14
Ian leaned the seat back in the Audi and glanced over at Katherine. She had cried for nearly fifteen minutes straight and then sobbed a few more before quieting down. When she was calm enough, he asked, “You hungry?”
She looked at him in amazement and then back out at the road.
“Well, I’m hungry. You know anywhere good around here? I feel like Mexican.”
She was quiet a long while and then said, “Paiso is good.”
“Paiso it is. Let’s go.”
She got off on the next exit, and they headed through a somewhat rundown part of the city Ian wasn’t familiar with. The addresses had only street names instead of numbers, and most of the stores had bars on the windows.
“How’s a good girl like you know about this part of the city?”
“I used to work here.”
“Doing what?”
“Delivering meals.”
“To who?”
“Homeless youth.”
He laughed. “Really? Wow, what an incredible waste of time.”
“They’re kids,” she said quietly.
“Let me tell you something, Katherine. I’ve been everywhere in the world and met all kinds of people, and you know the one principle that applies to all of them? They are in their life exactly where their past thoughts have brought them. Our thoughts are what make us who we are. You keep thinking negative thoughts, and that’s all you’re going to bring into your life. Bailing out those that haven’t mastered themselves doesn’t help either person. It’s actually an embarrassment to both.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Did your thoughts bring you here?”
“They did,” he said, looking out the window as they passed dimly lit liquor stores and fast-food restaurants with thick, bulletproof glass in the drive-throughs.
“So you thought about killing people?”
“No, I thought about efficiency. That’s what I do. I’m an efficiency expert in an industry where that is sorely lacking.”
After turning into a lot filled to the brim with cars, Katherine parked in back near the dumpsters and they walked to the entrance. A line stretched in front of the restaurant, and they were told it would be a half-hour wait. Ian checked his watch.
“Do you want to find somewhere else?” she said.
“No.”
He took out a wad of hundred dollar bills and went to the hostess. He whispered, “Beauty is a terrible thing not to reward.” Then he slipped her three hundred dollar bills. She took two menus and, without calling any names, sat them by the window.
“You paid three hundred dollars to eat here?” Katherine asked when the hostess had left.
“You can’t put a price on quality,” he said as he opened the menu and looked over the items.
After he ordered a chimichanga with spicy mole, he handed the menus to the waitress and asked Katherine, “You sure you don’t want to eat anything?”
She shook her head.
Ian smiled at the waitress and told her, “Just me today.”
When they were alone, Katherine looked around, and Ian noticed.
“You could scream your head off right now. But that wouldn’t change anything.”
“They would call the police.”
“Eventually, yes, they would. But this is Los Angeles in a shitty part of the city. The police will take at least ten, maybe fifteen minutes to respond. And what do you think will happen in that ten or fifteen minutes?” He glanced over at a fat man in a suit who was accompanied by a woman dressed like a hooker. “You think he’ll come to your rescue?” He looked at another young man of about twenty on a date. “Or how about him? Or maybe you think these poor waiters earning two bucks an hour plus tips are going to run over here and risk their lives for a customer?”
“Maybe.”
He grinned, glancing back at a child at the table behind them. He leaned back in his chair, partially exposing the holster with the pistol inside. “I’ll tell you exactly what would happen. Nothing. Not a single person in here would do anything once they saw this gun. I would pull it out, shoot you in the head, and then again in the heart to make sure you were dead. I would take the keys out of your pocket and then find someone else to drive me. Maybe the hostess.”
She shook her head, her eyes on the table. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m not doing it to you. You were brought here by your choices. The choices you’ve made in life brought you here, and the choices I made in life brought me to this side of the table.”
“You’re not making sense. You said our thoughts bring us where we are.”
He smiled. “Thoughts make our choices, and our choices make our actions, which make our lives.”
The food came out a short while later, and he ate with gusto, then chugged a full glass of water.
“You were absolutely right about that,” he said. “That was delicious.” He wiped his lips with a napkin. “So have you made your decision?”
“About what?”
“About whether you’re going to scream or not.”
She didn’t say anything, and he rose from the table, leaving a hundred dollar bill next to the plate. He took her arm and dragged her out of the restaurant, and she didn’t protest much.
Once they were on the road again, he pulled out his phone and checked the next name before he said, “Head to the 405. We got a thirty-minute drive ahead of us.”
15
Dobbins Air Force Base was the closest air base to Samantha, and she sped down the interstate to get there in time for her flight. She wouldn’t arrive in California until early the next morning. But she was too wired to sleep on the plane, so she’d brought her iPad, which had several movies on it she hadn’t watched yet.
When she arrived, the flight wasn’t scheduled to leave for another forty-five minutes, so she waited by the gate since they wouldn’t let her in without proper clearance. Duncan had forced himself onto the flight and demanded that he go with her. She protested, saying he should be on the flight for purposes of getting her there and then fly right back after dropping her off. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and she didn’t fight hard. The truth was she could really use someone with her.
Within minutes of her arrival, Duncan appeared at the gate in a cab. He paid before getting out, then hugged and kissed her.
“You sure about this?” he asked by way of greeting.
“She’s my only sister. And she’s in trouble. I know it.”
He nodded. “Okay. But we’re going there as part of the military. I only got you clearance by saying the CDC needed access as part of a study I’m doing and that I couldn’t do it without you. You cannot go anywhere without me. I’m serious, Sam. You have to stick by me once we’re there.”
“Why? What did they tell you was going on?”
“I’m not entirely clear on the details, but it sounds like they’ve shut the entire state down, and no one can leave. I don’t know how they intend to enforce that, but that’s their plan.”
She shook her head. “I thought we were done with this. I thought the agent had died out in South America and Oahu.”
“Nature doesn’t know how to give up. But I think it’s contained. Just under a hundred known infections, every one of them quarantined in a hospital. Hopefully, this will be over once no more cases appear.” He looked at the guard at the gate and then back to Sam. “You certain?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
16
Dr. Aneil Deluge walked down the corridor of Saint Anthony’s Hospital in Napa, California. Under his arm, he carried a clipboard with two intake sheets attached. He took the elevator to the quarantine unit on the top floor, which was really nothing more than a portion of that floor cut off from the rest.
The elevators dinged and opened, and he stepped off. The nurse behind the desk smiled at him, and he smiled back without greeting her. He walked the length of the corridor to a room separated from the others. He looked in on the patient through a glass viewing window.