At her playful choice of words, they couldn’t help smiling. Dean left for his shift, and Lucy returned to her lab. Knowledge awaited her. She had to know what these people were playing with, what they’d chosen as their instrument of death. They might not have the vaccine in their arsenal to stop them, but Mama had always said, know your enemy. As she thought of Dean and Marcos, and an old fella named Simon, Lucy vowed to know all she could about the enemy in Roswell.
Ω
Lucy woke to the ringing of her alarm, and although she kept punching the button on the clock, it refused to stop beeping. She finally realized it wasn’t the clock, but her laptop.
Sitting bolt upright, she stared at the screen.
Two matches found.
She bent closer, stared at the message, but still didn’t push the button.
Pulling in a deep breath she gathered her courage. “Dios estar con nosotros.” A premonition told her if God wasn’t with them, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
She pushed the button and read the analysis for Simon’s blood sample.
BT agent found.
H1N1—93.2%.
Ricin—6.8%. Lucy didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t even touch her keyboard. She stared at the screen waiting for it to correct itself. The program had malfunctioned. It was the only explanation. The sample Dean had given her did not contain ricin. She knew, because she had manually checked for it. Ricin had been on her priority list of agents to test for since Dean had described the first victim, specifically the girl’s paralysis. Ricin caused paralysis, as well as a quick and painful death.
“No bleeding though,” she mumbled, moving down the table to her microscope. “Ricin doesn’t cause bleeding.”
Slipping Simon’s blood sample back under the lens, she pressed her eye to the scope, daring it to reveal what it hadn’t before.
Ricin’s protein chains appeared as two distinctive threads of ribbon. The A chains spiraled and looped as if they belonged beside a bow on a birthday package. The B chains were more elongated. A first-year intern could pick them out.
None showed in Simon’s blood.
Yet, the computer analysis had found it, as well as influenza. Lucy stood up, feeling old and tired and—yes—burned out. She splashed cold water over her eyes and cheeks, grabbed a towel, and stared at the stranger in the mirror as she blotted her face.
“Influenza causes massive hemorrhaging. Ricin is a poor weapon because it degrades too easily. What if they slotted the ricin inside the influenza? They swapped out the RNA which makes it infectious. Now they have the perfect killing machine, and control the when and where. What if they created a weapon containing the infectious component as well as the ricin?”
The world tilted, and Lucy let the towel fall. No longer able to face the person in the mirror, or the truth of what she knew, she sat down on the tile floor. Its coldness did little to slow the spinning in her mind.
Ricin was extremely toxic, twelve thousand times more poisonous than rattlesnake venom. But they had vaccines for ricin. What they didn’t have vaccines for—what no one had vaccines for—was influenza. From the RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae, it was the wildfire societies had feared for generations.
It killed forty to fifty million people in Spain from 1918–1919. In 1957, the smaller Asian outbreak only claimed a few million lives. As did the 1968 Hong Kong Flu.
Of course they dealt with its cousin worldwide every year. People accepted the flu as they accepted the common cold.
This time, the common cold held the kiss of death.
Lucy leaned over until her forehead pressed against the side of the tub. She needed to run a few tests, confirming what she knew. Then she would call Aiden, who could transfer the information to Commander Martin. After that, she had to tell Dean. Maybe he would have some idea how to fight the worst biological nightmare she could imagine.
DEAN DIDN’T REALIZE he’d been holding his breath until he saw Lucy walk in the front door of E.T.’s. He expelled it in one relieved exhale.
“Come in late again, don’t bother coming in at all.” Sally deposited two plates of burger specials on the grill’s window ledge and barked, “Order up!”
Lucy didn’t argue. She tied on her apron, picked up her pad, and started taking orders. By sheer luck, her first table included several early drinkers. She circled back to the bar in three minutes.
“Dean, I need to talk to you.”
“Yeah, well I need to talk to you, too, but the boss is watching.”
