Chapter Twenty

6:18 p.m.

The office the Surgeon General assigned to her wasn’t big, but it did have a fast, secure internet connection, and that was worth more than a bigger room or a raise. Because, unless they came up with some way to mitigate the staggering number of cases of measles, she might not have a job at all. She’d be blind, or brain damaged, or dead.

Or in jail.

Because she’d finally snap and murder John for being an overbearing, brain-damaged man. She wanted to be with him, but he was smothering her. She couldn’t be with someone who didn’t trust her enough to look after herself. And because he didn’t trust her, she couldn’t trust him.

It was a piece of foundation that would always be missing in their relationship, and without it, there was no relationship.

Carmen dragged her thoughts out of the rabbit hole they’d gone down and focused on the data coming in from all over the country. Orlando was still in the lead for confirmed cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, but L.A. was on the board with far too many, and Seattle wasn’t far behind.

Henry had gone into his lab and was refusing to come out. He was still sending data, though, so she’d left him alone to unravel the virus. If anyone could find a way to combat this outbreak, it was him.

She stared at her computer screen, too tired to be afraid or anxious anymore. The phone rang, and she picked it up automatically. “Dr. Rodrigues.”

“It’s working,” someone shouted.

“What?”

“The second test group.” The voice was female and infused with exhausted excitement. “We’ve just finished entering all the results from the lab and correlating it with current patient outcomes from both test groups.” She paused to take in a breath. “Both groups have nearly identical results. After vaccination, eighty percent of patients see significant improvement. None of the patients in either test group have died.”

For a moment, Carmen couldn’t breathe, her muscles held in place by a shot of adrenaline so strong she was sure she was floating.

“What about new infections?”

“No one who has received a third vaccination has gotten more than a mild case.”

“Report these results to the Director of the CDC immediately. I’ll inform the Surgeon General.” She stopped to catch her breath. “And…thank you.”

Carmen ended the call, then, grinning like a loon, hurried to give the news, good news, to the Surgeon General.

Tuesday, April 8, 1:16 a.m.

Carmen woke to darkness and noise—running feet, shouting, and shots fired.

Shots fired? She’d gone to sleep in her small loaner office just down the hall from the SG’s office. She must be dreaming.

Another couple of shots reverberated through the walls.

Nope, not dreaming.

The long, cold fingers of terror closed around her throat. For a moment, all she could do was stare into the darkness, unable to understand how this could be happening.

Where was security?

Why wasn’t someone stopping the shooter?

Someone screamed and screamed and screamed until it was cut off by another shot.

She finally managed to suck in a breath and roll off her cot, but instead of landing on her feet, she hit the floor on her hands and knees. Shit, nothing was working. Not her arms or her legs or her head.

Pushing away from the floor, she staggered upright and turned toward the door.

More screams. More shots.

Terror tried to choke her a second time, but she shook that bitch off, eased the door open, and peered out.

The crack of a shot split the air right in front of her. Sheldon, one of the SG’s aides, staggered and fell in front of the door, a spreading stain of blood across his shirt. Sheldon’s arm smacked into the door hard enough to knock it open.

Carmen stumbled back, then found herself in plain view of a man holding the back of the SG’s shirt in one hand and a semi-automatic pistol in his other hand. A man with Dr. Halverson’s face.

A very angry face.

“Dr. Rodrigues,” he snarled. “How fortuitous.”

There were a lot more words beginning with F that she’d call this situation other than fortuitous.

“Come out of there,” he ordered. “And show me your hands.”

Raising her hands, she followed his instructions and emerged from the room one step at a time. Getting shot wasn’t on her list of things to do today, but wringing his scrawny neck just got added.

Dr. Halverson waved his gun at her to precede him into the SG’s main office.

She walked slowly and carefully into the large space, stopping when she reached the center of the room.

The doctor and his captive entered, then Halverson kicked the door shut.

“Close the blinds,” he ordered.

Carmen moved to do as instructed, continuing her unhurried approach to the desk and windows. She hated to block a possible sniper shot, but she had to get Halverson to a place where he believed she was on his side. It might be the only way to talk him down safely from whatever mental perch he was standing on precipitously.

When she finished closing the blinds, she turned to face him, putting her hands back in the air.

Halverson pushed the SG away hard enough to make him fall. “Sit in the chair,” he ordered.

The SG got to his feet, then sat in one of the visitor’s chairs with a short back and arms.

“Dr. Rodrigues,” Halverson said as he kept his gun pointed at the SG. “Tie him to the chair.”

This could be a problem. “With what?” She kept her voice as nonthreatening as possible.

Halverson glared at her for a moment before looking around. There was nothing obvious in the room that could be used to tie a person’s arms to a chair.

“His tie,” Halverson said. “Use that, and…and his belt for the other arm.”

She followed his instructions, glancing at the SG several times as she did so.

For a moment, the highest-ranked health officer in the country met her gaze and spoke several silent messages at once.

Their captor was insane.

Death for someone was guaranteed.

Surviving the situation for any of them was questionable.

Fuck.

After she was done, she withdrew a few feet, standing where both men had a clear view of her and she had a clear view of them.

Halverson pointed the weapon at the most senior-ranked health-care officer in the country and said in a shaky voice, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you.”

The Surgeon General waited a beat before answering in a calm, measured tone, “I’m your best bet to getting out of here alive.” He paused again. “If you shoot me, the law enforcement officers outside will shoot whoever is moving in here.”

Halverson sneered. “That’s why she’s in here.”

“They don’t know she’s in here.”

The sick smile on Halverson’s face faded and fell off his features, and panic whitened his face. Then, his cheeks became a dry red. “You’re a cold bastard. You fire me without any hearing. And…and you presume to control people and events that are outside of anyone’s control.”

