“Idea of what?”
The girl was getting distressed now. I couldhear it in the rising pitch of her voice.
“Don’t cry,” Kirk warned. “Do not cry.”
Julie’s chin trembled, but she held back thetears. “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, hisnext uttering a single word.
“Ebola.”
“Many things can happen in the field,developments no amount of training can help you understand orabsorb,” said The Instructor. “In the face of such trauma, knowinghow to compartmentalize extraneous thought and emotion can saveyour life.”
Heat rushed to my face, and I feltlightheaded. I lowered my arm from his throat, freeing him to sitnormally, and rocked back on my heels. I wanted to believe itwasn’t true, that Kirk was lying, but it all added up. It all madesense.
A laugh bubbled up inside me, but I held itback. I felt giddy, on the edge of hysteria. This girl I’d beenprotecting—who I’d thought of as a younger me and even started tocare about—was the host of a disease that could wipe out all ofManhattan.
Hell, it could wipe out the entire world.
Ebola was known as a filovirus, and it wasprobably the deadliest and most virulent little critter on theplanet. Also known as hemorrhagic fever, Ebola basically invadedcells and chopped them into bits. Victims bled internally—andultimately externally—through every opening in their body,including pores.
All bodily fluids leaked by someone withEbola were highly infectious. Including tears.
If Julie was a carrier, she could spread thedisease without getting ill herself.
She cannot be harmed in any way, not evenslightly.
I took a step back, fear making my shouldersbunch up.
Every moment I’d been with Julie, I’d been onthe verge of disaster. The bullet wound on my shoulder was like awide open door. Add in all the cuts and scrapes I’d sustained, andI was just begging to be infected.
“How did she contract the virus in the firstplace?”
Kirk looked at Julie.
It took several seconds before she opened hermouth. “The free clinic.”
He nodded like an encouraging teacher whosestudent 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, andI woke up in a hospital, only …”
Her eyebrows dipped low, and worry dug linesin her forehead.
“Only what?” I prompted.
She focused on the grimy floor, her handsclasped.
“It wasn’t a hospital. It was some kind of …warehouse. On an island.”
“Plum Island,” Kirk said.
I knew Plum Island, AKA Plum Island AnimalDisease Center, off the coasts of Long Island and Connecticut.There were actually several facilities on the island, and there hadbeen rumors for decades it was a front for US biological weaponsresearch.
“What happened there, Julie?”
“I don’t know.”
I studied her, the way her fingers fidgeted,the flush to her skin, and I had to wonder if she couldn’t rememberor just didn’t want to.
“You must know something. How did you wind upat the mansion?”
“I got up out of bed … and … and … there weredoctors and nurses …”
“Only,” Kirk filled in, “the nurses anddoctors were dead.”
Julie’s face crumpled. “They were beat up andshot. Murdered.”
“No crying.” Kirk ordered.
She looked to the ceiling and fluttered hereyes, trying to drive back tears.
Kirk continued. “It might have looked likethat to you, skin purple with bruising, blood everywhere.”
Julie nodded.
“They were infected by the virus. They gotsick, crashed and bled out within hours.”
I almost choked. “That fast?”
A chill moved through me, chasing the heat. Iwas somewhat familiar with the symptoms of Ebola. The red eyes, theway the virus replicated and ate away at a person’s body untilnothing was left but a bloody soup of more and more virus. Buthours?
“I thought it took days.”
“Not this particular strain. It had somehelp. A little genetic tinkering.”
I let the new snip of information sinkin.
“So I’m sick?” Julie said. She hiccupped alittle.
“You’re not sick, but you can killothers.”
“Typhoid Mary,” I said.
“Exactly. Your body is a factory for apowerful biological weapon, a virus that couldn’t be producedwithout killing its host … until now.”
Julie slumped against the stall wall. Shelooked stunned, almost catatonic. But to her credit, she didn’tcry.
I had to report this to Jacob, only I wasafraid what he’d say. It was probably a tossup; finish the op bydelivering her to the government, or destroy her.
What the hell was I going to do?
I now understood why the defense departmentwas concerned about Julie. If she was a living, breathing, hot zonecapable of killing people within a few hours, every government andterrorist group on the planet would want her. She’d be worthbillions.
Because she could kill billions.
Kirk cocked his head to the side and lookedat me as if he’d just finished discussing a Broadway play or a filmhe’d seen at the local multiplex.
“So, where are we off to now?”
“We?”
I struggled to shut away the voice in theback of my mind that was screaming Ebola, Ebola, holy shit,Ebola, and focus on my surroundings.
If possible, the smells of mildew and urinehad gotten worse, mixing with the scent of stress emanating fromthe three of us. One of the faucets dripped, and somewhere in thewalls I heard a clunk in the pipes.
Something inside me shifted, as if I couldphysically feel myself locking away the shock and fitting back intomy skin.
“Morrissey has a personal car. I can take youto 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 asideways sort of smile, of all things.
“You made me run all this way on a bum legjust 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 thoughtabout kissing you. Could I ask, out of professional courtesy, forone kiss before you kill me?”
A kiss. After handing Julie off to him atColumbus Circle, that’s precisely the path my thoughts had taken. Akiss. Hot sex. That seemed like forever ago.
Now I was bodyguard to a biological weapon,and I
