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“COME ON IN, DOCTOR,” said Miller. Despite the cold of the room, there was sweat on his upper lip. There was an electronic pad taken apart just behind him.
“Uh, hey,” said Glenn. He couldn’t keep his eyes from the syringe. Whatever was in there, it could be deadly. It must be, or Nydia would have risked getting stuck to fight her way out of this. “How’s it going, Miller?”
“Damned well so far, thanks for asking. I just need to do one tiny little thing, and then put you two out of commission, and I’ll be on my way.”
Glenn looked at Nydia’s face. She was holding herself physically still, but she was angry, and he could tell her bright mind was working at a furious pace, trying to find a solution to this. Miller’s arm was around her neck, holding her still, with the syringe pointed inward at her neck, not an inch away. She’d obviously been in a scuffle. Her wrists were bound with Miller’s tie, but in front of her. That might give her a chance to use them in a fight.
Their eyes locked, and Glenn tried to communicate a world of messages in the one second they had.
Nydia’s eyes weren’t pleading, or helpless, or anything of the sort. She was purely pissed off. Her gaze flicked to try and take in Miller’s face, but he had her pinned in the wrong direction, facing away from him.
“Um,” Glenn said, trying to figure out how to get them both out of this alive.
“The flu virus,” said Miller. “The syringe is only half full of it. The first half went into the office water supply a half hour ago. You know, the bottled water dispenser?”
Glenn flashed on the image of the worker filling the coffee pot from that source just moments ago. He wondered how many of the people who had just driven out of here had taken a sip of this water before they left.
Shit.
“So this batch of vaccine will be destroyed, and they’ll have a hell of a time gearing up for the next with half the staff here in the hospital,” Miller said. “I guess it’ll be five more months before anyone can get vaccinated. Now you sit down, Dr. Stevens, right there in that empty corner. Get up, and I jab this into the pretty little FBI agent’s neck. I wonder what this much virus would do to one person. Don’t you?”
Glenn hesitated, trying to think what the hell to do. If he had a chance, it was right now, this second. Any thought of running out to warn the others had flicked through his mind and been discarded in less than a second. Nydia was at risk. Getting her safe was his first concern—his only concern for now.
Nydia’s lips began to move. The second word, he realized was “Four.” Then “Three.”
Oh damn, she was going to do something.
Crazily, he wanted to ask her, “We go at one, or on zero?”
Not that he knew what to do when the countdown ended. He wasn’t trained for this. He was an epidemiologist, not a cop or black belt in karate. “Miller, think this through,” he said.
Nydia’s lips: “Two.”
“Sit down,” Miller said. “Get in the corner.”
“One,” Nydia mouthed.
Glenn launched himself at Miller, hoping against hope he’d react automatically, bringing the syringe hand up to fend off Glenn. Halfway there, he saw Nydia drop, as if she’d fainted dead away.
But she hadn’t. Her tied hands were up on Miller’s wrist, keeping the syringe at bay.
Not far enough away from her for Glenn’s comfort. It was still one lunge away from plunging into her body, filling her with the deadly virus.
Glenn turned at the last second and slammed his shoulder into Miller’s chest. He felt Miller yank at his syringe hand, but Nydia must have a solid grip, for only his shoulder and upper arm shifted.
Miller’s other hand came around and clouted Glenn on the side of the head.
He saw stars, but his hands came up and clawed at Miller’s face. Eyes were vulnerable.
Miller jerked back, but not before Glenn’s fingers found his face.
Glenn howled as he felt Miller’s teeth close around the fleshy part of his thumb. Belatedly, he realized making noise was a good idea now, so he yelled “Help!” as loudly as he could, at the same time bringing a knee up into Miller’s groin.
It made him suck in a breath, his mouth open for just long enough for Glenn to yank his thumb back. He went for Miller’s eyes again, briefly finding one wet surface with a fingertip.
Miller instinctively pulled away. And then suddenly, he wasn’t standing there any longer.