“I know what it is.”
Dean’s hands froze at her words. He didn’t realize he’d left the Bud Light tap running until Paul reached over and pushed it back.
“Seems like the world has ended today,” Paul said. “But I doubt Sally will go for pouring beer on the floor.”
Dean nodded his thanks, set the beer on Lucy’s tray before he dropped it.
“Hey, Paul.”
“Hey, Lucy.”
The three of them stood looking at each other until Sally yelled, “Order up!” once again, puncturing the stillness. Only three in the afternoon, and E.T.’s was full: packed with bewildered people who had no idea what to say in the face of such tragedy.
Bubba and Billy came out of the bathroom. Bubba’s arm was slung around Billy. Both were red-eyed, which wasn’t unusual. Normally, it was from hangovers. Today, though, both of them had been crying. Billy made it as far as the bar, then toppled onto a stool. Bubba slid in beside him. Dean sent Paul a look.
Paul set two glasses of ice water in front of the boys.
“My grandpa turned sixty-two this summer, Paul. Sixty-two ain’t so old. You’re older than sixty-two.” Billy didn’t seem to notice the river of tears running down his cheeks.
Paul nodded, but offered no answers.
Answers were at a premium today in Roswell.
“Why won’t they let us see him?” Billy peered into his water, then at Bubba. “Where did they take him? He felt fine when he left for his tee time. Then Ma gets a call saying he’s dead.”
Bubba grabbed his drink, downed the whole thing in one gulp, even though it was only water.
“Eaton wouldn’t let anyone follow the ambulances. I got there while they were still loading the bodies. He had his bullhorn out. He even pointed his weapon at me.” Billy’s hand fisted.
Dean pulled Paul to the back as Lucy walked up with another order. “Maybe we should call Billy’s dad.”
“Died in a factory accident, five-six years ago. It’s just him and his mother now.”
They all studied Billy. A big boy, Dean had heard him bragging about playing defensive tackle in high school. Like most boys out of high school, he’d probably added a good forty pounds, but the beer hadn’t softened him yet. Add the tragedy of the last four hours, and you had a ticking bomb.
“Easy, Billy. Take a deep breath.” Paul’s voice was softer than the bar top’s mahogany shine.
“I went by the morgue and the hospital. He’s not there. They can’t take him away and not tell us where he is. It’s not right.”
Bubba exploded before Billy did. “I have my gun in the truck. I say we go down there to the morgue, or the hospital, or wherever they keep d-d-dead people and demand some answers.” He waved his arms around wildly. “They can’t stop us. Let them try to stop us.”
Dean and Paul exchanged looks. Paul reached for the Maker’s Mark.
“Boys, why don’t I get you a drink? On me.”
“I don’t want a drink. I want to see my grandpa.” Billy rose, fury and grief reddening his face.
Lucy slapped her order pad on the counter and stepped between the boys. “Where is your mother?”
“What?”
“Where is your mother? You’re a man, Billy, not a boy.”
Billy stared at her, as if she spoke another language.
Bubba took a step back; Lucy took a step forward.
“Do you think it’s your time to grieve? It’s not. Maybe tonight will be. M
aybe tomorrow. Right now you should be with your madre and your familia. You’re the man of the family now, Billy, whether you like it or not. You go home, and you take care of your mother.”
Lucy whirled on Bubba. “And you—”
She had to look up to glare into his eyes, but Dean knew from experience height or size wouldn’t slow her down. “You are supposed to be his compadre. Yet, what do you think up? Getting a gun and landing him in jail. How will that help him? Take him home now. Sit with his family. Be the friend he needs. Any punk on the street can carry a gun. It takes a man to stay with a family when death passes over.”
She waited, scowling at them as they inched away, stopping only once to look back.
After they’d left, she snagged Nadine. “Honey, would you take this to table six for me?”
“Sure thing, Lucy.” Nadine shouldered her tray and ambled off.
