“Just spill it, Kirk.”
He took a deep breath, let it out slow. “Ever heard of an asymptomatic carrier?”
Where the hell did that come from?
“It’s someone who has a disease and can spread it but never actually gets sick,” he said.
“What?” Julie not only looked in shock now, she appeared as confused as I was.
“And you’re telling me Julie is an asymptomatic carrier?” I asked Kirk.
He nodded.
Julie shook her head. “I am not. What are you talking about?”
Kirk’s gaze flicked to her. “You really have no idea, do you?”
“Idea of what?”
The girl was getting distressed now. I could hear it in the rising pitch of her voice.
“Don’t cry,” Kirk warned. “Do not cry.”
Julie’s chin trembled, but she held back the tears. “Chandler?”
I pressed the gun barrel against his temple, hard enough to leave a bruise.
“You have two seconds to explain.”
He spent his first second frowning at me, his next uttering a single word.
“Ebola.”
“Many things can happen in the field, developments no amount of training can help you understand or absorb,” said The Instructor. “In the face of such trauma, knowing how to compartmentalize extraneous thought and emotion can save your life.”
Heat rushed to my face, and I felt lightheaded. I lowered my arm from his throat, freeing him to sit normally, and rocked back on my heels. I wanted to believe it wasn’t true, that Kirk was lying, but it all added up. It all made sense.
A laugh bubbled up inside me, but I held it back. I felt giddy, on the edge of hysteria. This girl I’d been protecting—who I’d thought of as a younger me and even started to care about—was the host of a disease that could wipe out all of Manhattan.
Hell, it could wipe out the entire world.
Ebola was known as a filovirus, and it was probably the deadliest and most virulent little critter on the planet. Also known as hemorrhagic fever, Ebola basically invaded cells and chopped them into bits. Victims bled internally—and ultimately externally—through every opening in their body, including pores.
All bodily fluids leaked by someone with Ebola were highly infectious. Including tears.
If Julie was a carrier, she could spread the disease without getting ill herself.
She cannot be harmed in any way, not even slightly.
I took a step back, fear making my shoulders bunch up.
Every moment I’d been with Julie, I’d been on the verge of disaster. The bullet wound on my shoulder was like a wide open door. Add in all the cuts and scrapes I’d sustained, and I was just begging to be infected.
“How did she contract the virus in the first place?”
Kirk looked at Julie.
It took several seconds before she opened her mouth. “The free clinic.”
He nodded like an encouraging teacher whose student had found the right answer.
“I just went there to get some antibiotics, you know? They took a blood test and then they gave me a shot, and I woke up in a hospital, only …”
Her eyebrows dipped low, and worry dug lines in her forehead.
“Only what?” I prompted.
She focused on the grimy floor, her hands clasped.
“It wasn’t a hospital. It was some kind of … warehouse. On an island.”
“Plum Island,” Kirk said.
I knew Plum Island, AKA Plum Island Animal Disease Center, off the coasts of Long Island and Connecticut. There were actually several facilities on the island, and there had been rumors for decades it was a front for US biological weapons research.
“What happened there, Julie?”
“I don’t know.”
I studied her, the way her fingers fidgeted, the flush to her skin, and I had to wonder if she couldn’t remember or just didn’t want to.
“You must know something. How did you wind up at the mansion?”
“I got up out of bed … and … and … there were doctors and nurses …”
“Only,” Kirk filled in, “the nurses and doctors were dead.”
Julie’s face crumpled. “They were beat up and shot. Murdered.”
“No crying.” Kirk ordered.
She looked to the ceiling and fluttered her eyes, trying to drive back tears.
Kirk continued. “It might have looked like that to you, skin purple with bruising, blood everywhere.”
Julie nodded.
“They were infected by the virus. They got sick, crashed and bled out within hours.”
I almost choked. “That fast?”
A chill moved through me, chasing the heat. I was somewhat familiar with the symptoms of Ebola. The red eyes, the way the virus replicated and ate away at a person’s body until nothing was left but a bloody soup of more and more virus. But hours?
“I thought it took days.”
“Not this particular strain. It had some help. A little genetic tinkering.”
I let the new snip of information sink in.
“So I’m sick?” Julie said. She hiccupped a little.
“You’re not sick, but you can kill others.”
“Typhoid Mary,” I said.
“Exactly. Your body is a factory for a powerful biological weapon, a virus that couldn’t be produced without killing its host … until now.”
Julie slumped against the stall wall. She looked stunned, almost catatonic. But to her credit, she didn’t cry.
I had to report this to Jacob, only I was afraid what he’d say. It was probably a tossup; finish the op by delivering her to the government, or destroy her.
What the hell was I going to do?
I now understood why the defense department was concerned about Julie. If she was a living, breathing, hot zone capable of killing people within a few hours, every government and terrorist group on the planet would want her. She’d be worth billions.
Because she could kill billions.
Kirk cocked his head to the side and looked at me as if he’d just finished discussing a Broadway play or a film he’d seen at the local multiplex.
“So, where are we off to now?”
“We?”
I struggled to shut away the voice in the back of my mind that was screaming Ebola, Ebola, holy shit, Ebola, and focus on my surroundings.
If possible, the smells of mildew and urine had gotten worse, mixing with the scent of stress emanating from the three of us. One of the faucets dripped, and somewhere in the walls I heard a clunk in the pipes.
Something inside me shifted, as if I could physically feel myself locking away the shock and fitting back into my skin.
“Morrissey has a personal car. I can take you to it.” Kirk raised his brows, trying to sell the suggestion.
I answered with an emotionless frown. “Actually, this is where we part ways.”
He didn’t seem surprised. He answered with a sideways sort of smile, of all things.
“You made me run all this way on a bum leg just to kill me?”
“Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Do I get a last request?”
“Depends. What is it?”
“Kiss me.”
I hadn’t seen that one coming. Facing death, and still flirting. Had to hand it to him.
“Seriously?”
“Ever since I laid eyes on you, I’ve thought about kissing you. Could I ask, out of professional courtesy, for one kiss before you kill me?”
A kiss. After handing Julie off to him at Columbus Circle, that’s precisely the path my thoughts had taken. A kiss. Hot sex. That seemed like forever ago.
Now I was bodyguard to a biological weapon, and I had to single-handedly keep her away from Iranians and South Americans who wanted to use her blood to wipe out their enemies.