Looking down, Glenn saw Nydia had pulled some kind of martial arts move on him. Her legs were around Miller’s knees, and she had brought him down by twisting. She was getting to her knees already, her hands still clamped around the wrist of the hand that held the syringe.
“Kick his head,” she yelled to Glenn.
Glenn hauled back and did, aiming for the temple. Once, twice, a third time, he landed solid kicks.
Miller went limp. The syringe clattered onto the floor and, in a flash, Nydia had her hands out of the tie. She used it to tie Miller’s hands behind him.
She said, “Go get an agent. I need handcuffs, Taser, and help.”
Glenn wanted to pull her into his arms, but he made himself move away. She was okay. He did pause long enough to kick the syringe into a corner, a safe distance from Nydia, then he yanked open the door.
“And stop them from drinking that water!” Nydia called.
Glenn ran to the break room first. The person who had put on the coffee wasn’t there. The coffee pot was full. Maybe they had lucked out and no one had poured a cup yet. Glenn knew better than to pour it down the sink. That wasn’t the way to dispose of a biohazardous material. He still had the pen and his papers in his jacket pocket. He took them out, turned them over and wrote the word “poison” twice and put the signs against the coffee pot and the water cooler.
He sprinted down the hall. Rogers was still in his office. “The water supply in your break room has been tainted with virus. Go down there and keep anyone from going in the room. Take your phone. We need a hazmat team for that and your cold room. Keep those doors closed and call—hell, whoever you call for that. Cops, FBI, whoever. Hazmat.”
He left the man staring in shock. He was competent and would get moving soon enough. Glenn ran to the last place he’d seen a dog team, a lab down the hall. They were still there, the dog sniffing at corners. Glenn opened the door with his key card. “We have him. The terrorist. Nydia—the Special Agent—needs help.”
“Who do you have?” called one of the workers. “Who was it?”
The FBI man was in motion, the dog loping at his side. Glenn ran down the hall to lead them back, saying, “Be careful. There’s a syringe of live virus on the floor in there. Don’t let the dog nose around in it.”
Glenn keyed the door open. Nydia was on Miller’s back, holding his tied arms up at what must have been a painful angle. Miller was groaning.
The other FBI agent pulled out flex handcuffs and replaced the tie. Then he did Miller’s ankles.
“Pull him out in the hall,” Glenn suggested. “I’d rather that syringe was shut off from the rest of us until hazmat gets here. Or no, wait, maybe you shouldn’t touch him more than you have. Not without gloves.”
Nydia and the other agent didn’t seem to care about stopping to get gloves, for they wrestled Miller out and then let him drop to the hall floor. They weren’t particularly careful when they dropped him. He was conscious but not putting up a fight. Maybe he was still dazed from Glenn’s kicks.
Glenn didn’t care about Miller. He cared about Nydia.
“I’ll radio in,” the other agent said.
“Are you all right?” Glenn said to her.
“I’m fine.”
He reached for her neck, wanting to examine it. “He didn’t jab you?”
She shook her head, blowing a hank of hair out of her face.
He touched her jaw, tilted her head, and looked for any speck of blood or scratch. “I think you’re okay. Can I hug you?”
She glanced at the other agent. Then she said, with half a smile, “Not until you learn to fight better.”
“I suck, don’t I?” He laughed, mostly in relief that they were both okay. “Though in my defense, he’s the one who did the biting. Very girly of him.”
“Don’t you guys get physical training? Doesn’t a weapon come with that uniform?”
“We get a ceremonial sword.”
“Oh dear,” she said, shaking her head. “Where did he bite you?”
Glenn held up his hand.
“That looks nasty. You need first aid.”
“You sure you’re okay?” he said.
She nodded, keeping an eye on Miller. “We got him.”
He could tell how buzzed she was. “There may be more terrorists.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think in this building right now. And I suspect this was his only plan, screwing up the finished vaccines and infecting the staff. Still, I’d like those dogs to do a full sweep, make sure he didn’t plant explosives too.”
