“I can’t even think about eating when I know what’s happening.”
Barry said to Nora, “We’re about to begin.”
She nodded, and Barry motioned for his team to fan out.
“Quin, please go home. I’ll call you later.”
Quin hung up and Nora frowned.
“Something wrong with your sister?” Duke asked.
“She’s upset.” But Quin’s panic surprisingly calmed Nora. She did much better when she had a crisis to resolve; talking to Quin had put her in the proper mindset.
Barry and his team were working along the western perimeter of the lake. They all wore protective breathing masks. Dr. Thomsen and Dr. Duncan handled the microchip reader.
It was an assembly line with multiple approaches. Fish and Game employees captured the ducks with a net or their hands, brought them to Duncan and Thomsen. After twenty ducks, they still hadn’t found a bird from the lab. The ducks they’d captured were put in the back of an enclosed truck. If they couldn’t get a positive identification of a lab duck, all the ducks would be freed. But if they found even one from Butcher-Payne, the captured ducks would be killed.
The work was painstaking and methodical. The wait was agonizing. The sun dipped lower in the southwest; the air grew cooler.
Duke stood as close to her as he could without touching. She closed her eyes and wondered if she was crazy for wanting to give in to her attraction, but right now the idea of having someone come home with her, someone to hold her close, someone who understood her job and what she did and still cared … she wanted it.
How Nora could want something she’d never had, she didn’t know.
A loud beep cut through the silence and her eyes opened.
Thomsen inspected the duck, nodded. Melanie Duncan started crying silently as Thomsen handed the duck back to Fish and Game. “That’s one.”
Barry ordered the ducks already captured destroyed, and he took the Butcher-Payne bird from his staffer. Without hesitation, he snapped its neck and placed the bird in an individual bright orange plastic biohazard bag and sealed it. The other ducks were killed and then put in large clear plastic bags, ten to twelve per bag.
Nora stood and watched as duck after duck was scanned, killed, and sorted into an orange bag or clear bag. Even the wild ducks would be tested-blood drawn and dissected-in case the virus had spread in the day they’d swam with the contaminated birds.
It wasn’t the sight that bothered Nora the most.
It was the sound.
Like a thin, dry tree branch, each slender neck was snapped, the carcass disposed of in the correct manner.
Nora watched with wide eyes, fearing that if she only heard the sound she’d fall apart.
She remembered the day, years ago, when Lorraine had freed the wild horses. The horses Nora’s mother told her had been born free, and should be let free. Nora had helped. She desperately wanted to please Lorraine, who just told Nora the day before that she was pregnant.
Nora would never forget the stampede. Hiding in the brush. The shouts and curses of men and women trying to recapture the animals. The horse falling in front of her, the snap of his leg loud enough that Nora knew he was lame.
When a man found the distressed horse, Nora saw pain in his expression. Pain and shock and anger. He talked to the horse quietly, whispering so softly, so soothingly that Nora was almost lulled into believing what he said, that the horse was going to be okay, that he was safe. Nora didn’t hear the words, but she felt the rhythm, the tone.
The man, who looked like he might have been a cowboy though Nora had never seen one outside of a book, knelt by the horse’s injured leg. He gingerly touched it and the horse tried to stand, stumbled, and fell, his whinny full of agony.
The cowboy took a gun from his belt and put a bullet in the horse’s head.
Nora froze. Stunned. She’d believed …
Then the man turned away from the horse, looked at the sky, his face wet from tears. Before then, Nora had never seen a man cry. She’d never seen such real pain.
Later, her mother told everyone who would listen, “That bastard just killed the poor animal in cold blood. Didn’t even try to save the horse. Probably enjoyed it. Or didn’t even think about it, just a stupid animal,” she added sarcastically.
Nora went to her mother later and said, “He was crying, Mama.”
“No he wasn’t,” Lorraine said. “And don’t call me Mama.”
That had been the day Nora realized that her mother was wrong, and if she would lie about the sad man, she could lie about anything and to anyone. That had been the day Nora started believing in herself and not in her mother, the day Nora had decided she wanted a different life, and she would do everything to get away.
Quin was born six months later, and Nora realized she couldn’t let her beautiful baby sister grow up like she had. She would find a way for both of them to be free.
Nora had been nine.
As Duke watched, a pair of mallard ducks, male and female, waddled up to where Nora was standing on the edge of the gruesome scene. Some of the Fish and Game people were enticing the ducks from the water with bread-they were all quite domesticated. Evidently, these ducks thought Nora had food for them.
“Hey, Agent English, can you grab those for me?” one of the men called.
Nora didn’t move. Her face was hard, icy, her entire body rigid. Something was wrong, even though he couldn’t see her eyes through her sunglasses.
Instead, Duke managed to catch the birds and bring them over to the assembly line. A moment later, Dr. Thomsen, the vet, ran a scanner over them. It beeped.
“That’s ten and eleven,” Melanie Duncan said, her voice thick with emotion as she sealed their dead bodies in the biohazard bags. Her face and eyes were swollen from tears, though her red eyes were now dry.
“Team B is done as well,” Barry said. “That’s it.”
“We’re missing one,” Melanie said.
“It’s not here,” Barry said. “But I’ll send the team out to canvass the area one more time.” He walked away, wiping his brow.
Duke went back to Nora. “Hey.”
She didn’t acknowledge him.
He reached out and touched her shoulder. She jumped, her body so tense he expected her to snap. Her face was pale, as if all the color from her tan had been leached out of her skin. “Please don’t touch me,” she whispered.
“It’s okay. Hey, Nora, it’s okay.”
“Go away.”
Was she angry with him for handing over the ducks? “They’re done for now,” he said. “Why don’t you sit down?” He looked around, saw a private place about twenty yards away, shaded by trees.
“Leave. Now.” She swallowed. “Please, Duke, leave me alone.”
Her voice cracked and Duke realized how precarious her emotional balance was right now.
Barry from Fish and Game approached. “That’s it, one’s missing. I sent everyone out to scan the area one more time, but we’ve already been around it three times. The vet said he’d drive around with me along the entire perimeter. Dr. Duncan said it’s a male, and he couldn’t have gone far, since their wings are clipped. I’m sending these other birds to the lab now. The CDC guy is getting a bee up his ass with the media here, and wants me to clear out ASAP. Is that okay with you?”
Nora nodded.
Duke had a half-dozen questions he wanted to ask. Then another voice from behind them called, “Sheriff, I
