by Cherry Adair
“Okay. Fine. Where exactly are we?”
“Ninth floor of T-FLAC’s HQ in Montana. Come on, the lab’s this way.”
And his almost completed house was only fifty miles down the road. When habitable next summer, it would be close enough to drop in here after ops.
His house. His home. He wondered what Kess would think about it.
They dropped the vials off in the lab, and were told by a young, male receptionist to wait in the next room and not to leave in case someone had questions. Simon took the order in his stride, sitting in one of the easy chairs and picking up a science magazine.
The large room looked and felt more like someone’s living room than a waiting room outside a lab. Squishy, chocolate-colored chairs, the leather as soft and comfortable as an old jacket, were grouped around coffee tables with current magazines piled haphazardly. Sepia-colored photographs of children playing lined the walls. The room smelled pleasantly of coffee.
He glanced up from the glossy magazine. “You’re going to wear a rut in the floor if you keep pacing like that.”
“I hate sitting around,” she admitted. “Want some coffee?” Kess asked, nodding to the space-agey looking coffeemaker on a table across the room.
“Sure,” he muttered, not looking up as he turned a page.
“Black, I presume?” How odd. They’d slept together, but Kess realized she had no idea how Simon liked his coffee.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Happy to have something to do, Kess poured fragrant coffee into a ceramic mug. She loved the smell, but hated the taste. “You know what I’d really love to do is have a tour of this facility.” She crossed the room and handed him the steaming mug. “How big is it? How many people work here?”
Not only was she curious about T-FLAC’s facility, Kess was fascinated with seeing where Simon worked. She wanted to meet the people he interacted with. See who he was in his natural habitat.
Simon’s teeth flashed white as he gave her the half smile that was somehow connected to her heart. The organ fluttered in response.
“You know if I tell you I’ll have to kill you, right?”
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait? Perhaps we have time to—”
He scanned her from top to toe. “Cold?”
She didn’t have to glance down to see that her nipples were hard little buds beneath her T-shirt and her goose bumps had goose bumps. “It’s not a hundred in the shade in here.”
“True.”
She suddenly found herself wearing a long-sleeved sweater in a delicious cinnamon color; it felt as soft and luxurious as cashmere. “Thanks.” She wandered over to look at one of the large framed photographs of two little girls on a merry-go-round. They were about three or four, and both were laughing uncontrollably, their sweet faces scrunched up with mirth as they hung on each other. Kess smiled, then went to look at the next picture.
When she’d inspected all of the photographs she ambled over to sit on the arm of the sofa, swinging her foot as she waited. Simon caught her eye and patted the seat next to him. “Come sit here and keep me warm.”
Just as Kess jumped to her feet the inner door opened. A tall woman with pixie-short black hair, wearing a pristine lab coat, came into the room. Simon immediately got to his feet and crossed to meet her.
“Blackthorne? I’m Dr. Kelsey Roberts. I’ve been working on your specimens, and found the results, quite frankly, intriguing.”
No shaking of hands, no smile. The doctor—Kess presumed scientist not medical—was all business. She was also attractive, clearly good at what she did, and part of Simon’s inner circle. Kess felt a tightness in her chest that she accurately interpreted as jealousy. Here was Simon’s One Day Woman personified.
Not that he exhibited any signs of interest. He was too focused on what he was here for. An analysis of the water samples. Kess felt small, reacting the way she did. She had no claim on him. None. Something she should remember. She admired that he was a man who took his job seriously. She’d just happened to be in the right place, at the right time.
She still had ten months to remain in Mallaruza on her contract with the president, unless Mr. Bongani asked her to stay after his election. Or unless he lost. Or she was in jail.
Simon would go somewhere else in the world on some black ops T-FLAC mission. And one day he was going to be in the same place and at the same time as a tall, beautiful brunette. He was going to claim his Stepford wife and live happily ever after.
Kess wanted to kick something. Hard.
The doctor practically did a U–turn as, the niceties over, she wanted to give Simon the information he needed and apparently required them in another part of the lab. “Follow me.”