The other agent was just hanging up his phone. “You’re right. Minutes until we have backup, and then I’ll take the dog through the whole place again.”
“Great, thanks,” Nydia said. She reached up and smoothed her hair, found her hair clip, and re-clipped her hair.
The action was getting to be familiar to Glenn, and he had grown to love watching her do it. A surge of warmth filled his chest. “You, on the other hand, fight like a pro.”
“I am a pro.”
“You’re a psychologist.”
“With training at Quantico. We get the physical training too. I’m an actual FBI agent.”
“Whatever you are, I’m impressed.”
“Forget what I said about you not fighting well. You know I was joking, right?”
“I know. But you weren’t far off.” He laughed again. “I suck at being an action hero.” But he had helped save the girl in the end. Thank God for that.
The FBI agent who had been outside checking exiting staff cars came running down the hallway. “Got him? Good job, Watt.”
“With help,” she said, looking at Glenn.
The agent with the dog moved off to do his job.
Glenn said to the new agent, “Be very careful about what you touch. For the next half-hour, there might be live virus on surfaces around here. It might be best to wait the half-hour before anyone does anything in here.” To Nydia he said, “Did he mess with the temperature controls in there?”
“I don’t think so. He opened it up, but I kept him distracted by asking questions. Playing up his ego, you know, that kind of thing.”
“Let’s get him to a car,” the other agent said. “Is it safe to touch him?”
Nydia looked to Glenn. “As far as I know. He isn’t sick. He might have stray virus particles on his hands, so I’d avoid touching his hands, arms, or face. Get bags over his arms.”
“I can do that,” the agent said. He hauled Miller up by the back of his pants and hustled him down the hall.
Glenn said to Nydia, “You need treatment, just in case. The prophylaxis.”
“You told me that doesn’t work well. I need to be debriefed.”
“They can do that in the hospital.”
“I don’t know. Hospitals don’t sound like the safest places to be right now.”
“Then the hazmat team needs to wash you down.”
“You too, I imagine.”
Glenn nodded. “Can I hug you now?” They were alone in the hallway, though all kinds of noise was breaking out around the corner.
“Not until I get washed off. If I’m carrying virus, and you aren’t, I don’t want to make you sick.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do,” she said, backing up a step. “If I’m infected, I don’t want you to be.”
His fists clenched against the urge to bridge the distance between them.
She said, “Thank you for understanding what I was doing in there. With the countdown, I mean.”
“I barely did understand. I am sorry if I screwed it up,” he said. The degree to which he’d been terrified for her had surprised him.
“We got him. He didn’t shoot me up with virus. He’s in handcuffs. It’s done. That’s all that matters.” She frowned. “I hope it’s done. I hope he didn’t do anything else before we stopped him. He did have a day’s notice that we were getting close.”
“When will we know that for sure? How will we know?”
“He’ll be interviewed, very quickly. We need to know if there’s a local associate, or any kind of booby trap in here. We’ll get it out of him.”
“Maybe you and I should go outside, just in case there is one.”
“What about if we’re contagious? Should we stay in here?”
Glenn tried to work through the logic. If there was virus on their skin anywhere, they’d be safe enough after a half-hour. Soon, there’d be FBI people in the halls, maybe police too. “We’ll tell people to keep away from us. It’ll be easier, I think, if we kept away from them by going outside, and as long as no one approaches us, probably safer for everyone. Let’s meet the hazmat team out there, okay?”
“There’s a fire door in back. Go out that way. I’ll call to explain that’s where we are, and that everyone should keep clear of us.”
They pushed through the fire door and out into a beautiful evening. Overhead, the sky was blue, and to the west a fog bank was building.
She spoke on the phone briefly and then sagged.
“You okay?”
“Adrenaline’s leaving me. I think I’ll sit right on this curb.” She did, ungracefully, collapsing more than sitting.
“Screw it,” he said, and sat next to her and gathered her into his arms.
She tried to pull away at first, but then she sighed and let it happen. “I don’t think it’s all that romantic to die together of the flu.”
