vaccine, they would begin to wonder who else knew how to make it, and conclude that that person should probably stop breathing very shortly.
Todd was one of three people who knew how to create more vaccine. He had no intention of waiting around until the police made a connection between him and Dr. Bernard Copeland, and he certainly was not going to wait for the terrorists to blow him up. He finished packing and rolled his suitcase into the small living room. He stopped to make two phone calls, dialing and speaking quickly.
There was another knock. “Todd?” Mrs. Neidemeyer called.
Todd sighed. He swung open the door. “Mrs. N, I told you it’d be a minute. I was just—” he stopped cold. Mrs. Neidemeyer was not alone.
It should have taken ten minutes on surface streets to run south from Santa Monica to Venice, but an accident on Wilshire Boulevard slowed their progress. Jack tapped the side of the car impatiently until at last they were past the accident and rolling. Mercy shook her head. “This has got to be the only city where you can find a traffic jam at ten o’clock at night.”
They turned down Lincoln Boulevard and crossed Colorado, then Pico, and soon they were in the beach community of Venice.
The first name on the list was Todd Romond, his information scribbled on page thirteen. An MIT graduate and an expert on the behavior of viruses, he had discontinued a lucrative grant with a dominant pharmaceutical company to become a tour guide organizing eco-vacations in Costa Rica. He was also one of three people who had helped Copeland mutate his virus and develop a vaccine.
This was going to work, Jack thought. They were going to find this Todd Romond and he was going to cure Kim.
Romond’s apartment was a small seventies model shaped like the letter “U.” The empty middle of the shape was a grass yard open to the sidewalk, with a driveway on one side that led to a carport that supported the upper- story apartment at the back. There was a car parked diagonally across the driveway.
“That Romond’s car?” Jack asked, already knowing the answer.
Mercy conferred with the stats she’d written down after calling in for Romond’s profile. “Yep. Looks like he’s coming or going in a hurry.”
“Guess which.”
Jack stopped in the middle of the street and jumped out, Mercy close behind. Jack nearly stumbled at the curb, reminding himself how hard he’d pushed it all day. Jack checked the car quickly, his weapon drawn but held low at his side. Sure the car was empty, he ran to the apartment number that matched Romond’s. There were lights on in the living room.
Jack pounded on the door. “Romond! Federal agents!”
No answer. Jack didn’t want to wait for another warning. He stepped back and then kicked the door hard right where the bolt met the frame. The thick door held until the third try, when the wood shattered and the door swung open.
Mercy, who’d come up behind, now slipped around him as he recoiled his foot. She stepped into the room and faded left. Jack followed, his own weapon now chest-level. But it wasn’t necessary.
Todd Romond lay on his back on the living room floor. There was a small hole in his forehead, from which blood slowly trickled. Beside him was an old lady, facedown, as dead as he was.
Mercy checked the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedroom, and that was the end of that small apartment. She came back to stand over Romond’s body.
“Al-Libbi,” Jack said hoarsely. “We’re in a race now.”
16. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 P.M. AND 11 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Christopher Henderson watched technicians from National Health Services carefully wheel a hermetically sealed coffin out of the holding room. They had sprayed the room down with powerful chemical cleansers and collected the soiled chemicals into special vats. They had gathered up what was left of the girl’s body, which wasn’t much considering that she’d been alive and actually participated in a firefight not two hours earlier. That was the fate that awaited the President if they didn’t do their jobs right.
A call came through from Jack Bauer. Henderson took it at a spare computer station. “Tell me you found something.”
“We did,” Bauer said from the other end of the line. “We have the names of three people who worked with Copeland.
We think they know about the vaccine.”
“Good! Let’s round them up.”
“Agreed,” Bauer replied. “We have to move fast. The first one was just murdered. I’m standing over his body.”
“Al-Libbi,” Henderson surmised.
“The girl gave him the names. He’s ahead of us.”
“But he can’t have our manpower. Give me the other names. I’ll get teams to bring them in right now.”
Jack recited the two other names they’d gleaned from Copeland’s annotations: Sarah Kalmijn and Pico Santiago. “On it,” Henderson said. “I’ll call you back.”
Teri Bauer picked up the phone before the first ring had finished.
“Honey, it’s me,” Jack said.
Her voice was cold and quiet. “Great, how nice of you to call.”
The tone of her voice stabbed Jack in the chest. “Teri, I’m sorry—”
“You’re not!” his wife replied, her voice rising slightly. But she wasn’t frantic or passionate. She was earnest. “Jack, you’re not, that’s the thing about it. You’re out there doing your job. I know that. But it doesn’t make it any easier to be the person sitting here. There was a riot today, Jack. Our daughter was in the middle of a riot. My husband was in the middle of a riot. I haven’t even been able to process that, and you’re probably already doing god knows what else.”
“How’s Kim?”
“Sleeping,” Teri said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “She has a little fever and went to bed early. I’m hoping it was just all the craziness today.”
The phone was silent for a minute. “Jack?”
“Sorry,” he said after a second. “The connection dropped out. Just a fever, though? Anything to worry about? One of the protestors they arrested today had some kind of rash. Nothing serious, but some FBI guys caught it and said it itched like crazy.”
“No, I didn’t see a rash.”
“Okay.”
“Jack, what time are you coming home?”
Another pause. “I don’t know, Teri. As soon as I can, I promise. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said, in the same voice she’d used to answer the phone.
Jack ended the call and put his head down for just a minute. It was a moment of indulgence he could hardly afford, but he took it anyway. Teri was upset with him, but she didn’t know the half of it. He would have to tell her the truth soon. By his watch he still had a few hours, even allowing for a margin of error…but in the end he’d have to get Kim quarantined. She would hate him then.