Kess tailed along as the doctor led them into another room. This one was all white tiles and antiseptic-looking. Actually it looked a bit like Kess imagined the inside of a spaceship would look. Like the coffeepot in the other room, it looked very space-agey and quite cool. Kess wanted to explore. In particular she wanted to look through one of the extremely scientific microscopes and see things she’d only seen on the Discovery Channel.
Dr. Roberts dimmed the lights and went to a computer on one of two long counters filled with machines and an odd assortment of equipment Kess didn’t recognize. The room was cool. Cold. She rubbed her arms through the cashmere sweater, but didn’t move closer to Simon’s heat, much as she longed to.
Through a large window she observed technicians in what Kess presumed were some sort of close-fitting Hazmat suits that covered them from head to toe. They looked like black-garbed space aliens. She sucked in a nervous laugh. For all she knew that could be exactly what they were. Fascinated by the possibility, she walked over to the window for a closer look.
“The preliminary cultures show it’s a genetically engineered derivative form of dengue fever,” the scientist told Simon, her tone grim. “As intriguing as that is from a scientific standpoint, I can’t stress strongly enough that this is much worse than we originally anticipated.”
Alerted to the combination of excitement and foreboding in the woman’s voice, Kess turned her back on the people moving silently in the next room and looked over at where Simon and the other woman stood side by side.
“Our DNA tests matched the alleles to a particularly virulent outbreak in Chechnya last year.” The woman’s slender, ringless fingers flew across the computer keys and an image came up on the large monitor.
Simon narrowed his eyes to glittering slits. “Someone from Chechnya visited Mallaruza and brought dengue fever with them? Intentionally?”
A shiver, like a cold hand on her spine, made Kess move in closer to see what the doctor was about to show Simon. She knew she wouldn’t have a clue about whatever example the woman was about to use. But Kess needed to be closer to him. She needed to feel his warmth. Needed his calm. Because, while Dr. Roberts was talking in a cool, scientific way, the subtext was starting to give Kess a really bad feeling. A quick glance at Simon’s face showed he was sensing the same thing.
“Dengue fever has four subtypes,” Dr. Roberts told him. “DEN-1 through DEN-4. Once someone has been exposed to one of the subtypes, they have lifelong immunity. Outbreaks of all the dengue subtypes have been reported in Mallaruza, making it statistically improbable that a strain of the disease could be responsible for the incredibly high mortality rate and alarmingly swift spread in the current situation.”
“Fascinating.” Simon leaned in to look at the monitor and the examples of…whatever it was the doctor was showing him. Twisting ribbons of…something important and scary-looking.
Simon absently stepped behind Kess, laying his open hand on the small of her back. The heat of his fingers warmed her, but more, the fact that he was touching her made her insides jump and shout. Looking at him, one wouldn’t know that he was even aware that she was in the room with them. His touch meant that he was tacitly aware of her, even when focused on his job.
“So we’re looking at a natura
lly occurring disease that was normally transmitted?” Simon asked with a frown, “and the only unique aspect is it screws with your statistical probabilities?”
Doctor Roberts ran her fingers through her short hair. “You’re missing my point.”
“Easy to do with all that DEN-1, DEN-2 mortality rate bullshit.”
The scientist keyed up another graphic. “This.” She used the pad of her forefinger to bring up a photograph of dots in varying density in long rows. “This is an electropherograph of the genetic material we extracted from the water sample you gave us.”
Simon inched Kess forward so he could get a closer look. “Okay.” His thumb ran a small circle in the middle of her back, even though he was looking intently at the screen, not at Kess.
Dr. Roberts tapped the screen. “Let me overlay a second electropherograph in a contrasting color scheme so you can see what I mean. This is from the Chechnian sample we had on file.”
“What are those extra dots?” Kess asked, intrigued even though she didn’t understand most of what the doctor was telling Simon. While it was clear that whatever the doctor had discovered was something incredibly bad, as in not good and very scary, Kess still found the entire process fascinating.
