Encrypted (20 page)

“I’ll just gather my stuff,” she mumbled, rising as she opened her desk drawer. “Do you want security to escort me out?”

Henderson squinted his bloodshot eyes. “What in damnation are you talking about?”

Amanda’s eyes shifted from Henderson to her assistant at the door. Jennifer’s arms were overloaded with files as she balanced a three
-
hole punch and stapler under
her
chin. If they were being fired, Amanda doubted they were going to let Jennifer take off
with the best three-hole punch on the island
.

“I’m not fired?”

Breath whistled through Henderson’s
pinched
nose as he shook his head. “Clearly
,
you haven’t heard.”

“Heard?”
Amanda parroted, not knowing what else to say.

“The first American case of the plague.” Henderson grabbed a remote control off her desk and turned on the overhead screen. “Reported at
9:18
this morning.”

Amanda gulped as Henderson flipped through several channels, all reporting the same thing. “The
p
lague is
here
.”

She looked back
at
her boss. “Where?” she asked
,
not needing
to qualify where she meant.

“A passenger off a flight from Venice.”

Amanda sat down. Hard.

“We are moving you from these offices to the main conference room
,
where you’ll have another dozen assistants to shift through all of the data,” Henderson said
,
but Amanda barely heard him.

Being a harbinger of doom was bad.

Being right? Even worse.

* * *

Quirk stood on his tippy-toes trying to spot Ronnie
.
Why did she always do this
?
Wait until the last conceivable moment to board
?
After all, she had left the cold room at what,
10:00
last night
?
While he had been up half the night rooting through the carnage of their near miss
.
Besides
,
just assessing the damage done, he had to reassure himself that the components could indeed be fixed
.
He had the knowledge
.
He had the technology
.
Making sure his cyber babies kept a positive mental attitude could be time
-
consuming
.

Quirk had fallen asleep between a CPU and a high-speed router
.
Then at the crack of dawn, he was up, shipping the myriad of components to the States
.
Even the ones damaged beyond repair would go home for a proper burial
.

He looked down at the tickets
.
10:00
a.m
.
He looked at his watch
.
Nine-forty
.
As he was searching the crowd, a man bumped right into him,
and
then stayed there
.
Quirk glared down at the squat Mexican, but he didn’t budge.

“Um, el personal-o space-o?” Quirk asked, but the man just stood there
.
Having no greater depth of the Spanish language, it was he
who
moved to the left to get some breathing room
.

Well, not exactly breathing room
.
The airport was crammed with under-bathed Latin Americans
.
The stench
was
so thick that Quirk remembered why he had started to develop nose plugs that could pass as fashion accessories
.
And given that body odor was a product of bacterial growth, he didn’t like to be uncouth, but
Ay,
chihuahua
!
T
hese people were walking pathogen factories.

Which reminded him…

Despite
that he was anxious
to find Ronnie, Quirk
checked his phone.

It is here
was still the last text from his CDC BFF. The plague. It had reached North America.
New York
,
in fact.
How long until the Black Death cast its long shadow down Mexico way?

Quirk
turned to the television screen
.
All morning long
,
they had been running plague reports
.
Granted
,
these were in Spanish, but Quirk could
spot
a boil in any language
.
This
show
was obviously going over the early signs of the disease
.
With practiced routine, he went through the checklist
.

Fever
.
Nope.

Sub-mandibular lymph nodes enlarged
?
Nope.

Blackened patches of skin
?
Nope.

The patient on the screen stuck out his tongue
.
It was covered with the worst yellow film
.
Yellow
film
?
Quirk nearly panicked
.
Jennifer hadn’t informed him that
was one of the early signs
!
He hadn’t checked
it
in the mirror this morning
.
He would have to give Jennifer
,
his CDC BFF
,
a scolding
—
that is
,
once he found someone to check his tongue. Quirk glanc
ed left, then right
.
Where was Ronnie when he needed her
?
He turned back to the rotund
gentleman
.

“Excuse me?”

“
No
hablo
inglés
.”

