Infected

by Sophie Littlefield

  When they were under the tree, Sheila turned to face Carina with a grim expression.

  “There are things you don’t know about the project your uncle and I have been working on,” she said before Carina could speak. “The situation isn’t what it appears to be. Walter made some … unfortunate errors in judgment recently.”

  Her tone—accusatory and grating—set Carina’s teeth on edge. Any desire she had to be fair, to give Sheila the benefit of the doubt, evaporated.

  “Oh really? How would you even know that?”

  Sheila blinked and Carina could see the effort she was making to keep her temper in check. “Walter and I worked together before you could talk, Carina.”

  “If anything was going on, I think I’d know, considering that I’ve been living with him for the past year.”

  “You have no idea what we were working on.”

  “Sure I do—your nutritional research, right?” Carina didn’t bother to keep the skepticism out of her voice. “Only that’s not really what you guys were doing at all, was it?”

  Sheila stared at Carina for a moment, narrowing her eyes. Finally she took a step closer, leaving only inches between them. Up close, Carina could see the faint lines between her eyebrows and bracketing her mouth. Carina had always thought Sheila was attractive for her age, if you liked thin, wound-tight women, but up close her eyes had a hardness to them and her smile was forced.

  “All right,” she said softly. “All right. So this is how we’re going to do this. I didn’t want to risk tarnishing your uncle’s memory in any way, but you aren’t giving me a choice. You’re right—our research was much more … shall we say, far reaching than you were aware of. Classified, in fact, so at least you don’t need to be angry at your mom or your uncle for not telling you about it, because they were legally prevented from discussing it with you.”

  It stung to know her mother had kept secrets from her. Carina supposed she shouldn’t be too surprised—she’d accepted long ago that her relationship with her mother was more distant than she would have liked. But this meant there had never been an adult in her life, not a single one, who had always been honest with her.

  Still, she wasn’t about to give Sheila the satisfaction of seeing her pain. She fixed a cold expression on her face and glared back. “And I should believe you … why?”

  The corner of Sheila’s eye twitched. “How about this—because you’re in danger, serious danger, and I can keep you safe?”

  Carina laughed bitterly. “Danger, really? Is that why Meacham won’t even let me go to the bathroom by myself? Are you afraid bad guys are going to parachute into the stall and torture me until I tell them what Walter was working on? Oh, wait—it was classified, so there’s no way I’d know anything about it anyway—right?”

  “You need to shut up and listen,” Sheila snapped. Out of the corner of her eye, Carina saw Tanner edging closer, Meacham close on his heels. “The press is reporting that your uncle died in a random auto accident on the way from the Houston airport. That’s not entirely true. That embankment he crashed into? Two vehicles with bogus license plates forced him off the road. He couldn’t have avoided the collision, and since he’d been trying to outrun them, he was going close to eighty miles an hour when he died.”

  Carina struggled not to blink. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe this: those cars were driven by members of one of the most violent gangs operating in the Republic of Albania. They were after Walter because of some specialized research he was supposed to give them. Which, by the way, has nothing to do with nutrition and everything to do with enhancing battlefield performance. The Albanian mafia intends to use our work to fight a crackdown on cocaine trafficking by the government. If they are successful, many, many innocent people will die.” Sheila sighed. “That technology we developed was meant for our own army, needless to say. Your uncle was a brilliant man—too bad he was so hardheaded.”

  “Uncle Walter would never get involved with anything like what you’re saying,” Carina said, outraged. “He was—” She struggled to find the words to describe him: brilliant, and passionate about his work, but he could also be funny, and on the rare occasions when he took a break from his job, he was kind and generous with her. In some ways, he’d been more of a parent to her than her own mother had been. She could no more imagine him cheating on anything than she could imagine him singing on American Idol.

  “He was human.” Sheila shrugged. “He made mistakes. For whatever reason, the Albanians thought they had made a deal with him, but he didn’t actually hand over the research like he was supposed to. That’s why he was killed. They made an example out of him. Now, unfortunately, our intelligence suggests that his contacts believe you have access to the data.”

  “Me? Why would they think that?”

  “You were close to him,” Sheila said.

  “That’s crazy. He never told me anything.”

  “Closer than anyone else,” Sheila amended. “He told several people that you were his protégée. Before he made his last trip, Walter wiped his lab’s servers of all his files, and changed all his passwords.”

  “What’s going on?” Tanner demanded, putting his arm protectively around Carina. “Is she threatening you?”

  “I’m trying to save her life,” Sheila said. “If you try to get involved, you’ll just endanger her further.”

  “She says some Albanian gang was after Uncle Walter to get at his research, but he hid it all before they killed him. And that now they’re trying to find me because they think I have it.”

  “That’s crazy,” Tanner said. “They’d have a dozen different layers of data security at a place like Calaveras Lab. There’s no way Mr. Monroe would have been able to single-handedly take it all down.”

  “Aren’t you the clever one,” Sheila snapped, glaring down her nose at Tanner. “You must belong to the computer club at school. A regular prodigy.”

  “I’d have to belong to the idiot club to believe that high-security government contract data isn’t routinely encrypted and backed up.”