The woman shot her a Where-did-you-come-from look. She put more electro-whatevers up on the screen, and Kess had to concentrate hard to see the subtle differences.
“The extra dots,” she said with patience and a touch of amusement, “are DNA alleles from leptospirosis.”
Simon stiffened behind Kess, making her aware of how much tension he was already holding in his body. The fact that Simon was tense made her tense. “These two diseases don’t normally coexist?” he demanded, his fingers tightening on Kess’s back.
“They can,” the doctor said flatly. “But in this case, they aren’t coexisting, they’re a singular organism.”
“Gene-splicing?”
The woman nodded. “By someone who knew what they were doing. It’s simple but brilliant.”
“Unleashing two separate but deadly viruses at the same time?” Kess asked as her heart started racing. Someone was killing millions of people on purpose? Who? Why?
“Not separate,” Dr. Roberts said. “Someone took a sample of the dengue fever outbreak and joined the dengue from Russia with a sample of leptospirosis, probably from the most recent outbreak after the flood in Nicaragua.”
“Why?” Kess whispered, horrified.
“Because dengue is a mosquito-borne illness and leptospirosis is a waterborne illness,” Simon told her grimly. “Splicing them together created a form of dengue that can be transmitted through drinking water.”
“Correct,” the doctor agreed. “Not just any dengue, but hemorrhagic DEN-4. It’s genius. You can spray an infected area to kill the mosquitoes when you have a normal dengue outbreak. Just as you can treat water to kill off leptospirosis. But whoever came up with this knew that unless the genetic manipulation was discovered, none of the conventional treatments would work.”
“There’s no way this could be some freaky thing in nature?” Kess asked.
“Absolutely not. There’s no way the DNA from your sample would match the DNA from Chechnya. There are always slight variations in the alleles in nature. The leptospirosis is caused when animal urine contaminates drinking water, and while I can’t pin down the exact origin of this strain of leptospirosis, I can tell you that the gene types wouldn’t fuse without the aid of human manipulation under carefully controlled conditions.”
Simon’s breath fanned the back of Kess’s head. Not in a loverlike way—she was pretty sure he wasn’t even aware that he was so close against her back that a piece of paper wouldn’t fit between them. “Who has this kind of sophisticated, advanced technology?” he demanded.
“We do,” the doctor admitted. “T-FLAC does this sort of cutting-edge technology right here.”
Fourteen
“God, this is amazing,” Kess said, wobbling as they materialized beside the river in Mallaruza. She grabbed his forearm to balance herself; he’d brought them in a little closer to the water than he liked and Simon steadied her before they both went into the river.
“Teleporting is the only way to travel.” She laughed. “Who needs planes? And for someone who likes instant gratification, teleportation as a means of transportation can’t be beat.” Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled. Her hair was a wild orange-red nimbus around her shoulders. Botticelli’s Venus. Sensuous and strong. Irresistible.
Finding it impossible to keep his hands off her, Simon cupped her warm face between his hands, feeling her fiery hair slide over his fingers. “I’ve never met anyone as fearless as you.”
She grinned up at him, her perfectly imperfect teeth very white in the golden glow of the late afternoon sun. “I’m not exactly fearless,” she admitted, her good cheer dimming slightly. “Spiders still scare the crap out of me, and that is ratcheted down from the paralytic terror I had before I went to the Atlanta zoo at twelve, and begged them to allow me to handle every spider they had.”
“Arachnophobia?”
“Off the charts.” She shuddered dramatically. “Hated them since I was an itty-bitty little kid. But learning about them, and handling them every day, gave me a healthy respect for them.”
What an amazing woman she was.
“The situation with the gene-splicing, and this virus business, scares the crap out of me.” Kess’s shudder this time was the real deal. “But right this second I’ve just made an extraordinary journey few other people will ever experience, and I’m standing here—in Africa—in the arms of a man I trust implicitly. So right now, Simon Blackthorne with an e, living in the here and now isn’t scary at all.”