“Better than dying alone of it.”
“We did good, didn’t we?”
“We did,” he said. They did the best they were able, considering how they’d been working blind most of the time. He’d felt the pressure of getting an investigation right before. He’d even felt the weight of lives hanging in the balance. But he’d never had a single moment like that in the cold room, five seconds where so much depended on his not messing up.
“Tell me it made a difference, what we did.”
“It saved seventy-five thousand lives directly. Maybe more, if he would have gone undetected and done something to the next batch too. Then there’s the families of those seventy-five thousand, also not getting sick. Some of the vaccines will go to nurses and cops and troops, people out there on the line saving lives. So stopping Miller makes a big difference. It does.”
“Thanks for saying so. I’m just having post-adrenaline anxiety, I think. Doubts about myself. And worry about the future. So many will die anyway of the flu.”
“I know. I feel the weight of it every day.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to blame you. There’s nothing more you could have done.”
“Not in the time I had with the information I had. Doesn’t stop me from wishing I could have done more anyway.”
“I know that feeling.”
“Maybe it’ll be a kinder world at the end of this, when we survivors appreciate life all the more, and you won’t have so much crime to investigate.”
She laughed. “Optimist.”
“I am. Incurable. Is that bad?”
She shook her head against his shoulder.
“Hey!” A guy in a mask was at the corner of the building, pointing at them. “If you’re the decons, you shouldn’t be touching each other!”
Glenn let go of her and quietly said, “I know,” with a smile for Nydia. He stood and backed off.
A different person in full hazmat gear led Glenn to a bus, where he was relieved of his uniform and his phone. “Shit,” he said. “I’m never going to get that back, am I?”
“Probably not.”
The FBI-issued tablet was inside, but depending on what they did for decon in the building, he might lose that too. Luckily his laptop was back at the hotel room. He hoped to God he had backed up his contact list recently. Naked, he stood in the shower and worried about that, even while he realized he was clinging to that sort of petty worry in order to not be worried about other things, like if Nydia was infected. Or about Harper, back in Atlanta, or all his other colleagues who were ill. He’d pushed them to the back of his mind while he was trying to help solve this mystery, but now the worry for them returned full-force.
He turned when he was told to turn, bent over when he was told to, raised his arms when told to. Then came awful-smelling soap, applied with a disposable plastic scrub brush and another rinse in almost scalding water.
When it was all done he said, “I feel like a car going through the wash. Going to detail me next?”
A short woman in hazmat gear punched her microphone and said, “You wish.”
He had to laugh.
“Next room, scrubs.” She pointed in the direction she wanted him to go.
He pushed through plastic and found blue scrubs in his size. He could hear them washing down the shower room, then leaving it to allow steaming hot water to rinse it yet again before the next person went through it.
He slipped on booties and tried the next door, a plywood door that was unlocked.
“Dr. Stevens?” said a young man sitting at a desk. “I’d love to shake your hand, but I won’t. You were the one who found the vector for the flu, right?”
“That was partly me,” Glenn said. “But lots of other people helped, from lots of agencies.”
“Great job anyway. And now this. I’d love to work for the CDC one day.”
“Apply. We’re going to need good people, more than ever, after our losses are counted.”
The man began to dress the bite on Glenn’s thumb. “The flu is getting a firm hold here in the Bay Area now.”
“Is it? I’ve been bad about checking the news the past seventy-two hours.”
“Understandable. Lucky we’re a place with lots of telecommuting jobs. Way ahead of the curve on that. It’ll help keep infections down, right?”
“Very much so,” Glenn said. “Did anything in my pockets make it through decon?”
“Your wallet is gone, sorry, but yeah, they did save your laminated IDs.”
“Not the cell phone?”
“No, sorry. Not possible with today’s technology. Maybe one day, right?” He slid a basket of personal items back to Glenn.
“Maybe one day.” Glenn put everything in the breast pocket of his scrubs. He was glad to see the hotel key card there. Right now, he wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for twelve hours—right after he saw Nydia again. Maybe she’d be willing to sleep next to him.