When Lucy turned toward him, Dean knew his turn had come.
“Stockroom. Now.” She stormed off.
Dean raised his hands in surrender. “Guess I’m taking a break, Paul.”
“I’ve got the bar covered. Don’t stand near any knives.”
Dean took off to the stockroom, but didn’t immediately see Lucy.
One bulb hung from the ceiling near the door. Lucy waited in the far corner, pacing back and forth. The light barely reached her, but what little pierced the gloom allowed him to see the fear behind the bravado she’d shown with Billy.
He’d barely rounded the corner when she grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him close.
“The computer identified the BT agent.”
“Huh?”
“Bio-terrorism agent.”
“That’s good. Right?”
“Not exactly. It’s ricin.”
He reached out, brushed her hair behind her ear. “It’s bad news, but we have a vaccine for ricin. We’ll contact Martin. He can—”
“No, he can’t. He can’t do anything.”
Dean felt sweat break out down his back at the certainty in her voice.
“It’s not just ricin. It’s also influenza. Type A influenza, H1N1 subtype.”
Dean waited for her to say more. She didn’t.
“I don’t understand. How can it be both?”
“They’ve found a way to combine the two.”
“You lost me. Back up a minute. Influenza. That’s just the flu, right?”
“No, Dean. Listen. Influenza—Spanish influenza.”
“How would they get their hands on a strain of the Spanish flu?”
“It doesn’t matter how. Let Martin figure out how. I put a call through to Aiden. What matters is it’s not infectious—not yet. At least what they released at Felix Canyon isn’t.”
“Influenza is always contagious.”
“This one isn’t.”
“That’s a positive thing.” Dean felt light-headed and wondered if the virus had begun to crawl through his system.
“Maybe.” Lucy pressed her forehead against the coolness of the freezer door. “Maybe not. They slotted in the ricin protein.”
“What does that mean? Slots are what you play in Vegas. What does it have to do with BTs?”
Lucy banged her fists lightly against the freezer. Dean stepped around a stack of cased beer. “I need to understand, Luce. I have to grasp what we’re up against.”
He didn’t need to remind her that in the last six hours, at least twelve people had died. Tonight, the terrorists could release more...But more of what? He angled closer, touched her. When she looked up, he understood something of the depth of her frustration. The look on her face told him she grasped the nature of the storm that threatened to overwhelm them, but she couldn’t explain it to him.
Lucy yanked open the freezer door. “Think of this freezer as a single particle of influenza virus. It contains eight pieces of RNA, which encodes ten proteins. Somehow, they took out one of the proteins—possibly the infectious protein.” She grabbed Dean’s hand, pushed him into the freezer. “You’re part of the influenza, one of the ten proteins. I’m ricin—one of the most venomous substances on Earth.”
She stood across the doorway from him, staring at him with those bottomless brown eyes.
“Poison. Got it.”
“If I can manipulate the protein strains, I can remove one part—maybe the infectious part. I have more control. In its place I slot in the ricin.”
She took his arms again, waltzed him around so he stood outside the freezer and she stood inside.
“Now death occurs in eleven minutes instead of three days.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper.
“And you control the when and the who.” As understanding washed over him, he wished he could go back into the freezer.
“Exactly. You don’t die immediately, as with ricin. You contract the disease, like you would with the flu. But, you set the time for the ricin to release—maybe twelve hours later. Once it releases, you die in eleven minutes, the same way you would with any exposure to ricin. It begins a chain reaction in the lungs, works up the throat, causes paralysis, then reacts with the sinus cavities on its way to the brain. The skin on the face sloughs away and massive hemorrhaging occurs as the patient dies.”
Her face had lost all color.
“Since you’ve delayed the actual kill time, you can demand a ransom, if you want to. Or you can issue a bulletin to tell you when and where the deaths will occur.”
