Calculated Contagion Page 12
“Yeah, we’re in deep shit, and we get to find out how deep it is and what it smells like.”
“It’s a wonder you didn’t become a poet, Mikey.” Shaking her head at him, Alexis picked up the phone to notify their contact at the Centers for Disease Control that live measles virus had gone missing. Best case, a lab employee was doing their own research on the side. Worst case, someone was planning to spread a nearly undetectable contagion somewhere, somehow. Less than five minutes later, she had finished her call, and there were three additional passengers in the van. Parker’s phone beeped and he looked up at the waiting crowd. “Cam and Tyler will be at your apartment in half an hour, Dani. We have some explaining to do.”
* * *
Dani barely remembered Ree leading her back into her apartment, followed by three uncharacteristically quiet FBI agents. To occupy her hands and pass the time, Dani brewed a cup of tea. As it steeped, she waited, trying to figure out the motivation of whoever had taken the vials. A tap at the door made her shoulders tighten until she heard the familiar voices identify themselves. She came out of the kitchen as Cam and Tyler entered her apartment. Clutching her mug of tea, Dani waited for new information that would make her current circumstances make sense. “Hey guys,” Dani said. “Where have you been?”
Tyler took a step closer and said, “Romania. And Russia. We’ve been busy. You okay?”
“We have some bad news.” Dani looked at her shoes.
Cam slapped Parker on the back “I leave you for five minutes…”
“We kept Dani in one piece. Didn’t know we needed to watch for someone on the inside stealing bits and pieces of the lab while you were flying all over the world.”
“Yeah, good catch there,” Cam said. “We know the news, Dani. We got the call on the way over. It’s shit-all luck, but we’ll figure it out.”
Tyler shut the door behind them. “Dani, I’m going to need you to catch me up. Some bugs were taken from the lab. I mean, if you wanted to make a bioweapon, why would you steal something everyone is vaccinated against? Are we missing something?”
Dani clutched her hot cup of tea. “You’re mostly right. The young, unvaccinated, and immunocompromised would still be at risk. But in the US, herd immunity would limit the spread, to an extent.”
“Any idea who would want to take it?” Cam asked.
Dani took a sip of tea. “What about a competitor? Someone who wanted to do some experimentation without the paperwork hassle of setting up a huge lab?”
Cam crossed his arms. “That’s an interesting idea. We can explore that angle. In the meantime, it sounds like whoever is behind this is willing to kidnap a scientist as well as work with potentially deadly bugs, so I want you to lay low here with Alexis for now. Parker, a word?”
Parker followed his brother and Tyler out of the apartment and Alexis locked the door behind them. The mood noticeably lifted in Dani’s cozy apartment. Dani allowed a small amount of hope to sneak back into her battered heart.
* * *
In the apartment next door, the mood was dark. Tyler crossed his arms and let Cam break the bad news to his brother. “It’s not a competitor, P.”
Parker leaned against the door. “Yeah, I figured. Why the secrecy?”
Cam said, “I don’t want Dani panicking, but we’ve had some troubling developments. The man who kidnapped her made it over to the States before our facial recognition software caught him at the airport on our side. He must have used a fake passport. He slipped through two days ago.”
“Where’d he go?” Parker asked. “He hasn’t been within spitting distance of our witness. I memorized his face, and there’s no way I’d miss something that big.” Tyler looked to his team lead instead of answering–he didn’t have the authorization to tell the FBI agent the truth without Cam’s go-ahead. However, he underestimated Cam’s brother. Parker put the pieces together just by watching their exchange. “He was in town, wasn’t he?”
Cam nodded. “It’s connected, bro, but I don’t know how yet.”
“What’s the plan?” Parker asked Cam, who tilted his head to Tyler. Cam was leading the operation, but Tyler was the one feeding him information. While Cam had been darting off to clandestine meetings, Tyler had been putting a plan together.