  “Indeed. But what you’re not taking into account is Walter’s private work. Technically, the lab owns anything developed by Walter even off-premises, but he seems to have been adept at blurring the lines. There were … elements … of our project that Walter alone had access to.”

  “So you’re saying that my uncle had his own thing going on, something outside your supersecret ‘battlefield enhancement’ project, and that’s what he was killed for?” Carina demanded. “That’s what they think I have? What exactly is it, anyway? Some kind of extreme energy drink? Rock star in a pill?” There was that smart-ass side again, the one she couldn’t contain when she was angry.

  Sheila’s grim expression turned even more scornful. “You don’t need to worry about the details. All you need to know is that we have access to communications suggesting the Albanians believe Walter gave key information to you. The reason Baxter and Meacham have been so attentive today is that they are trying to keep you safe.” She raised an eyebrow. “You might actually want to try being grateful.”

  “Grateful?” Carina said incredulously. “If you knew all this, if these Albanians are as big a threat as you say they are, then you practically got Walter killed yourself.”

  “Carina!” Sheila snapped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea how ruthless they can be. If they want you—and trust me, they do—then they’re just waiting for the opportunity.”

  “If we were in so much danger, why didn’t you say anything about it sooner?”

  “I didn’t think …” Sheila shook her head impatiently. “I don’t have time to explain. New information has come to light, and you can bet they have people on the ground close by, watching us even now—”

  “I don’t believe her,” Tanner said, not bothering to lower his voice, never taking his eyes off Sheila. Meacham had a hand on his shoulder, and Tanner was trying to shrug him off without attracti
ng the attention of the people who were wandering close to the gardens.

  Carina didn’t believe her either. Walter couldn’t have been killed over something as simple as a performance-enhancing drug. Something else was going on, and she was beginning to feel certain that Sheila was at the center of it.

  “Give me ten minutes to say goodbye to Tanner,” she hedged. “Alone.”

  Sheila glanced impatiently at her watch. “You’ve got your priorities all mixed up,” she said. “Your boyfriend should be the last thing on your mind. At least until we get this nailed down. In a few days’ time the authorities should have the men who killed Walter in custody, and you can quit worrying about them. Until then, I highly suggest you let the grown-ups do what they’re paid to do.”

  If it weren’t for that final dig, that last bit of condescension, Carina might have agreed. But Sheila had been treating her rudely all day, snapping at her to hurry in the morning, and again when she was taking too long to walk to her seat. Gone was the solicitous kindness she usually showed Carina, the almost insistent generosity she’d exhibited at the salon. In its place was a cold efficiency that made Carina’s skin crawl.

  “Ten minutes,” she repeated.

  “It’s okay, Ms. Boylston,” Baxter said. “They’re just kids. Give them a few minutes.”

  That earned Baxter a scowl, but Sheila reluctantly nodded, and Meacham let go of Tanner’s shoulder. Carina took his hand and they practically jogged down the path until she was certain they were out of earshot.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured to Tanner. “I can’t believe I got you into this.”

  He pulled her closer. “This is really weird,” he whispered against her ear, “and try not to react, but that guy Meacham showed me his gun. When you were talking to Sheila. Like, if I tried to mess with you he wasn’t afraid to use it on me.”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t just trying to intimidate you?”

  “Uh, yeah. It’s hard to misinterpret when a guy holds his jacket open and points to his holster, you know?”

  “But Sheila said …” Sheila had said Meacham and Baxter were supposed to be protecting her, and presumably not just from the Albanian mafia. Was it possible he considered Tanner a threat?

  And if she was to leave with Sheila—what guarantee did she have that Meacham wouldn’t do something to Tanner the minute they were out of sight?

  “This is so messed up,” she said. “I wish we could just go somewhere, the two of us, and figure this out.”

  “Your uncle said to stay away from her. Do you trust her?”

  Carina considered; it didn’t take long at all for her to come up with an answer. “Yesterday I would have said yes. Today? I don’t know who to trust. But I certainly trust my uncle more.”

  “So come with me. Just us, we’ll go somewhere alone and figure out your next move.”

  “Now, you mean? There’s no way they’ll let us.”

  “I don’t know about that. It’s the middle of a memorial service, and there’s, like, half a dozen news crews here. Even those guys wouldn’t risk making a scene that will end up on the Internet or TV.”

  Carina turned over the possibility in her mind. She had the key—and Walter’s instructions to go straight to the address in his note. Whatever waited for them there, was it any riskier than staying here?

  “Look over behind me, to your right,” Tanner said. “Don’t let them see you doing it, but … there’s a little road that goes around the Dumpsters. I’m pretty sure that’s a service drive. We go that way, get a head start, there’s no way they’ll catch us before we get outside.”

  Carina calculated the distance to the wall that ringed the cemetery. If Tanner was right, there would be a break in the wall, just around the corner, for delivery trucks. If he was wrong …

  Well, he couldn’t be wrong. That was all there was to it—because what he proposed was better than trusting Sheila.

