Chapter Forty-four
Jenkintown, Pennsylvania
December 19, 12:06 P.M. EST
Amber Taylor left work without notifying anyone. She stole someone else’s red winter coat from the staff room. She put on sunglasses and wound a scarf around her face, pulled the hood up, and slipped out through the delivery dock. She walked quickly to the parking lot, got into her car, and drove as fast as she could to her children’s school. She was careful to obey all traffic laws, however. She did not want to get stopped by the police. Not yet, and not now. During the short drive to the school she obsessively checked the mirrors for any sign of a car following her. She saw nothing, but she knew that did not prove a thing. Except for that day the Spaniard came to her to ruin everything and to show her the pictures of the things he called angels, she had never seen anyone. And yet she knew they were watching. They were probably watching right now.
Her stomach felt like it was filled with rusted nails. She popped the glove compartment and took out the large bottle of TUMS EX that she always carried. It was the fifth bottle she had gone through, the extra-large container. She ate six of them while she picked her way through traffic to the school.
When she pulled into the school parking lot the kids were playing in the big concrete yard. A game of tag in one corner, ball in another. Emily stood talking to three of her friends and Mark sat on the steps nearby reading a comic book. Spider-Man. Mark loved comic books. Emily was already reading chapter books, and with her mind she would graduate soon to Young Adult novels.
God, Amber thought, let that happen. Let my babies grow up. Help me keep the monsters away.
She pulled to a stop as close to the school-yard gate as possible and left the engine running as she did a slow surveillance of the area, turning in the seat, craning her neck, looking at every person, every face. None of them looked like it could belong to the face of the man with the Spanish accent. No one looked like they could be one of them. Everyone looked ordinary.
She sniffed back tears, then tapped the horn.
Emily looked up first and smiled. She waved. Amber got out of her car and hurried into the school yard.
“Come on, honey; we have to go.��
“You got a new coat!” said Emily.
“Yes. Say goodbye to your friends. Mark! Come on, honey. Grab your things.” She hustled them to the car, belted them in, got in, and locked the doors. Then she left the parking lot, turned left, and drove like hell toward home.
As she drove, she made a single phone call to a number that was burned into her mind.
Chapter Forty-five
Jenkintown, Pennsylvania
December 19, 1:19 P.M. EST
We got off of I-95 and started picking our way across northeast Philadelphia.
Ghost sat in the backseat and laid his head on the storage bin that separated the front bucket seats. He was still mad at me for putting him in the jet’s cargo hold and probably wouldn’t warm up until I bribed him with food. So, I went through a McDonald’s drive-through and got a couple of Filet-O-Fish sandwiches and an order of fries and gave them to Ghost.
“Is that good for him?”
“He likes fast food.”
“Two sandwiches and fries? What, no Coke?”
“Hey,” I said, “he’s only a dog.”
She stared at me as if I was a lunatic. Fair call. Then she turned and watched Ghost wolf down the fried squares of fish, mayonnaise, buns, and all, and then he settled down and ate the fries more slowly.
“I’ve never seen a dog eat French fries one at a time.”
“He’ll share if you ask nice.”
Ghost looked up as if he understood that comment and regarded it as heresy. He placed one paw over his fries and gave Circe a steely stare.
“Bon appétit!” she said, and turned back. “I’m more of a cat person.”
I was both. I had a marmalade tabby named Cobbler back at the Warehouse, but it didn’t seem to be the right time to bring him up. So we drove in silence for a while.
My phone rang. Church.
“Change of plans,” he said curtly. “You won’t be picking up Dr. Sanchez. He’ll come to meet you in Jenkintown. Echo Team is also inbound to the same destination.”
“Christ, don’t tell me there was another attack,” I growled. Circe turned sharply at those words.
“Not yet,” he said. “Your video message idea seems to have borne fruit. A woman named Amber Taylor has barricaded herself and her children inside her house. She called the number we gave during the broadcast. She says that a man with a Spanish accent told her that he would kill her children if she did not do what he said.”
“Son of a bitch. What did he want her to do?”
“To release fleas into the Philadelphia subway system.”
“Fleas infected with—?”
“Take a guess.”
“Oh, shit.”
He gave me the address. I immediately shifted into the fast lane and put the hammer down. Ford Explorers aren’t exactly sports cars, but mine had been given the DMS version of the Police Interceptor package adapted for an SUV. I stamped down on the gas and the Explorer shot forward, the needle climbing to a hundred and then past it.
“Joe, what’s wrong?” demanded Circe, bracing her feet and gripping the support handle bolted to the frame.
“You know history,” I said through gritted teeth. “If you were looking at a worst-case scenario of a disease transmitted by fleas, what would it be?”
“Yersinia pestis,” she said without hesitation, and then the implications of my question and her response caught up to her. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the color drain from her face.
Yersinia pestis. A bacterium that can take three primary forms when spread from flea to humans. Pneumonic, septicemic, and bubonic.
Plague.
Chapter Forty-six
Jenkintown, Pennsylvania
December 19, 1:45 P.M. EST
I drove past the Taylor house without a pause, circled the block, and drove past again. I checked out each of the cars parked on the street and didn’t see anyone sitting in them. All of the plates were local. No pedestrians.
Amber Taylor lived on West Avenue, just off of Route 611. A blue BMW sat out front. Right color, make, and plates.
“Are we going to wait for your team?”
“No,” I said. “I want to talk to this woman ASAP. If the Spaniard leaned on her, then we may have our first solid lead. We can’t risk waiting … but it’s your call if you want to stay here or—”
“I’m going in,” Circe said in a tone that brooked no argument.
“Fine, Doc, but remember that this is a criminal investigation.”
“Yes, yes, and you’re the alpha. Get a grip, Joe; this isn’t my first time in the field.”
She said it with a lot of conviction, but I thought she was lying. I was pretty sure that this was her first time out of the world of “what if.” Even so, I kept my mouth shut on all the ways I wanted to reply to that. I took my Homeland ID case out of the glove box and looped the lanyard around my neck. We got out and I checked the street again. Nothing moved except the breeze through the December trees. I let Ghost out of the back. There was a case in the back marked with a rubber stamp of a blue old-style British police telephone box. In the TV show Doctor Who it was called a TARDIS, a kind of time and space ship. In the real world it was the box of special ultra-high-tech doodads provided by Dr. Hu and his team. I opened it and stuffed a few gizmos into my pocket.