Macy was in her tent with her sore ankle propped up on a chair when Clint walked in, balancing two lunch trays on one arm. She’d never been much on fussing over her looks with makeup, but just this once she wished she’d bothered to put on a little lipstick and do more with her wild hair than pull it back in a quick braid.
“One of those for me?” she asked, nodding at his cargo, “or are you making up for missing dinner last night?”
“You can have turkey on white or turkey on white.”
She smiled. “Turkey on white is fine. Thanks.”
He passed her a tray and she unwrapped the cellophane around her sandwich. Her stomach did a somersault when she thought about taking a bite, so she set it down.
“Did they—have they sent someone out to get Michael yet?”
He nodded.
“Who could have shot him? And why?”
Uncharacteristically, he studied his tray instead of meeting her eyes. The change in his behavior made her nervous. What was going on?
“You tell me,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Can you think of any reason someone would want to kill your pilot?”
Her stomach progressed from somersaults to full handsprings. She pushed her lunch tray away. “No.”
“What about the cargo guy, Jeffries? Or David?”
“No one would have any reason to kill them, either.”
“I meant would they have any reason to kill Michael Cain.”
She lurched to her feet. “No!”
Clint calmly took a bite of his sandwich and chewed in silence. She pushed her chair back and limped across the tent, her mind racing.
“Are you interrogating me?” she asked, spinning back to face him.
He looked up, took his time swallowing. “I’m trying to figure out what happened out there. It’s what I do.”
She hobbled back over to him, plopped into her seat. “I didn’t know Ty very well. But David did not shoot Michael. And if you’re even considering the possibility that he did, that means…you think he’s alive.”
Her heart stuttered. He did. Clint thought David was alive!
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going on here. Can you think of any reason someone would want to get their hands on the virus the plane was carrying. Could terrorists use it somehow?”
It was hard to put her hope that David might be alive aside and think about the virus, but she tried. “They could, but they’d be stupid to do it. The only reason it’s been contained in Malaysia so far is because it’s a small country, easy to close the borders. But if ARFIS were released in the U.S. or Europe, they’d be risking a worldwide outbreak. They’d be jeopardizing their own countries.”
“What kind of knowledge would it take to handle the virus without contaminating yourself if someone did take it?”
“Your average high-school science teacher could probably thaw the frozen virus and weaponize it.”
“Wonderful. And the instructions to make an atomic bomb are posted on the Internet. Ain’t it a wonderful world we live in?”
“If you knew David, you’d never think he was involved in some terrorist plot to kill God knows how many innocent people.”
Clint took another bite of his lunch and scooted her tray closer to her, giving her an encouraging look. “You need to eat. Tell me about Ty Jeffries. He’s the wild card here. Foreign national, you hadn’t known him that long.”
She picked up her sandwich, nibbled at the crust and shrugged. “We called him the red-tape man. He purchased supplies for us, acquired the test animals, arranged for shipping, dealt with the airport authorities, stuff like that. Maintained most of our equipment, too. He was very handy. David and I are…not mechanical.”
“Why was he going back to the U.S.?”
“David liked him. Offered him a job.”
“What kind of background checks do you do on employees?”
“Extensive. Although Ty wasn’t an employee yet. He was working as a contractor for us in Malaysia.”
“So you basically let a man you know nothing about on board a plane carrying a lethal virus.”
“David—” She ducked her head. She would not blame this on David. Not without him here to defend himself.
“David what?”
She lifted her head. “Nothing. I guess you’re right. We screwed up.”
“Had David ever hired anyone from a field mission before?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Could he have been under any coercion this time?”
“You mean Ty forced David to bring him on that plane?”
He took a long drink from a bottle of water. “Or bribed him. Offered him something he couldn’t resist?”
Macy’s nerves sizzled. Clint had struck a sore spot. If David had one weakness, it was his ambition. “No.”
Clint looked up as if he’d heard the lie in her voice.
“Why did you really break off your engagement to him?”
She jerked as if he’d slapped her. She waited for his expression to soften. For him to apologize.
She should have known better. He sat there stone-faced.
“None of your damned business.” She tried to get up, but he stopped her by clamping his hand over her wrist. “Let me go.”
“Did you know he was up to something? Is that what you fought about before you gave his ring back?”
Her eyes stung. “We didn’t fight. I just—I couldn’t be with him anymore.”
“Because he wouldn’t cut you in on whatever he’d gotten into.”
“Because I didn’t love him!”
He leaned forward in his chair, pulled her closer to him. Storm clouds brewed dangerously in his pewter eyes. “Or maybe he was just your patsy, and you were through with him. Did you sleep your way close to ARFIS, to the connection with Ty? Maybe you’re the one working with Jeffries. After all, David wasn’t even supposed to be on that plane.”
“Bastard!” She jerked her arm out of his grasp—or maybe he let her go, she didn’t know which, didn’t care. All she cared about was getting out of there.
Slowing down only long enough to don her protective gear, she stormed out of the tent without looking back.
