by CJ Lyons
“Frustrating?” Devon asked, his tone one that would have sent his former associates with the Russian mob running for cover. “Do not talk to me about frustrations, Dr. Lazaretto.” His use of the man’s title and last name were not a sign of respect. Academics. Too caught up in the research possibilities, theories and hypotheses, forgetting real lives were at risk.
Anger pounded through his mind. Damn doctors were brilliant at thinking but had no idea how to get things done. But Devon did. Eight years being a fixer for the Russians had been better training than any business school. “I don’t want to hear anything except answers. How do you plan to locate the source of the infection? What treatment options do we have? How are we going to find other infected children? Who is going to coordinate their care and help their families through this? Money is no object—but we need results, and we need them fast. Is that understood?”
Both Tommaso and Louise seemed taken aback by his demands.
He whirled, heading toward the door. “I expect your proposal by morning.”
“Sir, you don’t—” Tommaso started.
“But, Devon,” Louise said, “tomorrow is Christmas.”
Devon paused at the doorway. “Think of it as a present for nineteen families and their sick children.”
He left, his anger and grief propelling him down the hall with staccato steps. Thank God he’d left Esme back at the brownstone with Flynn and Ozzie. He didn’t want her to see him upset like this. It would frighten her too much.
But he needed answers. Not the kind that Louise and Tommaso were working on. The kind that only one person could get him.
Angela Rossi.
He took the stairs the two flights up to her room. Since her collapse, he’d checked in with her whenever he could. Every time, he’d found Ryder at her bedside and Angela still unresponsive in that eerie sleep that wasn’t sleep. Passing the nurses’ station without stopping, he paused to knock at her door and pushed it open without waiting for an answer.
She and Ryder stood beside the bed, embracing. Pretty clear he’d interrupted something. Too bad. As glad as he was to see her back on her feet, he couldn’t help but feel resentment that she’d escaped the day and a half of worry he’d suffered through.
“Devon,” she said, catching sight of him. She separated from Ryder. Her face clouded. “The children—I’m so sorry. I planned to be there. What happened?”
“Your friend Louise and her assistant used a new test that’s faster than the blood one. Nineteen children from the Tower, all positive. Make that twenty.”
“Twenty?”
“Esme,” he said grimly. “Flynn brought her home because she has symptoms as well.” He glanced at Ryder, uncertain how much he knew about Angela’s illness, decided he didn’t really care. “Hope you’re refreshed and ready to go, doc. Because I need your help.”
First time he could remember saying those words. To anyone.
She nodded, understanding.
Ryder’s phone buzzed. He glanced at the number but didn’t answer.
“Any luck finding Eugene Littleton’s partners?” Devon asked, beating the detective to the punch.
“Not according to the Major Case detectives. They couldn’t trace the drugs used at the school, and there’s nothing helpful on any of the surveillance tapes. How about that fancy lawyer you bought him? Gena Kravitz. She hasn’t been available for an interview, is ducking my calls.”
“Gena would tell me if she knew anything.” Although, come to think of it, he hadn’t spoken to her since he left Littleton in her care night before last. Funny how having a sick child changed every priority.
Ryder made a noise of disbelief. “There’s something about that woman. Anyway,” he waved his phone, “Littleton’s caseworker from when he was young is finally able to meet with me. I’m hoping the more I can trace the people from his past, maybe I can find his partner.”
“You ruled out Manny Cruz?”
“As much as we can. No suspicious bank transactions. His trial record and prosecutions seem pretty solid, but it will take time to go through all of them.”
“Well, good luck with that.” Devon turned back to Rossi. Despite her bruises, she looked good. Almost back to normal. “Are you checked out? I want to go over what the doctors told me, get your thoughts.”
Ryder bristled at that, but Rossi calmed him with a slight shake of her head. She kissed him on the cheek. “I’m fine. Honest. I’ll meet you later. Think you can handle one last family party?”