“Christ, Kess, what the hell am I going to do with you?”
She stood on tiptoe to brush a kiss against his lips. “Feed me. I’m starving.”
He glanced at his watch. “We can make it back in time for dinner.”
“Sweet.” She tucked her hand in his as they headed back across the open expanse of grass. “Oh! Stop a minute,” she whispered, pointing to a pair of lions under the shrubs Simon had conjured earlier to conceal their kiss. “I’ve never seen that before. Have you?”
“Lions having sex?”
Kess tilted her head, her cheeks a little pink. “It doesn’t look as if she’s enjoying it very much.”
The young male had the female pinned to the ground, his massive mouth and sharp teeth holding her by the scruff of her neck as he mounted her.
Surprising himself, Simon felt a rush of raw heat when both animals roared as the male started thrusting. When the male was sure his lioness wasn’t going to toss him on his royal ass, the lion released her neck, then nuzzled his face against hers.
“He’s kissing her! That is so sweet,” Kess said softly. In seconds it was over. The lion did a graceful dismount and rolled over and yawned. Kess laughed. “Oh, my God. You guys are all the same.”
“I have never bitten the back of your neck.” Simon ran the flat of his hand up her soft, pale nape. She shivered. “Right…here.” He trailed the edge of his nail across the smooth skin and delighted at her responsiveness as she bent her head with a whimper.
“They’ll nap awhile, then be back at it every fifteen or thirty minutes for the next couple of days.” With a strangely human-sounding moan the young lion rolled over on his back like the giant cat he was, his legs spread as he slept.
Kess’s eyes twinkled. “No wonder he’s king of the freaking jungle. Nonstop for a couple of days? Holy cow.”
“We’ll take the long way round so we don’t disturb their postcoital glow.”
“Thirty seconds hardly warrants his smug smile,” Kess observed as they circled the pair.
“What he lacks in quality, he makes up in quantity.”
“You lions all think the same way.”
“Don’t tempt me; right now the thought of grabbing you by the scruff of the neck and throwing you down in the grass
has a certain piquant appeal.”
Kess shot him a sassy glance. “Nobody’s stopping you, Leo.”
Simon’s laugh disturbed a small flock of tiny brown birds with yellow throats. “I’m thinking bed, clean sheets—”
“Hmm. Shower. Wine. Can we teleport back to Quinisela after dinner?”
“You enjoy that mode of travel, do you?”
“If it gets me alone with you, I’m all for it.” Her smile dimmed as if a cloud had suddenly slid behind the shine in her eyes. “Simon…Dr. Roberts didn’t literally mean that the splicing was done by someone at T-FLAC, did she?”
“Jesus. I hope to hell not. But no. She meant that we have that capability.”
Kess grimaced. “God, that’s scary. Why?”
“Because we need to at least keep up with what the hell tangos around the world are doing. Want to lose the sweater?”
“No, actually I want to keep it, just take it off.”
“I’ll send it to the car. The color looks good on you. Lost your hat I see.” Simon teleported the sweater, and replaced the ball cap. Mint green this time. Kess smiled happily and adjusted the brim.
His sat phone vibrated in his hip pocket and he hauled it out. “Blackthorne—”
“This is Gonzales from trace. Found your Angela Marie Sidel working in a diner in Nome, Alaska. What do you want done with her?”
“Good work.” In an aside he told Kess, “My guy found Angela—First of all,” he told Gonzales. “Stick to her like glue and don’t let her out of your sight. Second, contact Nelson McKay. He’s Kess Goodall’s attorney in Atlanta. Tell him you have Sidel and set up a meet so he can get her sworn statement.”
“Then…”
“Get back to me.” Simon closed the phone and shoved it back into his pocket. “Good news.”
“Yes—i-it is.”
He stopped and put a finger under Kess’s chin. “Are you crying?”
She wiped her wet face with both hands. “Absolutely not.” And then because she was Kess, flung herself into his arms in an exuberant hug, half laughing, half crying. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