Tyler said, “We find out where he ended up, who he called, and if he’s still in town. We’re tracing his calls using the voice data from the audio Cam got when we were first…introduced to Dani. It’s going to take a little time. Our working theory is that they’re stealing bugs they don’t know how to work with. They want a scientist to go with it. A scientist who saw too much.”
“Does she need to disappear?” Parker asked.
“Something like that,” Tyler said. “I can manufacture a car crash, but I’m going to need at least a day to put everything together. We’ll ask her to call in sick tomorrow to get all the pieces moving. Her coworkers will believe they saw Dani die the day after tomorrow outside of her building. That should keep her out of their crosshairs for a little while. We can’t be sure who is involved, so we’ll need eyewitnesses near the scene of the accident. You and your team can stay in the building another couple of days to ensure your cover stays intact, but Dani will need to stay with our people until we wrap this case up. We’ll let her know once we have all the pieces in place, but for now, let’s keep it high level.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out. Let’s go talk to Dani.” Parker held the door open and Tyler and Cam filed out in silence. As they approached Dani’s door, Tyler cracked his neck, readying himself to break the news to Dani. All he had to do was explain to their witness that they thought she was in serious danger while also convincing her they had it under control. Which wasn’t going to make it easy for Tyler to tell Dani the half-truth the situation required.
When they entered the apartment, Tyler had to wait to give his prepared speech. The previously placated Dani now paced the floor, rubbing a spot between her eyebrows as she alternated between frustrated English and Hindi. It didn’t take a CIA officer to figure out that she was reassuring her mother she was okay, despite violating her father’s edict to stay home. After asking in a strained voice how her mother was doing, Dani listened politely and hung up the phone after repeating the same assurances and running her fingers through her long black hair. Slipping the phone back in her pocket, Dani collapsed on a chair but then bounced back up again and continued to walk around her small living room. Cam gave an expectant look to Tyler, who shrugged and swallowed hard. It was time.
Dani turned to face him, but in the short time they were gone, her relief had turned to suspicion. Tyler had now underestimated two people today and he braced himself for her questions. Dani approached him and said, “So the theft of the vials and my kidnapping–we think they are related, right?” Without waiting for an answer, Dani continued, “You know, I’ve been thinking about it. Why would a competitor go to all the trouble to kidnap me? There isn’t a lot of money in making vaccines for developing countries. No money, no motive. Which means we aren’t any closer to finding the person who kidnapped me than we were in Romania.”
Tyler clenched his teeth. So much for hoping he could sidestep an uncomfortable topic. Still, he wasn’t going to lie to her, and brusque half-truths were his only defense. “You bring up a reasonable argument. We have a team working on that. In the meantime, we need you to stay in your apartment with the blinds closed at all times, with Alexis, Mike, or Parker here with you. We don’t even want you to go for a walk. If there is any chance you are still in danger, we want to keep you safe.”
Dani took a step closer and eyed him suspiciously. “Tyler, are you keeping something from me?”
Tyler shifted under the weight of her stare. “Yes. But we’d like to wait until we know more to fill you in. We don’t want to alarm you if we’re wrong, and we’re doing what we can to get to the bottom of it. I promise we will keep you posted.” Tyler turned on a heel and gestured at Cam to leave. It was rud
e but necessary. If he stayed any longer, he wouldn’t be able to keep finding excuses to keep her out of the loop. Dani found weak spots in his explanations too easily. He and Cam needed to report all of this to Morgan and solidify a game plan. It was the least he could do for a witness brave enough to keep herself in the crosshairs, even though she’d been kidnapped once already.
* * *
“You could have at least been friendly, Eagle. The poor woman was terrified,” Cam admonished Tyler as they reached the apartment lobby. Sure, reading people’s emotions was a skill that took time to develop, but it didn’t take a psychologist to realize the woman was dealing with PTSD on top of her fear that it wasn’t all over yet. Alexis reported that Dani had been having regular nightmares since her first night there. Dani hadn’t mentioned it, and until it started affecting her in the daytime, they would take her at her word that she wanted to stay involved.
