report this to Jacob, only I was afraid what he’d say. It was probably a tossup; finish the op by delivering her to the government, or destroy her.
What the hell was I going to do?
I now understood why the defense department was concerned about Julie. If she was a living, breathing, hot zone capable of killing people within a few hours, every government and terrorist group on the planet would want her. She’d be worth billions.
Because she could kill billions.
Kirk cocked his head to the side and looked at me as if he’d just finished discussing a Broadway play or a film he’d seen at the local multiplex.
“So, where are we off to now?”
“We?”
I struggled to shut away the voice in the back of my mind that was screaming
If possible, the smells of mildew and urine had gotten worse, mixing with the scent of stress emanating from the three of us. One of the faucets dripped, and somewhere in the walls I heard a clunk in the pipes.
Something inside me shifted, as if I could physically feel myself locking away the shock and fitting back into my skin.
“Morrissey has a personal car. I can take you to it.” Kirk raised his brows, trying to sell the suggestion.
I answered with an emotionless frown. “Actually, this is where we part ways.”
He didn’t seem surprised. He answered with a sideways sort of smile, of all things.
“You made me run all this way on a bum leg just to kill me?”
“Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Do I get a last request?”
“Depends. What is it?”
“Kiss me.”
I hadn’t seen that one coming. Facing death, and still flirting. Had to hand it to him.
“Seriously?”
“Ever since I laid eyes on you, I’ve thought about kissing you. Could I ask, out of professional courtesy, for one kiss before you kill me?”
A kiss. After handing Julie off to him at Columbus Circle, that’s precisely the path my thoughts had taken. A kiss. Hot sex. That seemed like forever ago.
Now I was bodyguard to a biological weapon, and I had to single-handedly keep her away from Iranians and South Americans who wanted to use her blood to wipe out their enemies.
“How about it, Chandler?”
I blinked, bringing my thoughts back to Kirk, an idea starting to form.
“How much did they pay you?” I asked. “The Russians?”
“Fifty grand. Twenty-five up front. If I don’t deliver, I have to return it.”
Killing him was no doubt the safer move, but I didn’t kill unless I had a very good reason for it. So far, Kirk appeared to have been upfront about everything.
Besides, I could use some help.
“Tell you what. You return the money, come back to working for us, and Uncle Sam will give you sixty.”
Kirk smiled, full out this time. “I like that deal.”
“Of course you do.”
“You think you can trust me?”
“I think you’re a whore for the money. You’ll serve whoever’s paying you.”
“True. So what about the kiss?”
Cocky bastard. “If we get out of this alive, I’ll give you more than a kiss.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“Now where’s Morrissey’s car?” I remembered what Jacob had told me about the murdered spy. “Staten Island?”
He nodded. “The St. George ferry terminal. Just need to take the number one train to the ferry.”
I hiked up my jeans, slipped the small blade from my ankle sheath, and used it to cut the zip tie on his wrists.
“Give me your jacket.”
“Undressing me? You rethought that whole waiting-to-see-if-we-lived thing?”
“You’re not that cute.”
“Sure I am.”
Yeah. He was. But I was the one with the gun. I pointed it.
He handed me the garment.
I tore off a sleeve and hiked up his blood-soaked pant leg. I was right, the bullet hadn’t hit bone. In fact, the wound looked more like a deep cut than a gunshot. Still, flesh wounds, as they call them in the movies, were not something to scoff at. They hurt like hell, could render a muscle ineffective, and caused significant blood loss.
“Julie, can you … um … step back a bit?”
She nodded, putting both hands over her mouth as if her very breath was infectious. The dazed expression in her eyes was different than the drug buzz. She looked to be in shock.
I used the jacket sleeve to wrap Kirk’s leg and slow the bleeding. Ebola or not, this was a mission like any other. My life was in danger. Other lives were in danger.
Anyone who got in my way was in the most danger of all.
“
The creak of the bathroom door hinges dumped another dose of adrenaline into my bloodstream. I peered through the space between the stall walls and door and spotted a flustered looking man carrying a briefcase.