Macy shuffled across the compound as fast as she could with one good leg. The rain and the foot traffic had turned the grassy meadow into a bog that could suck a girl’s boots off if she weren’t careful.
With each slurping step she alternated between wounded feelings and fury.
How could he?
How dare he?
How could he?
Who did he think he was, accusing David of using ARFIS for his own gain? Accusing her?
But even as her heart ached that he didn’t trust her, and her mind railed at his unfounded accusations of David, her mind turned over the facts. The plane had crashed. Someone had shot the pilot. People were missing. ARFIS, in the wrong hands, could make Europe’s bubonic plague epidemic of the Middle Ages look like a preschool chicken-pox outbreak.
And David…David had been acting strangely those last few days.
She’d thought he’d just been tired. Maybe sensing her unhappiness with their relationship.
Had it been more?
She heard her name and turned to wait for Susan, who was waddling determinedly through the muck in her direction.
“Macy,” she called looking down at the clipboard in her hands as she walked. “We ran another set of tests on the—”
Susan glanced up. Her eyes widened. Her mouth pursed. “What’s wrong? Oh, no. Not the virus. Your blood work was fine. I checked it myself.”
“I don’t have ARFIS.”
Just then Clint stepped out of her tent and walked across the compound to talk to Skip Hollister, who was in from checking traps.
Susan’s eyes narrowed. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing.” Macy knew she didn’t lie well. She kicked at a clod of dirt. “You worked a lot
with David those last few days in Malaysia. Did he seem…normal to you?”
She laughed. “Dr. Brinker, normal? Never.”
“I mean, did he act differently? Give any indication that something might be wrong?”
“Well, you know how it is on field missions. And this one was worse than most. We work all kinds of crazy hours, and you hear things.”
“What kind of things?”
Susan’s cheeks turned rosy behind her face shield. “I heard about the two of you splitting up. Never was sure what you saw in him, anyway. He was a little more jittery than normal. I figured he was upset, but trying to, you know, cover it up.”
“Did he say he was upset?”
“No.” She gave Macy a sympathetic look. “He was just really distracted. Is something wrong, Dr. Attois? I mean, everything’s wrong, with the plane crash, and José loose, but…is something else going on?”
“I don’t know.” Macy watched Clint disappear into the security tent with Skip.
But I darned sure plan to find out.
Chapter 10
Christian and Curtis, Macy’s logistics guy and her second lab tech, ran a squeeze play on Clint in the chow line the next morning. They pinned him right between the butter beans and the fried chicken. The food had gotten better in the last twenty-four hours. Seems the women in town found out there were some government men in the woods searching for the “rabid” monkey and they insisted on bringing casseroles and pies—not to mention fried chicken—to sustain the hearty hunters protecting their town.
Curtis and Christian certainly seemed to approve of the country hospitality. Their trays were loaded.
Curtis kept a lookout, probably watching for Macy, while Christian started the proceedings. The intimidation proceedings, that was.
“Been hearing some trash talk about you and Dr. Attois,” Christian said. He was young, but not a kid. He’d probably seen the top side of thirty a year or two ago.
“That so,” Clint said noncommittally.
Curtis glanced over his shoulder. “She’s been upset ever since you got back from checking traps yesterday.”
“She say what she was upset about?”
“She didn’t have to,” Christian said. “Macy’s not real good at hiding what she’s feeling.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.” So, apparently, had everyone else.
“She was on the rebound, man,” Curtis said more vehemently. “You had to know that. She was trying to get her head straight. She didn’t need somebody coming along messing her up again.”
Clint didn’t have a comeback for that one. Sometimes a man just had to take his lumps.
“My sister said that ever since Macy talked to you, she’s been asking all kinds of questions about Dr. Brinker and Ty Jeffries.”
“Has she now?” Interesting. Doing a little investigating on your own, are you, doc?
“She even asked me if I thought David could have been seeing someone else.”
“Was he?”
Christian snorted. “David? Hell, no. He was more interested in laboratory mice than women. Well, except for Macy. And even she took second seat sometimes.”
“We heard she found the pilot in the woods and that he’d been shot,” Christian said.
Curtis added, “We want to know what’s up with that. And what you intend to do about Macy.”
Clint inched down the line past the chicken and grabbed himself a dinner roll. His two shadows followed.
“What’s up,” he said quietly, not wanting to announce it to the whole camp. “Is that we’re investigating Michael’s death. And that’s all I’m going to tell you about an open case.”
Curtis added two rolls to the mountain on his tray. “He was murdered for real, then?”
“For real.”
“Whoa.”
Clint turned to walk away. Christian followed, swung around in front of him, cutting him off. “And what about the other?”
“What other?”
“What you’re going to do about Macy.”
He’d said sometimes a man had to take his lumps, but some lumps were a lot bigger than others. This one was about the size of Mount Everest. The last thing he’d ever wanted to do was hurt her, and yet he had. So badly that even her staff noticed.
What the hell had he been trying to prove?
