“I don’t know,” Chapel said. “It’s—”
“Classified. Which might as well be a yes.” Julia got up and walked into the bathroom. She started washing her hands vigorously. It looked like a reflexive action, something she’d learned to do whenever people started talking about viruses around her.
He had forgotten she was a doctor. He’d forgotten she probably knew a lot more about viruses than he did. He should have been honest with her.
When she came back to the door of the bathroom and looked out at him, her eyes were haunted. “I need to be quarantined,” she said.
“No,” Chapel told her. “No, we can’t—”
“You do, as well. Anybody who’s had contact with a chimera.”
“No! That was what Laughing Boy was after. I refuse to accept his actions were appropriate,” Chapel demanded.
“Call up Angel. Call her right now. Tell her we’re volunteering to go into quarantine. We shouldn’t be out in public.”
Her legs quaked visibly beneath her. She dropped to the floor, her hands rushing up to cover her face.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Chapel, we could be dying right now, and not know it. That fucking chimera might have killed me just by breathing in my face. We could already be dead. What the hell have you done to my life?”
Chapel might have said something, but just then his phone began to ring. He dug it out of his jacket and stared at it. The number on the screen read (000) 000-0000.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+28:55
Chapel set the phone down on the bed. It continued to ring.
“Just answer it,” Julia told him.
Without a word he touched the screen to answer the call. He placed the phone against his ear.
“Chapel,” Angel told him, “please put me on speaker. You both need to hear what I’m going to say.”
Chapel did as he was told. He set the phone down on the comforter on top of the bed. He sat down in a chair and tried not to look at Julia.
“Doctor Taggart,” Angel said, “I know what you just heard must come as quite a shock.”
“You… heard all that?” Chapel asked.
“Give me some credit, Chapel. I’m a spy. I eavesdrop for a living. You muffled one of my microphones, but you forgot there’s a normal wired telephone in the room.”
Chapel looked over at the bedside table and saw it, an old beige model with a big red light that lit up if you had messages. It was such an antique piece of technology now that he hadn’t even registered it. That had been a dumb mistake. Chapel knew about infinity mikes, bugs that allowed any telephone to be used as a listening device — even if the handset was resting on its cradle. He should have thought of that.
“Doctor Taggart,” Angel said, “you’ve already shown your strength. So I won’t lie to you now. Chapel’s correct. You may have the virus. You may be infected already, or you could be a carrier. If you are, then you may need to be quarantined. And most likely that quarantine will be lifelong, or at least as long as it takes us to come up with some cure for the virus.”
Julia wasn’t looking at the phone. She had wrapped her arms around her knees and was gently rocking back and forth.
“I can give you a little comfort, though,” Angel went on. “Information on the virus is strictly need to know. But if anybody needs to know, it’s you. The virus is about as fragile as the HIV virus. Once you have it, there’s no way for your immune system to conquer it. But it is difficult to get from casual contact. When you were with the chimera, did he bite or scratch you? I know you’ll tell me the truth.”
“No,” Julia said, rubbing at her nose with the palm of her hand. “He grabbed my wrists and held me down. He screamed in my face. He may have abraded my skin, and he may have gotten some saliva on me.”
Angel sighed in relief. “That’s good. That’s pretty low on the risk scale. We can’t totally rule out an infection, but… your chances are good. I promise.”
“Yeah?” Julia said, looking up.
“Beyond that, the virus has a pretty long incubation period. Several months, in fact. And you’re not contagious, even if you do have it. You won’t be for a long time.”
“Okay,” Julia said, letting out a deep breath.
“Director Hollingshead feels the best place for you now is with Chapel. He can make sure you stay safe. We don’t want you to come in just yet. At the moment, we can’t even detect the virus if it’s in your system. When that changes, we’ll make sure you’re tested — so you’ll know. You’ll know for sure. Only then do we need to start talking about what to do next.”
“Thank you,” Julia said.
“We will take care of you. No matter what, we’ll make sure of that.”
“I appreciate it,” Julia said. A teardrop fell from her left eye.
“It’s the very least we can do. Now, I’m going to have to talk to Chapel in private for a while. And I imagine you could use some time to be alone with your thoughts, after everything you’ve learned.”
“That would be nice,” Julia confirmed.
“Chapel, please put in your earpiece. Maybe you could go outside and let Julia be alone while we talk.”
“I don’t want to let her out of my sight, not after the last time, when Laughing Boy—”
“Laughing Boy is in a hospital about twenty miles from you, waiting to see if he’s going to keep his toes,” Angel said. “By the way, Doctor Taggart — nice shooting.”
Julia laughed, though there were tears in her eyes. “You know I was trying to kill him, don’t you?”
“He deserved nothing less. I’m just glad you made him pay. Now. Chapel?”
“Okay, okay,” Chapel said, and grabbed the phone and the hands-free unit. “You going to be okay?” he asked Julia.
She glared at him.
Crap. It looked like Angel had relieved a little of her fear — but just enough to let her get angry at him again.
Maybe stepping outside for a while was an excellent idea.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+29:02
A long balcony ran outside the motel room, allowing access to all the rooms on that floor. Chapel felt exposed walking up and down, past all the curtains of the other rooms, but there was nothing for it. “Was all that true, what you told her?” he asked.
“Absolutely. I imagine it’s going to be some comfort to you, too, sweetie,” Angel said. There was a distinct note of sadness in her voice. “After all, you had a lot more physical contact with the chimera than she did.”
“And there are three more of them out there,” Chapel said. “I’m going to probably have contact with them as well.”
“You’d be in your rights to be concerned about that,” Angel told him.
“I know what my job is. I didn’t join the army because I thought it was going to be safe.”
“I’m sure Director Hollingshead will be glad to hear that.”
Chapel didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he might spend the rest of his life locked up in a camp in the Catskills. “We need to get back to work,” he said. That was the best way to take his mind off it, he knew.
He filled her in briefly on what Funt had told him. About CIA hit squads and Laughing Boy — and that Funt definitely knew something about the chimeras. He even knew the name of the one coming for him.
“I guess that explains why he’s on the kill list,” Angel pointed out.
“Absolutely. Christina Smollett is still a mystery, but it’s starting to look like this is definitely a CIA hit list. I want to take a look at the rest of the names. My feeling is that William Taggart and Franklin Hayes are the next two targets after Funt. But maybe I’m wrong. Who else do we have?”
Angel tapped away at her keyboard for a while.