“I can do that.” He grabbed his overcoat, strode past Devon. Then stopped and pivoted, staring him straight in the eye. “She doesn’t leave your sight, understand? Not until you deliver her to me.”
Devon gave him a fake salute. “Roger, WILCO.”
Ryder paused a beat.
Devon nodded, serious. With Littleton’s partners still on the loose, no way in hell was he risking Angela. “She’ll be fine,” he promised.
Ryder sealed the pact with a jerk of his chin and left.
Angela waited a few moments, then began to bustle around the room, gathering her few belongings. While Ryder had held vigil at her bedside, Devon had brought her a change of clothing, and her coat and phone. The bare essentials.
“Doesn’t the doctor need to check you out or something?” he asked.
“I’m checking myself out,” she declared as she grabbed her coat and slid her phone into her pocket. “I want to see Jacob.”
“I tried to see him earlier. The nurses said he’s getting some kind of dialysis treatment—”
“Hemofiltration. It slows the damage from the PXA overdose.”
“Whatever. They told me it would be an hour or so before anyone could see him.” He assessed her. Despite her eagerness to go, she looked pale. “What happened the other night? I saw your place.”
She jerked her head up at that. The look she gave him was a curious mix of fear and hope. “Did you see Littleton? While you were in my apartment? Did you do something to him?”
Devon stepped back in surprise. “Whoa, hold on there. I was in your apartment earlier today. After Louise said you’d be waking up. I brought you some clothing and shit. Cleaned up the mess the cops left behind. Last I saw Eugene Littleton was when I was with you.”
She frowned as if she didn’t believe him. “He came to my place that night. Ryder says it was about the same time Manny was killed. Littleton attacked me, but I fought back.” Her voice dropped. “Please, you can’t tell anyone this…”
His face flushed with rage. “Did he…Angela, did he assault you? Are you okay?”
“No, no, nothing like that. In fact, I’m the one who assaulted him. I tied him up and forced him to take PXA. I was hoping to get answers.”
“Angela, I wasn’t serious—” That was a lie. But he’d never wanted her to do anything that might jeopardize her already precarious health. “What did you see?”
“Nothing helpful. And nothing I want to talk about.” Her face twisted as if she’d swallowed something rotten and decayed. He could only imagine being inside a mind like Eugene Littleton’s…
“What happened?” he pressed.
“That’s what’s so crazy. I’ve never had a fugue like that. Instead of being able to communicate with Littleton or having one of my hyperaware, hypersensory fugues, this one was confused, jumbled. Like being on a hallucinogenic. I swear, Littleton died—at least, I thought he did. And I thought I’d died with him. Everything was…nothing. Gone. But then a man came in. I never saw his face. He removed the duct tape from Littleton—I couldn’t see him, but I heard it—then he carried me to the couch and—”
She frowned, touched her fingers to her head, as if a new memory had been released from her fog of confusion. “I know this sounds crazy, but I swear he put a hat on me. Then he took it off and left.”
It did sound crazy. But Devon was used to that with Angela. “A man? Like your uncle? Then why didn’t he call an ambulance? And why take the duct tape off Littleton, ma
ke it look like he collapsed while attacking you?”
Her expression was strained. She clearly had more questions and no answers. “Not my uncle. Not anyone I know. Except, I thought it might be you. Or someone you sent, following Littleton.”
“I wish. I would have taken care of that bastard myself, saved you the trouble.”
“Maybe I dreamed it all, part of the fugue. Louise says FFI patients have seizures that can cause delusions and confusional episodes. Maybe it wasn’t even real. I just can’t be sure anymore.” She shook her head in small, uncertain movements.
“I couldn’t tell Ryder,” she continued. “I couldn’t bear it if he knew how far I really went—maybe I am crazy.” She cupped her temples with both hands. “Forcing myself into someone else’s mind. It’s almost a form of rape. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work and everything went so wrong.”
“No,” he said sternly. “You shouldn’t think that. You were trying to save lives. Don’t you dare compare yourself to a monster like Littleton.”