In his own stupid way, he supposed he’d been trying to prove her innocence. He’d needed to make the accusations, see her reactions. She wouldn’t be able to keep the truth from him. Everything in her heart showed on her face. Everything.
Including the hurt. The pain of the betrayal she’d felt with each ugly insinuation he’d thrown at her.
At the time, he’d thought it was better this way.
“I’ll talk to her,” he promised, and his stomach rolled even as he spoke. What could he possibly say to her?
He was still wondering five minutes later as he sat at a plastic table staring at his uneaten food and heard a commotion behind him. Looking out the clear plastic tent flap, he watched a half-dozen men pour out of the security tent and jog toward the ATVs. Engines roared to life, drowning out the shouts of the operations guys diagramming search sectors on a large map taped to a whiteboard on wheels nearby.
Macy hobbled out of her quarters in a big hurry.
She had on a full environmental suit.
Clint shoved his tray aside, grabbed his mask and caught up to her just as she swung her leg over the last ATV. “What’s going on? Have they found the monkey?”
“No.” She fiddled with the ignition switch on the four-wheeler. He thought for a moment she wasn’t going to tell him any more when she finally looked up.
Her face was pale. Her eyes looked bruised, tired. Her lips were flat, unsmiling. “A man stumbled out of the woods at one of the checkpoints on the logging road about three miles from here. He appears to be sick.”
Clint flinched. His chest went hard.
Oh, God. It was starting.
“Scoot back,” he said. When she didn’t move, he waved her toward the end of the ATV seat. “Scoot back. I’m driving.”
Macy tightened her hold on Clint’s waist as the ATV bumped over a rut in the trail. His body was hard as a rock beneath her hands. Tension rolled off him in waves, crashed against her own.
“You don’t have to do this,” she shouted so he could hear her over the howl of the ATV as he pushed the engine past the redline.
“Like hell I don’t.”
“I can handle this.”
“You don’t even know what ‘this’ is yet.”
He was right about that. But in the minutes since she’d heard, she’d imagined a thousand scenarios, each one more horrific than the next.
She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to shut out the pictures in her mind. “What if it’s some poor hiker or camper that we missed when we cleared the forest? What if some innocent man has ARFIS?”
“Then it’s one man, and we stopped him before he got to town and spread the virus to anyone else. It could be worse.”
“Not for that man.”
She opened her eyes. Clint was looking over his shoulder at her and for once, his expression was completely open, readable.
He was worried.
He pushed the four-wheeler faster. All she could do was hold on.
And pray.
They pulled in behind a mish-mash of vehicles that resembled a multicar pileup on the expressway. Except this was a two-rut logging trail of red mud, not an expressway. And there was only one casualty, as far as she knew.
Clint climbed off the ATV and headed straight for the man in camouflage fatigues with yellow stripes on his shoulder. Macy tried to get a look at what was in front of the vehicles, but all she could see was a bunch of soldiers standing around staring at something.
She hurried to catch up to Clint, who had outdistanced her with his ground-eating strides.
“What have you got, Lieutenant?” he was asking when she arrived.
“Subject walked out
of the woods twenty-five minutes ago, failed to respond to our challenges, failed to stop. He appeared incoherent. He was stumbling. There were visible signs of blood on his face and his hands. He was ordered to stop again, at which time he turned and came right at my men. They had no choice but to take him down.”
“They shot him?” Macy asked, her voice high and tight.
The lieutenant scrutinized her. “They tranquilized him, ma’am. Used the dart gun we were given in case we saw the monkey.”
“What will animal tranquilizer do to a human?” Clint asked.
“Depends what’s wrong with him.” She looked from Clint to the other man and back. “If he’s got ARFIS, it’s not going to matter one way or the other. Has he moved since he was darted?”
“No ma’am.”
“He didn’t say anything before he went down?” Clint asked.
“Negative.”
Macy took a plastic box with a bright red cross on the top from Susan, who’d arrived on another ATV, and started forward. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
As she walked away, she saw her lab assistant give Clint a hard look. She’d have to talk to Susan about that. Macy was a big girl. She didn’t need anyone looking out for her.
But right now, she had other things on her mind.
“Pull your men back, Lieutenant,” she asked and he barked out an order.
The pack of bodies opened up, and there in the center of a circle of soldiers with rifles pointed down at him, face down in the red, rutted road, lay the man she had been engaged to marry until just a few days ago.
David Brinker.
“David,” Susan breathed next to Clint.
Clint stared at the crumpled form on the pavement. All he could see from here was a cap of straight brown hair and a pale complexion, a pair of broken wire-rimmed glasses askew on the man’s nose and fine-boned hands. “That’s Brinker? You’re sure?”
Susan nodded.
He took a step forward. Macy must have seen him out of the corner of her eye, because she held out a hand. “Stay back.”
Every atom in his body wanted to go to her. She shouldn’t have to do this. Especially not alone. But he did as she asked, not wanting to distract her.
Her Last Defense Page 9