“I do my job,” the SG said as if they were talking about subpar service at a restaurant. He tilted his head to one side and infused a genuine-sounding concern into his tone. “What are you doing, doctor?”

“You fired me,” Halverson shouted. He bounced awkwardly in place, the gun in his hand in no way controlled. “You humiliated me and made it impossible for me to find another job in my field.” He re-centered the weapon’s muzzle on the SG’s chest.

“You broke security protocols, and your drug screening was positive for cocaine,” the SG said with more patience than anyone tied to a chair with his own tie and belt should have. “I had no choice.”

Security protocols? This was news.

Nostrils flaring, Halverson sneered. “It was a false positive, and I was performing important experiments. Instead of firing me, you should have supported the revolutionary work I’d undertaken.”

“Nothing in our vault needs to be made more dangerous,” the SG said. “We’ve got all the deadly pathogens needed to wipe humanity out dozens of times over. No one should be developing bioterrorism weapons.”

The smirk reappeared. “You might not be, but other people are.”

The SG looked genuinely surprised. Either that or he was a really good actor.

“Who are these people?” Before Halverson could answer, the SG continued with, “This is the kind of intelligence I, in particular, need. If you had this intelligence when we spoke last, our conversation would have ended quite differently.”

Halverson looked skeptical. “Are you saying you wouldn’t have fired me?”

The SG leaned forward. “The American government never throws away valuable assets.”

Shock and confusion crossed Halverson’s face. The two emotions battled back and forth, twisting his features. “You wouldn’t have arrested me? He assured me I’d be arrested.”

“Who told you that?” Carmen asked, pulling the attention of both men to herself. She smiled at Halverson. A sad, slightly misty smile. “Who convinced you to violate your oaths?”

Halverson swallowed as if he had something large stuck in his throat, but he didn’t answer.

“Did someone approach you to steal pathogens from our vault?” the SG asked, leaning as far forward in his chair as his bonds would allow. “Were you blackmailed into doing it?”

At that, Halverson’s confusion cleared, leaving behind only ruddy-faced rage. “I was shown proof,” he said. “Proof you were going to fire me anyway. You ruined my career and have taken everything I am from me.”

“No,” Carmen said, taking a step toward him. “That’s not—”

“Shut up,” Halverson yelled, pointing the gun at her. “Not another fucking word or I’ll shoot you first.”

Was getting shot second supposed to be better? She’d seen other men in this situation—armed, angry, aggravated, and at the end of their rope. She knew what was going to happen next. Because he was going to shoot her.

He was going to shoot everyone in this room, including himself.

Fear tried to strangle her. It circled her throat with cold fingers and squeezed.

And squeezed.

After all the hard work she and her people had done, after all the crap they’d had to sort through, put up with, and conquer, to be murdered now by one of their own was…unacceptable.

She was done with people who thought it was okay to hurt others because they were frustrated, angry, or sad.

Done.

If he was going to shoot her, she might as well get shot for a good reason, like punching Halverson in the face.

She had nothing to lose.

The noose around her throat loosened, and she was able to take in a breath—let it out and suck in another one. Her stomach settled back into its place, her heart let up on the gas pedal, and she could suddenly see everything in the room in sharp detail.

Dr. Halverson was yelling at the SG again, screaming about how dismissive his coworkers and supervisors had been. How often he’d been humiliated. How no one recognized or even noticed his intelligence or ideas. He waved the gun in the air, using it to punctuate his tirade. With every second that passed, his rage increased until spittle flew in a wide arc from his mouth.

There was another chair sitting off to one side. Plain, with no wheels on the bottom or arms, it would be the last choice for any guest in this office. She measured the distance between herself and the chair and estimated that reaching it would take three steps.

Three steps to return to her current spot.

Another two before she’d be close enough to do what she needed to do.

Halverson demanded the SG apologize while he recorded it. If he was happy with the apology, he promised to kill both of them quickly.

How kind.

Certainty and adrenaline slowed time to a crawl as she walked to the chair. She grabbed it by the back, turned, and pushed herself forward to gather momentum.

Gun hand leading the way, Dr. Halverson turned toward her.

She pushed harder. At the same moment he had the weapon pointed at her, she brought the chair down from right to left, bashing it against his arm and shoulder, knocking him to the floor.

A shot exploded through the room, and the vibration spawned by the bullet reverberated through her in a sharp, sickening wave. The wave crested and plowed her over.

She hit the floor, and time returned to normal.

The chair had knocked Dr. Halverson down. He lay sprawled on his front and was scrambling to get to his hands and knees.

The SG bellowed for help and struggled to get out of his chair.

Halverson flopped over, staring at her with rage and pain twisting his features, but his hands were empty. Where was the gun?

Carmen tried to roll, to get to her feet, but all her strength had disappeared.

The door to the office burst open. Men in a variety of uniforms and suits rushed in, shouting for everyone to stay down and don’t move.

Attention fixed on Carmen, Halverson slid toward her in a broken, jagged crawl. Blood dripped from somewhere on his head onto his hands and half of his face. His lips pulled back from his teeth, allowing the viscous red fluid to stain his enamel.

He slithered closer, despite the male voices demanding everyone stop moving.

Her limbs weighed far too much, her lungs unable to take in enough air for her to go anywhere.

Odd. She really did need to move if she didn’t want Halverson to strangle her.

He slid almost close enough to touch her, had reached out with one hand, when the sound of a shot hit her ears at the same time as Halverson dropped onto his front in an untidy sprawl.

She glanced past the body, because the man was obviously dead, to see John standing in the doorway, his service weapon in his hands.

She smiled at him. He looked good. Uninjured and full of energy. She wanted to tell him he could stop frowning at her, that he’d killed the bad guy, but a dark, prickly pain spread out from her chest with unexpected strength, swallowing her whole.