She said nothing, face tilted to the floor, hair falling around it, but finally gave a nod.
Devon glanced at the clock. They still had time before they’d be able to visit Jacob. He opened the door, gestured for her to go through. “You must be starving. C’mon, dinner’s on me.”
They left for the hospital cafeteria. Not Devon’s first choice for fine dining, but where else was he going to go?
“I’m sorry about Esme,” she said as they rode down in the elevator.
His shoulders slumped as if a weight had fallen on him, and he felt anguish tense every muscle of his body. Angela said nothing, simply wrapped her arms around him, sharing his pain, offering her comfort.
Chapter Forty-Two
The cafeteria smelled of baked ham and roasted vegetables, reminding me of how hungry I was. Contrary to popular belief, holidays at Good Samaritan meant good eating. If you were stuck working or visiting a sick family member, the kitchen staff always went all-out to make you feel at home. I loaded up my tray while Devon only got a cup of tea. He’d forgotten to bring me my wallet and laughed when I asked if he was serious about paying. Right. Sole heir to the Kingston fortune.
“With Esme home for Christmas, are you going to decorate the brownstone? Make your butler and maids dress up like elves?” I asked as we sat at a table near the windows. The sun was starting to set, and snow was falling, making the view appear magical—if you ignored the abandoned and decaying steel mill hulking along the riverbank.
“You know damn well I don’t have any butlers or maids.” It was the truth. He lived in the mansion alone with his comatose father, who required round-the-clock nursing. Other than that, the only staff Devon kept was a cleaning crew who came in once a week.
He smiled. “She already made Flynn go out and drag home a tree. Monster of a thing. Had Flynn running up and down a ladder decorating it. But no Santa or elves, that kind of shit. She’s too smart to fall for any of that.”
“Ten’s a tough age. Too old for fairytales, too young for the truth.”
“Not Esme. She’s already had more than her fair share of truth.” Seeing Jess and Sister Patrice murdered last month had a lot to do with that. He buried his head over his steaming tea. “What kind of world do we live in where a good kid like her survives all that, only to be facing a death sentence?”
I placed my hand on his arm. “It might not be a death sentence. Maybe it’s some other form of prion disease. Something new, treatable. You can’t give up hope.”
He glanced up at that, his expression fierce. “I’ll never give up on Esme.”
“I know.”
“So what the hell are we up against here? An epidemic? Some kind of zombie apocalypse?”
“No. It doesn’t act as if it’s airborne.” Not that fear of infection had stopped him from gathering those children and their families and risking his own health. Typical Devon. “More likely another form of exposure. Maybe an environmental toxin.”
I stopped, puzzled. What could the kids have been exposed to that adults hadn’t? Were all the cases really isolated to the Tower, or had those just been the only ones we’d found so far?
“You’ve got to get to the bottom of this, doc. She’s all I have.”
“Stop calling me that. You know I’m not a doctor, not anymore. Louise will take good care of Esme and the others.”
“I call you that to remind you of who you are, not who you were. Less than a day, you figured out what was wrong with those kids. No one else could. And you’ll save them. Doctor Rossi.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. I don’t have the right training or the equipment. I don’t even have a job—”
“There’s a hell of a lot you can do. Starting with finding out why those kids got a disease you said runs in only a handful of families and is a one in a billion odds of anyone getting.” His eyes narrowed to dark slits, the whites hidden, only his irises and pupils showing. “Someone’s got to be behind all this. Tell me who, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
Back to his conspiracy theories about his father’s company. “You’re thinking Kingston Enterprises?”
“Why stop at Ebola? If the sick bastards will go there, what’s to stop them from something worse, something there’s no cure for—at least not that we know of. Yet.” The gleam in his eyes told me that Kingston Enterprises was about to get the most thorough inspection tour any CEO had ever performed.