But it was not to be. When he exited the bus, an unfamiliar FBI agent showed him an ID and said, “Dr. Stevens? You need to come with me.”
“Is everything okay? Why?”
“To be debriefed.”
And for the next three hours, he was debriefed at the FBI regional headquarters. He could only assume Nydia was elsewhere in the building, answering the same kinds of questions. Halfway through the first hour, he asked, “Do you have Miller in custody?”
“It’s being taken care of,” the man said, and then returned to his questions.
Finally, two or three hours later, Glenn was exhausted by the length of the interview. “Look, I know you’re just doing your job, but I need some rest. I’ll answer more for you tomorrow.”
The agent frowned.
“I’m not a suspect in anything, am I?”
“No, Colonel.”
“And I’m not FBI, either. So I’ve cooperated, and now I need a break from being cooperative. If I was exposed to the flu, I’ll fight it off better if I get a good night’s sleep. Besides, if I have, you don’t want to be cooped up in this tiny room with me when I start shedding the virus, right?”
As with the TSA people way back when, playing on the fear of contagion got him out of a boring situation. He probably should feel bad about using the trick, but he was too tired to feel bad about anything. Worry about Nydia, about his coworkers and even about his family, though they’d been fine earlier today, were quiet buzzes in the back of his mind. Mostly, what filled his mind was the image of a nice big hotel room bed and how nice it would feel to fall into it.
They drove him back to the hotel. He was damned hungry, but his exhaustion trumped that, and he fell, still wearing his borrowed scrubs, into bed and was asleep in no time flat.
A knock came at the door and dragged him out of sleep. “Aghhh,” he said, flipping over and trying to remember where he was. Right. The Bay Area. The lab. Miller. Where was Nydia?
The knock came again. Maybe it was her.
He stumbled to the door and flung it open.
It was the same FBI agent from their first day here, the guy who had raved about the burger joint. “In-N-Out Burger,” Glenn said. “How ya doing?”
“It’s Steve Egger, actually. Here, Watt wanted me to get you this.” He handed him a phone.
“My phone?”
“Sorry, no—a burner phone. She said you’d want one.”
“Thanks.”
“She put a thousand minutes on it. Enough to get you home, she said.”
“She did?”
“She’s on her way back to D.C.”
“She is?” Glenn’s heart fell. And he’d been sounding like an idiot, he realized. “I’m sorry, you woke me up. Do I need to go back to the FBI and answer questions again?”
“You do. But then we’ll get you on a jet back to Atlanta.”
Glenn couldn’t believe Nydia had left without saying goodbye. But it sounded like it hadn’t been her choice. “You don’t need me? I mean, what if there’s someone else at the lab who was in league with Miller?”
The agent’s smile was kind. “We’re on it, Doc. Your part is done.”
Time to quit playing junior G-man, in other words. “Right. Of course. Okay, let me get dressed.”
“I’ll wait for you in the lobby. Take your time. I have stuff to do.” Eggers turned to go, and then he stopped and turned back. “She said there’s a note for you under memos or notes or whatever on the phone.”
Glenn shut the door and thumbed on the phone. Or rather, he thumbed it and nothing happened, then tried a different button and it came on then immediately went off. With a curse, he tried again and got the damned thing to stay on this time.
The note said:
Glenn. I’m sorry, but they want me back in DC now. I’ll call you as soon as I can shake loose. I have this number, so don’t throw this phone away. You did a great job, partner. Yours, N.
He tried not to let the “yours” make him feel like a junior high kid with his first dance date, but it did make him feel like that. As did her promise to call soon.
He pulled out his laptop case, found a USB-to-mini cord, and tried to upload his contacts. The phone didn’t work like his old one. So he just looked up the office number and called in to Lorraine. He hoped by now she wasn’t angry at him and would take his calls.
She did. “I hear you’re the hero of the hour.”
