Exposed - A Thriller Novella (Chandler Series) by J.A. Konrath & Ann Voss Peterson

Then I went back to Pembrooke.

He was awake. And unlike Kirk, he despaired. He complained. He cried.

He also had two last words.

“Kill me.”

“Doctor,” I said. “Heal thyself.”

I stayed until he crashed and bled out.

My phone was in Pembrooke’s office, along with my clothing. I took a decon shower before dressing, and then got to work. I was apparently immune to Ebola, but I didn’t want to spread the disease to anyone else.

It took me less than an hour to do what needed to be done.

There was only one final loose end.

Julie.

I tugged my purse over my shoulder. My purse, with the wire garrote in the strap.

Not such a bad way to go, being strangled while under sedation.

I went to her, stood at the foot of her bed.

And I did the only thing I could do.

“When an operation goes wrong, thorough cleanup is a must,” The Instructor said. “Your value to the program depends on few people knowing you exist. If you can’t preserve this secrecy, others will be called in to clean up for you, and you will be part of the mess to be cleaned.”

My phone rang when I had the MH-60M Black Hawk helicopter in the air over the island. I connected it to my headset and answered the call.

“May I speak to Sheila, please?”

“Sheila is visiting her sister in Pensacola. Would you like to leave a message?”

“Jesus, Chandler. You’re okay. You scared the hell out of me.”

I smiled at the relief evident in Jacob’s slightly robotic tones. “Did you expect anything less?”

“I obviously shouldn’t have.”

I gave him the Cliff’s Notes version of all that had happened since I’d last talked to him back at the West 30th Street Heliport.

After I’d finished, he was silent for several beats. “Do you have the vaccine?”

“I am the vaccine,” I said. “From what I could gather, Pembrooke believed he could use my blood to vaccinate others.”

“I’ve got an eye in the sky on Plum Island. Is that you in the chopper?”

“Affirmative.”

“The director?”

“Dead.”

“Any survivors?”

“Negative.”

“You have the medical records?”

“I destroyed them.”

“The computers?”

“Likewise. What’s left is going to burn.”

I stared down at the facility, smoke already beginning to leak out of the roof. With all of the flammable chemicals on the premises, the firefighters were going to have a helluva job putting this one out.

“Ebola is a horrible weapon,” Jacob said. “One that can’t be controlled, no matter what people like Pembrooke believed.”

“I’m glad we’re on the same page.” I hesitated, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

“How about the girl?”

I hesitated, feeling sick in the pit of my stomach, unsure of what to say.

I trusted Jacob.

But more importantly, I needed him.

“She’s with me.”

“She’s alive?”

“Yes.”

“Chandler. This needs to end.”

My conscience was telling me the same thing. As the Typhoid Mary of Ebola, Julie was too dangerous to exist.

But that didn’t mean I wanted to listen.

Silence stretched so long, I was beginning to think he’d hung up. Finally he answered.

“There’s the ocean.”

I closed my eyes. I was a trained killer. I lived with death every day. I dealt it out to others like a losing hand of poker. As traumatic and horrible as Kirk’s death had been, that was his reality, too. Kill or be killed. Every day balanced on the edge of a knife.

It was what we did. It was who we were.

But Julie wasn’t from that world.

She’d never signed up for this. She’d had this horror forced upon her. Did she really deserve to be cast into the ocean for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Could I be the one who pushed her from the aircraft?

“I won’t do it, Jacob. I won’t let them turn her into a biological weapon, but I won’t kill her either.”

“If you don’t, I’ll have to send someone else to do it.”

“They’ll have to kill me, too. Do you have anyone that good?”

“She can never be a part of society.”

“I know.”

“That’s no way for a young girl to live.”

“I know.”

I stared at Julie, sleeping in the back seat.

“The ocean may be the most humane thing to do.”

“I know,” I said, trying to swallow the giant lump in my throat. “I know.”

Six Weeks Later

“Sometimes,” the Instructor said, “you’ll do things that will be hard to live with. You might never be able to forgive yourself. There’s no advice I can give you for when this happens. I’m sorry.”

The wind off the coast of Maine was as cold as the water was rough. Between the blue sky, autumn leaves, gray rock, white lighthouse, and adjoining red keeper’s house, the place looked as colorful as an image from a postcard.

Picturesque but lonely.

Maine had over sixty lighthouses along its shores and nearby islands, some so remote that even tourists and photographers hadn’t discovered them.

This was one.

I hefted box after box out of the fishing boat I’d rented and set them in the trolley next to the dock. Rails ran to up the steep, rocky face to the lighthouse and keeper’s house, an efficient system of delivering supplies that had been in place for a hundred years. It took me nearly a half hour, but finally the trolley car was full and my boat was empty.

Except for one box I would deliver myself.

I lugged it to my hip and started up the narrow path. The first time I’d been to the lighthouse had been the summer night after Plum Island. Now the ocean wind carried with it the crisp slap of fall.

I reached the crest of the hill, my back slick with sweat and the muscles in my legs pleasantly warm. The