“If it is manmade and not some crazy sporadic mutation gone wild, then they must have access to a sophisticated laboratory facility, advanced techniques in genetic engineering, the same isolation protocols you’d need to handle a Level Four pathogen.”
The thought of anyone playing with prions was mind-boggling. Who in their right mind would risk that genie escaping the bottle? Fictional depictions of a zombie apocalypse paled in comparison to what could actually happen in a world where prions were set loose. No defense, no treatment, no cure…not just in humans, in any mammal.
Talk about a horror story.
“You think Daniel might know something about this? Maybe we should go talk to him. You said no one can lie when you’re inside their head. Maybe we can finally get the truth.”
“I said one of his labs could be equipped to create a prion disease and turn it into a targeted weapon. Instead of looking at who could be spreading the fatal insomnia, maybe we should look at where. When Louise and I searched the CDC database, we found other clusters of prion disease. A few people, unrelated to each other. One in a small fishing village in Okinawa. Another in an ancient walled town in Umbria, Italy. A last on an island off the coast of Ireland.”
“And now here?” He frowned. “That makes no sense. Unless someone is using us as guinea pigs.”
I’d long since abandoned my food. He took my tray to the trash, and we returned to the elevator. As we emerged into the lobby outside the ICU, Devon said, “That’s how I would do it, testing a new disease. I’d want to see how many I had to infect—” He stopped. “Wait. What if there are people out there who are infected but don’t show symptoms? Couldn’t we use them to create a cure? Maybe that’s why it’s all kids, except for you. The adults are just, I don’t know, carriers. Or maybe they’re immune.”
“Doesn’t work that way, but you’re right. We need to find out how we were infected. Were the children targeted and I was accidentally exposed? Maybe Louise’s original assumption was right and my dad’s fatal insomnia—the genetic kind—somehow made me more susceptible.” I shook my head. “Too many questions.”
He jerked his chin. “Then let’s start getting answers. Because if someone created this, I’m damn sure they have a cure. I’m not losing Esme. Not again.”
“After I check on Jacob.”
He sobered at that.
There was a women’s room across the hall from the elevator bank. I’d promised Ryder I’d stay in touch. I pulled out my cell. “I’ll be right back.”
Of course he saw right through me. “
Tell Ryder he should feed you more often.”
I fingered Ryder’s amber pendant. Funny thing, I didn’t mind checking in with him. It felt good, knowing there was someone who cared enough to wait for my call. Plus, I wanted to know what more he’d discovered about Littleton and his partners.
So much to do. Bring the Brotherhood—or whoever Littleton’s partner or partners were—to justice before they killed again. Track the fatal insomnia patients and the origin of our disease. Find a cure—or at least a treatment.
Too many questions. But first…check in with Ryder and then see Jacob.
I paused at the restroom door and swung back to Devon. He’d loved once, loved so powerfully he’d sacrificed everything, including leaving Jess and Esme behind in order to keep them safe.
If there was no cure, and if these few weeks, months, were all I had, could I ask Ryder to suffer through that with me?
I knew Ryder’s answer. He’d made that clear. Just as Jess would have risked everything to go with Devon eleven years ago.
But… “When you left Jess, was it worth it? All those years apart?”
“Yes.” Devon didn’t appear surprised by the question. Didn’t hesitate in his answer. As if it was something he thought of constantly, weighed with each passing moment. “It kept her safe. And Esme. It’s the one decision I’ll never regret.”
His stare was heavy with the pain that decision had cost him—never seeing the woman he loved again, missing the first decade of his daughter’s life. But he bore the pain, carried it until it became a part of who he was.
Eleven years Devon had lived with his choice. I’d be lucky if I had eleven months. More likely eleven weeks.
My panic must have shown.
“He’s a big boy, doc. Ryder can handle it.” He glanced at the ICU entrance across the lobby from the restrooms. “I’ll check on Jacob, see if we can get in to see him now. Meet you in a few.”
I pushed through the door to the ladies’ room, glad for some privacy. Maybe Ryder could handle what was coming, but could I?