“News to me. I’ve been sleeping. Just so long as we stopped him, that’s all I care about. How are you? Well? And the staff. Who have we lost?”
“Only ten. The Favipiravir is working. We barely got it to the control group in time.”
“Bless the Japanese.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
“Do you know about Harper Bail? She was sick—how is she?”
“I have a list. Let me look.”
Glenn waited nervously.
“One of the first to be sent home from the hospital. She’s there now, off for another week. We don’t want relapses or secondary infections.”
“God, I’m so relieved. Who’d we lose?”
She slowly read off ten names. “And it doesn’t look as if Wick Cunningham will make it, honestly.”
He gave it a moment of respectful silence and then said, “Damn it.”
“Good people all.”
“They were. How’s Emile?”
“Back here finally. Healthy. His niece is living with them, and I guess she’s not doing so well emotionally.”
“And you, and your wife?”
“Both fine.”
“The dogs?”
She laughed, but it sounded tired. “Fine, thanks for asking. There are no other mammal infections than humans, as far as we can tell.”
“Probably engineered that way, those fuckers.” He felt a surge of rage for Miller, for Jarri, for anyone else involved.
“It’s so hard to believe someone did this intentionally. I’ve known it for months, but I still want to believe otherwise. Isn’t that strange?”
“I know what you mean. And the guy here? He was such a bland character. You’d pass him on the street and never guess he was a terrorist.” He said, “Look, I still need to apologize to you for the television interview.”
“You had to bring that up again. I’d blissfully forgotten.”
“I am sorry. Truly.”
“It’s probably forgotten by now by nearly everyone. You’re lucky. There are so many other disasters in the making, it’s only about number eight hundred on the Secretary’s list by now. Yesterday’s heroics must have made up for part of it.”
“And your list?”
She sighed. “Just don’t do it again, right? And you remember you have to go through media training again.”
He remembered. “How’s your job security looking?”
“For now I’m fine. I suspect once we get herd immunity, and people want heads to roll, mine will be one of them.”
“I hope not.”
“It’s okay. We have contingency plans, Sara and I.”
“And the dogs.”
“They don’t plan well, but they’ll be happy with whatever we decide. Anyway, you and I have another couple years of working together. That is, unless the FBI stole you away permanently.”
“Hell no,” he said. “I am so not naturally a G-man. You should have seen me try to help to—whatever they call it. ‘Apprehend the subject,’ is that what they say? Pure Keystone Cops on my part.”
“But you got him.”
“That we did, but the physical part of that was almost entirely Nydia’s responsibility.”
“Well as one of many in a grateful nation, thank you.” She said, “What?” away from the phone. “Sorry, Glenn, gotta go put out another fire.”
He put the phone down and began to pack his things. He showered, decided to hell with shaving, and put on his khaki uniform. The dress blues were history, lost to decon, and he’d have to get new ones.
When he made it downstairs, Eggers was sitting in the lobby next to a rolling suitcase. “Agent Watt’s things,” he said, pointing to it. “Ready?”
This debriefing session was much shorter. After that, he waited and waited and waited, using up two hundred minutes on his phone checking email and making calls until the phone read 20% charge. His family was all fine, though his mother was in a wretched mood about staying indoors, begging him to tell her it was safe to leave. It might in fact be relatively safe by now, with the flu on the wane in Atlanta. He promised her that he’d call before bedtime to tell her the timeline for her release. Finally, another FBI agent came to get him and drove him to the airport, where an FBI jet was alone on the tarmac. “We’re going to DC first to drop two,” said the pilot after Glenn walked up the stairs. “Then we’ll get you to Atlanta.”
Glenn tried to remember if his car was still in the long-term parking lot or not. Possibly, but which one? There were six lots, but he vaguely recalled parking in a closer one than he normally used. He’d have to walk all over the place using his idiot button trying to find it, no doubt.
The two other agents talked together the whole trip and left Glenn alone. He was still tired enough that he just sat there, images from the last two months running through his mind at random, a jumble. It’d be weeks before he could make sense of it all, to reflect and understand what it was he’d been doing all this time.