  “All right,” she breathed against his neck, hoping Tanner looked convincingly like a guy consoling his distraught girlfriend. She felt his muscles tense under his shirt.

  “On three, okay?” he said softly, and she subtly shifted her stance, finding purchase on the gravel, wishing she weren’t wearing such ridiculously high heels.

  “One … two …”

  When Tanner got to three she ran harder than she’d ever run in her life, ignoring the shooting pains in her feet from the shoes, narrowing her focus to a single thought: Get away.

  Before Carina had gone three strides, Sheila started yelling.

  If Carina had been holding on to any hope that Sheila really did care about her welfare, that she was merely a dedicated scientist with a few paranoid notions, those hopes came crashing down when she heard the fury in her voice. “Baxter, Meacham! Go! Stop them!”

  Meacham grunted with exertion as he chased them, hindered by his close-fitting designer suit. Carina held tightly to Tanner’s hand for balance as she ran, terrified of coming down wrong on her high heels and twisting her ankle. But the shoes didn’t seem to be slowing her down at all. In fact, the strange jittery buzz she’d been feeling all day had roared to life, swelling to a crescendo in her ears, energy flowing through her body as though someone had flipped a switch. Tanner seemed to feel it too. He wasn’t even breathing hard as they leapt over a cart loaded with folding chairs rather than swerve around it. Carina, who held a school record in the high jump, couldn’t have done any better.

  As they rounded the corner, Carina felt a surge of relief to see that the wall opened onto the street that ran along the south side of the cemetery. The tall, ornate gate was open, and a man pushing a handcart piled high with boxes was coming through.

  “Excuse us!” Tanner shouted as the startled man hesitated in the opening. Carina swerved around the cart, unable to attempt the jump in her shoes, while Tanner headed straight for it. This time he didn’t quite clear the tall boxes, hitting the top one with his foot; it fell to the ground, spilling small flowerpots that rolled in every direction behind them.

  After she and Tanner passed through the gate, Carina pulled it shut with a clang, and the latch fell into place. She heard frustrated cursing behind them as their pursuers tripped over the flowerpots.

  “This way!” Tanner shouted, running down the grassy median between lanes of traffic.

  “Wait—”

  Carina paused long enough to yank off her shoes and discard them on the ground. Then she was running barefoot, her feet sinking into the soft grass, her lungs filling with air as her arms and legs moved in tandem. When they reached the end of the block, she barely even felt the pavement beneath her feet, and she was sprinting faster than she ever had. Was her speed the result of terror? Adrenaline? Tanner was keeping up effortlessly—was he experiencing the same thing?

  After another block they turned down an alley behind a row of bungalows, little square detached garages lined up on either side. When they came to a garage with its door open, the interior crammed with boxes and bikes and sports equipment, Carina had an idea. She swerved into the garage, praying that it was unoccupied, with Tanner right behind her.

  Carina frantically scanned the wall for the button to close the garage door and slapped it hard. The door began to close, casting them gradually into darkness. When it groaned to a halt, the only light came from a grimy window facing the house. Through it, Carina could see a heavyset, sweating man mowing his back lawn with a push mower, sending up a spray of cut grass.

  He’d only done a third of the backyard. If she and Tanner were lucky, they had a little time. Tanner was standing up against the garage door, his face pressed to its surface.

  “What are you doing?” Carina whispered.

  “There’s a crack. I can see—wait—”

  Carina held her breath until he spoke again. She stayed as still as she could, but her left eye was twitching. She rubbed it and it stopped immediately.

  “He just passed by,” Tanner said softly. “Meacham. And, Car—he had his gun out.”r />
  A chill ran through Carina. Would the man really shoot them? Or was the gun just to scare them into coming along? She couldn’t imagine that Sheila would actually risk killing anyone, no matter what the truth was about Walter, the gangsters, and the mysterious research.

  She remembered something Sheila had said: Our intelligence suggests that his contacts believe you have access to the data.

  If that was true … was it possible that Sheila actually believed that Carina had something valuable? Something Walter had given her, a way to access his private data? Sheila had said he had blocked access to his work the week before his trip: maybe he had actually been hiding the information from her?

  Carina frantically racked her brain, trying to remember if Walter had given her anything that might contain whatever it was that Sheila wanted. They’d had breakfast together on the day before he’d left for Houston, oatmeal for Walter and a protein bar and a banana for Carina, as always. He’d brought a pizza home that night, after picking up the dry cleaning. Carina had been the one to bring in the mail, and there hadn’t been anything unusual, just a couple of bills and some junk mail. Walter had gone to bed by ten since he had an early flight.

  Nothing unusual at all. At some point, Walter must have hidden the letter under the recycling can in the hall. But if he’d left her anything else, she had missed it. And this wasn’t the time to worry about it.

  “We have to keep moving,” Carina said. “Baxter and Meacham are both out there, and Sheila—”

  Depending on how determined Sheila was to find her, there could be others. How many security agents had she seen at the edges of the crowd? A dozen? More? If they all worked for Calaveras, and if Sheila had the authority to order them around, the alley outside their hiding place could soon be crawling with people looking for them.