“Magnifying the terror.” Dean understood the extent of what Lucy was describing at the exact moment he heard approaching footsteps, steps quickly followed by the smell of cigarette smoke. Slamming shut the freezer, Dean bent and picked up a case of beer from the stack against the wall. He almost collided with Sally as she came around the corner.
“Sally.”
“Dreiser.”
He stepped aside as she continued toward the freezer. “Have you seen Lucy?”
“I hope she’s on the floor. She came in thirty minutes late. She better be on the floor.”
“Okay.” Dean switched the case to his other shoulder and started out of the stockroom.
“You know something I don’t?” Sally stopped with her hand on the freezer door.
Dean hesitated, as if he couldn’t decide whether he should spill the beans or not.
“Out with it, Dreiser. Lucy can’t be in any worse trouble than she’s already in for showing up late. It’s not like I can fire anyone the way people are dropping like flies around here.” Sally studied him through her cigarette smoke.
“It’s nothing. She had a confrontation with Billy and Bubba, then she stormed out into the alley. I guess she needed to cool off.”
“Like I don’t have enough to handle with Jerry still MIA.” Sally dropped the cigarette on the floor and ground it out. “I’ll find her. With everything going on around here, she needs to get herself back to work. It’d help if you’d back me up.”
Sally started back toward the bar, but stopped to holler back. “I’d forget my head if it weren’t on my neck. Grab another bag of hamburger patties, would ya?”
“Got it, boss.” Dean waited a good ten seconds before he opened the freezer door, long enough to be sure Sally was gone. Most women would have cooled off in ten seconds. It was after all freezing in there, but then most women didn’t have Lucy’s temper.
“Why did you shut the door?”
“Not so loud.” Dean checked over his shoulder. “I heard Sally headed this way. I didn’t want us to get caught.”
“So you thought you’d freeze me instead?”
“There’s something about Sally that isn’t sitting right with me. I’d rather she didn’t catch us talking bio-agents. You have to admit it would look suspicious if she found us back here.”
“And it wouldn’t look odd if she found me frozen in the freezer?”
Lucy slugged his shoulder as she pushed by him. For a girl—a small, geeky girl if he was truthful—she packed a good punch. He needed to find out how many brothers she had. F
irst they’d take care of this biological disaster, then he needed to find out how many brothers she had.
He wished his worries could be limited to a girlfriend’s father who was a Boston cop and some brothers he needed to square it with before he could...before he could what?
It wasn’t until he’d retraced his steps to the bar that Dean realized he had been thinking about Lucy in terms of after the op was over. If it ended without their deaths.
The Falcon settle down? Wouldn’t Aiden laugh at the thought, as would his family. He’d never even come close. The idea confused him nearly as much as this op. But life without Lucy? He couldn’t imagine it.
He didn’t need this kind of complication in his life right now.
He needed to get through this mission and then go somewhere and get his head on straight. What did he have to offer a woman? What kind of life could he give her? But what else did he know how to do?
No, he did not need a woman in his life, and, God knew, a woman did not need him. He was in no condition to emotionally support anyone. While he’d been alone, everything had felt frozen inside. Lucy had stirred up feelings, dreams he didn’t realize he had. Dreams he didn’t know how to handle.
The girl could pack a punch though.
As he filled orders, his despair changed to a senseless kind of optimism. He didn’t know what their future together held, but Lucinda Brown would have a future.
Suddenly he realized maintaining their cover wasn’t his highest priority—surviving was.
They would make it through if he had to duct tape a bio-hazard suit to her body.
Which was the last coherent thought he had before the screaming started.
LUCY WALKED OUT OF the ladies’ room and bumped right into her boss.
“Kind of a long break.”
“Sorry. Feel free to dock me.”
“I will.”
Sally didn’t move so she could pass.
“I don’t know what happened with Bubba and Billy, but I need you to work. Folks are wound a bit tight, if you haven’t noticed. We need to serve them and move them out. I don’t want frustration brewing trouble.”
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