“No kidding,” Quirk said, glancing around the crowd
.
No one looked especially
inglés
equipped
.
So he stuck his tongue out at the man, mumbling,  “
Yellowo
filmo
?”

“Really, Quirk, you need to work on your pickup lines.”

He turned back to find his boss right behind him. Quirk kept his tongue out, slurring his words
.
“Is it yellow?”

Ronnie just shook her head
.
“Seriously, Quirk, butch up.”

She came
this
late,
and
then gave
him
attitude
?
“Where have you been?”
he demanded.

“Buying our tickets.”

“Are you sun
-
addled?” Quirk asked as he pulled the travel documents out of his very
stylish
leather bag
.
“I’ve got them right here
.
I
always
have them right here.”

“Yeah, to Acapulco, but we’re going to Ciudad
Juarez
,” Ronnie said as the crowd dispersed
and
boarding began
.

Quirk tilted his head
.
Geniuses could be so damn exasperating
.
“Is this a real place, Ronnie, or one you made up in your head?”

“We’re going to Ciudad
Juarez
.”

“No
.
Real or not, we are going to Acapulco,” Quirk insisted
.

An airline employee nodded
toward
them
.
“
Señor
.
Señorita
.
You board?”

Quirk put a finger up to “hold” the employee as
he
turned to Ronnie
.
“Ciudad
Juarez
wouldn’t happen to be anywhere near El Paso, Texas
,
would it?”

Ronnie tried to look innocent, but it didn’t
come
natural
ly
to
her
.
“In the general vicinity.”

Oh, he was pissed
!
After everything that happened last night, Ronnie
wasn’t
just
now
learning
that
they had to
think
with their big head
s
.
“This is about
him
, isn’t it?”

Ronnie gave up on her attempt at
naïveté
and threw up her hands
.
“Fine
.
Go to Acapulco
.
I’ll catch up with you in Los Angeles.”

“Has it even occurred to you that he is setting you up
?
That he’s luring you there?”

Ronnie was right back in his face
.
“How do you even know
that
he asked
me
?”

Quirk pulled out the ultimate gay power move
—
the hand on the hip
.
“Because you talked to him last night.”

“You hung up on
—
”

“No,” he said firmly
.
The charade was over
.
The “don’t ask, don’t tell” phase of this little flirtation was over
.
“You talked to him after you got back to the hotel room.”

“What?” She actually sounded flustered, but his boss must have seen the truth in his eyes
.
He wasn’t bluffing
.
“I mean, how would you
—
”

“Darling, did you really think you could spend forty million dollars to develop a point
-
to
-
point communications device without me knowing about it?”

Ronnie started backped
aling
.
Obviously
,
this was not how she expected this conversation to go
.
“I just
—
”

He
showed
his palm
.
“Don’t.” He lowered his hand
.
“We’ll deal with my hurt feeling
s
over being left out, excluded, dissed, and all the abandonment issues this brings up for me later
.
Right now, I just need you to get your lack-of-squats ass on that plane.”

“I can’t.” Her eyes pleaded with him to understand
.
“I’m going to meet him.”

Even though the airline employee hovered just out of hearing range, the two stood in strained silence
.
Ronnie had lied to him
.
She was jeopardizing both of their lives
,
and didn’t even have the courtesy to inform before the fact
.
In Buffy’s immortal words, “Love, man, it makes you do the wacky.” Well, it was Quirk
’s
job to de-whack her.

“You
do
realize that Mexico has a well
-
enforced extradition treaty with the United States
?
”

But Ronnie stood her ground
.
“Yes, I do
.
But just like you risk the White Party every year, I’ve got to do this.”

“Excuse me, but last call,” another gate employee said with a thick accent.

Quirk picked up his bags and looked Ronnie squarely in the eye
.
“Go to your doom
.
I’m going to the land of bronzed men.”

Ronnie just gazed downward
,
so he turned away from her
.
But that wasn’t all he had to say
.
“And
,
just so you know
,
had
I
developed the technology rather than you outsourcing it, the music wouldn’t skip every time you made a call.”