He was entirely alone on the FBI jet for the last leg of the trip. As no one was watching, he ate nearly everything they had in the kitchen storage, trying to make up for missing two meals.
When he landed, he realized it wouldn’t be that hard to find his car. The airport was like some scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, down to a lonely piece of paper being whipped across the road by a hot breeze. There were only three dozen cars in the long-term parking lot. His was sitting alone. To his surprise, it started right up. He didn’t have the ticket, but it didn’t matter, because no one was guarding the exit. He drove home through nearly-empty highways and streets, to an empty townhouse that smelled stale.
It was surreal, looking around his place. He’d go into work tomorrow, just as if he was living a normal day, a normal life. But everything had changed—the world, the country, Atlanta, his work. And his personal life too, he hoped.
He was in bed trying to watch a movie on DVD when the burner phone rang. A DC number. He swiped frantically at the answer button three times before it worked. “Yes?”
“Glenn, hey. How are you?” Nydia.
Her voice was like a drug. A very nice drug. “Good. Tired. How are you?”
“Tired of talking.”
“I can do all the talking if you want.”
“I didn’t mean with you. I meant at work. You, I want to talk to.”
“Can you bear talking about work for a second?”
“Sure, if I have to.”
“What’s going on with Miller?”
“Are you at home? Do you have a landline still?”
“I am and I do.”
“Give me the number. I’m on a landline too. It’s more secure if you are as well.”
He gave her the number and waited. Fifteen seconds later, the phone rang.
“Portable phone?” she said.
“Yes, and good evening to you too.”
“Sorry,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll still need to watch what I say, then. How are you, Glenn, really?”
“Tired. Confused. I feel like my house is a stranger’s place and like I should be somewhere else.” Somewhere else with her, in fact.
“I know that feeling.”
“You’re all debriefed?”
“Debriefed, patted on the head, and given a week off.”
“That’s nice.”
“Not sure how nice it is. I think they’re worried I’ll come down with the flu and infect them all.”
“You deserve the time off. You aren’t feeling sick, are you?”
“Not a bit. You?”
“I’m okay. So tell me what you can about Miller.”
“He started talking. The whole trick of getting him going was to praise his ingenuity. Pride made him boast.”
“That simple, eh?”
“I saw the video. It really was. It was him acting alone. Him and Kater.”
“Who’s Kater?”
“AKA Jarri. He’s the man in the airport photo. He has other associates, but Miller is the only one here in the U.S.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“We’re pretty confident, yeah. Do you know him? Know of him?”
“Never heard the name. So you mean no one else is going to execute another part of the plan here?”
“Not with international flights canceled. Now all we have to worry about is domestic terrorism, of which there is an increasing amount right now. Opportunists.”
“So much for my hope for a kinder world.”
“Well, you’re kind, at least. That’s one person. Maybe it’ll spread from there.”
“I lied to you before,” he said. “I’m not feeling all that great—not at 100%.”
“Oh my God, Glenn, you have it?”
“No. My health is fine. I just miss you terribly.”
There was a silence. “Me too,” she said. “But I’m not sure what to do about it.”
“You know, I could get a long weekend off. I’m more than due. We could drive and meet halfway.”
“Long-distance relationships are hard.”
“Being without you would be harder. Much, much harder. We’ll work something out. The CDC has a DC office.”
“You’d do that?”
“I’d consider it.”
“In that case, the Bureau has an Atlanta office,” she said. “But we’re a ways from those sorts of decisions.”
“I know. So we can meet halfway in a day or two?”
“I could be on the road in an hour.”
He wished he could say the same. “I need to go in to the office tomorrow. I’ll call you by noon, though, and we’ll fix a time and place.”
“Glenn?”
“What?”
There was a long silence. “I feel like this is where I’m supposed to say I love you.”
“Do you?”
“Do you?” she countered.
He believed he did, but he wanted to be looking into her eyes when he said it. “That’s a conversation I would love to have with you in person.”