Instead of responding to his reprimand, Tyler continued to the car in silence. When he finally spoke through his teeth, Cam barely heard him. “I’ll take that under advisement, sir.” His tone made it clear there would be no more discussion on the subject, and Cam wisely let it go. If Tyler could channel his energy into catching the bad guy, they could put this operation and whatever had crawled up Tyler’s ass behind them.
They reached their nearby hotel after a quick stop to grab some takeout, a welcome meal after almost twelve hours of travelling and meetings. After dropping their bags, Cam and Tyler checked in with Morgan Grady via video chat. The connection took a minute to route through the secure channels, and Cam took advantage of the delay to pop open his takeout container and snag a handful of french fries. The burger would have to wait, but after a long flight back from Romania, receiving a call that measles virus had been taken from the lab, and changing their plans so they could speak with their witness right away, real food hadn’t been a priority.
Morgan’s face appeared on the laptop. “Good evening, gentlemen.”
“Morgan, how are things back at the ranch?”
“We’re trying to get you what you need, but we’re playing catch-up. The intel you sent us still needs some massaging for it to mean anything, and it’ll take some time to check with our local sources. However, the missing vials of measles virus changes things. We’ve got a big problem. It’s going to get sent up the chain, and they are going to want answers yesterday.”
“Yeah, I figured. If a competitor stole it for testing, the collateral damage will be minimal. It’s possible they would mishandle it, but we don’t have to worry much about a major outbreak stateside. It just isn’t the right bug if you want to kill a bunch of US citizens.”
“Is the competitor theory viable or just something to calm your witness?” Morgan asked.
Tyler raised an eyebrow. “It’s theoretically possible, but unlikely. Do you have anything to support the idea? Sounds too good to be true to me.”
“We’ve been keeping an ear out,” Morgan said, alluding to their counterparts in the NSA. “But I don’t think we’re going to be lucky enough to find a connection to a competitor. Did you guys find anything while you were in Moscow that could be the missing link?” She would receive the official report later but nearly always asked her people to give her their opinions before reading their paperwork. People were more likely to verbalize unproven theories. Morgan wasn’t one to toss out information just because it was hard to understand. They were always willing to engage in unofficial speculation with her since the seemingly unimportant coincidence had solved a tough case more than once.
“No, ma’am. It was a dead end. We traced the calls to Stanislav to a government building in Moscow, but it’s all patched in through one line–doesn’t narrow it down much and poking around didn’t tell us anything. Did you get a chance to talk to our sources over there?”
“It’s on the list, Cam, but we’ll move it up. I’ll make sure the night team gets you what they can. In the meantime, tell the FBI that they have our full support to move Ms. Christensen if they smell trouble before we move her into protection.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tyler said. “I’m working through an extraction plan. I’ll fill you in once I have all the pieces in place.”
“Glad to hear it, gentlemen. We’ll be in touch.” The connection ended and Cam grabbed his burger. It was the only thing standing between him and a satisfying night of sleep not on an airplane. While some agents had trouble adjusting to time changes, when there was no one actively trying to kill him, Cam slept like a baby. Taking a big bite, he raised an eyebrow at Tyler fussing over his chicken sandwich. Tyler didn’t usually fuss.
“Got a problem over there, Eagle?”
“No, sir.” Tyler straightened. By unspoken agreement, Cam called him by his code name whenever his question was business-related. Cam should have left the kid on guard duty at the apartment to help with his sullen mood. Nothing like a job to keep an officer from worrying about things they couldn’t control. It would also give Cam valuable time alone to untie the mental knots of this one. They’d been to Russia, Romania, and Minnesota in the past week, and so far, all they had was a pile of dead ends, bad news, and a terrified witness. Rest would help him make sense of the seemingly unrelated details while Dani was in good hands. Cam continued chewing his dinner in silence, but Tyler threw his sandwich down on the Styrofoam lid of the takeout container, turned to pull a pair of shorts out of his bag, and rose from his chair.
“I’m gonna hit the treadmill for a while.” Cam saluted with his burger, glad Tyler was finding an outlet for his nervous energy. If he knew his friend, Tyler wouldn’t be back until he pounded out a good ten miles. It’d give Cam precious alone time to figure out what was going on. The door shut, and Cam closed his eyes so he could concentrate.
18
After a strange evening of the FBI and CIA teams rotating through her apartment, Dani took in the quiet comfort of her kitchen, using the alone time to recharge her mental batteries. Alexis was in the guest bedroom, taking some well-earned downtime after pulling double duty working the night shift and in the surveillance van. The rest of the team was talking quietly in her living room. Dani realized, almost as an outsider to her own body, that she’d been staring off into space for an untold number of minutes while holding an empty mug, unable to get her brain to focus on making another cup of tea. When she felt a pressure on her shoulder, she shrieked and released the mug, waiting for what felt like a lifetime to hear the shatter her brain told her must follow.
Dani’s body responded to the danger in her kitchen, but her mind couldn’t process where it had come from. Her vision turned to blurs and blackness, and she pulled in a deep breath, fighting to hold onto the small part of herself that told her she was imagining the threat. Dani felt pressure on her wrist and screamed and pulled away, drowning out the present with a fierce determination to survive. She pressed her back against the cabinets and squeezed her eyes shut, calling out for help. She would not be a victim again.
The muffled sound of a familiar voice asking if she was okay was a pinhole of light in the hell of infinite possibilities. Not real. Not real. Not real. There were sounds of a crowd gathering, but soft, female voices were part of the noise. There were no women at the camp. She was imagining things. The women were her friends. She tried to force her brain to claw its way back to reality, and too slowly, her surroundings began to come into focus.
Dani found her words, but when she spoke, her voice was thick. “I. Need. Space. Sorry. So. Sorry.”
A man’s voice caused Dani to recoil until she realized it was the voice of Parker, the brother of the man who’d saved her life. “You have nothing to apologize for, Dani. Ree, Alex, I need you to stay with Dani until she is ready to talk. Get her some water or whatever she needs. Mike and I are going to step out for a minute.”
When she saw the backs of the two men leaving the room, Dani’s heart rate dropped, and she gulped in a breath of air. Her terror was real, but the situation that had caused it was not.
Her brain had begun to turn on her body after only days of refusing to deal with a painful memory. Basic physiology couldn’t be cheated forever. She should have set up an appointment with the counselor that Cam recommended, but she hadn’t had time to pencil it in between flying back from Romania and working with the FBI and CIA to find her kidnapper. Dani made eye contact with Alexis, then Ree. Her heart rate dropped again and the roar of blood in her ears began to ebb away into silence. Suddenly aware she was crouching in the corner like a feral animal, Dani gathered what dignity she had left and began to brush her sweaty palms along her pants.
“I’m s–” Dani was quickly interrupted by Alexis raising a staying hand.
Alexis spoke in a soothing tone. “Not a word, Dani. You don’t have anything to be sorry about. I’m sorry I haven’t been helping you work through this. I want you to sit down, catch your breath, and then we’re going to talk. When you’re ready.”
Ree’s eyes had gone round at Dani’s intense reaction. Her mouth was still parted, just short of fully gaping open. Her mouth closed, but her eyes stayed wide after a gentle elbow was delivered to her stomach and Alexis hissed in a voice Dani probably wasn’t supposed to hear, “Close your mouth, woman.”
Ree whirled on a foot and started rummaging through cabinets, muttering the words tea and chocolate. She fumbled with the teapot, staring at the object as if it were foreign to her, as Alexis led Dani to the small café table in her sleek, modern kitchen. Minutes later, Ree gently placed a mug of chamomile tea in front of Dani and slipped a chocolate next to the teacup. Dani smiled gratefully and took a long drink of tea, fiddling with the chocolate wrapper until she could find the words to explain something she only understood at an intellectual level.