Encrypted (58 page)

However
,
it was becoming clearer and cleare
r
that these most recent symbols were actual longitudes and latitudes.

The problem? Too damn many of them. Even if she ignored the sites outside the United States, there had to be at least a dozen scattered across North America. And just because there was a dot on a map
,
that
did not
mean that
a facility
was there
that stored vaccine.

Would the Hidden Hand have antiserum at each location
,
or would they control access to their greatest asset and hide it
at just one of them?

With half an ear,
Ronnie
heard the pilot ask where they should head.

“I think we just need to get out of the city,” Zach replied.

Ronnie could already feel the tug of the symbols. Her inner world want
ed
to consume her entire attention. But not yet. Her finger
s
flew across her keyboard
,
and a new set of coordinates appeared on the pilot’s dashboard.

“If that’s where the lady wants to go…”

The helicopter leaned left as it banked northeast. Zach raised an eyebrow.

“You’ll see,” she smiled. Ronnie waited for her assistant to pounce on that statement
,
fracturing the little moment between she and Zach. Wait. What was Quirk doing?

She looked
at
the back of the chopper. The
back
,
mind you. Not the
copilot
’s seat. Not in the jump seat that had an excellent view of the pilot’s profile. For goodness
’
sake, Francois was sitting closer to the pilot than her assistant. Instead
,
Quirk sat on the floor of the helicopter
—
turned away from the rest of them.

Even though the symbols called to her like sirens of gold, Ronnie rose and made her way to the back of the chopper.

“Quirk, what’s up?”

He looked up
,
tears glistening in his eyes. And not his usual self-pity tears, but real tears.

“What’s wrong?”

He tried to shake it off. “Nothing.”

Ronnie sat next to him. Quirk tilted his phone to her. “Jennifer…”

“Your contact at the CDC?”

Quirk sniffled once. “
Yeah
. She’s in the late stages of the plague.”

Ronnie squinted to read the texts upside down. That made no sense. The plague normally took four days to reach fatality.

“But isn’t that way early?”

He nodded. “That’s part of the weaponization. The Hidden Hand found a way to accelerate the plague’s course.”

Ronnie felt first her throat, then her chest,
and
then her heart tighten. She thought they had at least another day to find the vaccine. Now they had mere hours?

Quirk looked up, eyes rimmed in red. “Can I tell her anything? Give her any hope?”

Hope
? Ronnie just about choked. Since when was she the font of hope? How could she disappoint Quirk
,
who looked like a puppy
that
had been kicked
and
then told Santa didn’t exist?

“I’m sure the symbols will help us pinpoint a vaccine repository on the
E
astern
S
eaboard.”

Okay, maybe
sure
wasn’t the exact word she would use or even
pinpoint
or precisely on the
E
astern
S
eaboard, but Quirk’s fingers flew across the tiny keyboard.

Now Ronnie just had to figure out how to fulfill her words.

* * *

Amanda glanced up from her computer to the abnormally still conference room. Without Anderson’s voice in the background the place felt like a morgue.

Devlin was still missing
,
and even Henderson had left to find some potable water. Amanda turned to Jennifer
—
only the woman was
gone
.
How in the hell had Jennifer gone anywhere? Her assistant was too sick to get very far at all. Amanda’s head ached as she rose too quickly. Steadying herself on the table, she let the dizziness and nausea wash over her. The pressure on her neck from her lymph nodes forced her to swallow hard to get
her
saliva down her throat. Those poor lymph nodes had tried so in vain to stop the bacteria’s spread to her bloodstream.

However
,
the
beds of her nails had a distinct blue tint to them. None too soon
,
they would blacken as the bacteria destroyed her blood vessels. Sometimes it really was better to be naïve. Every hour
,
she could feel the plague advancing in her body. She knew each insidious step the bacte
ria
would take to overwhelm her immune system
—
and ultimately choke the life from her.

A faint clicking caught her attention. She followed the sound to find Jennifer curled under a desk
. A
sweatshirt
was
rolled up under her head as a pillow.

“Jennifer?” Amanda asked as she dropped to her knees. “What are you doing?”

As the woman typed on a tiny keyboard
,
it became obvious. She was texting.

“We’ve got to find you a bed,” Amanda said
,
taking the phone from Jennifer’s swollen hand.

Her assistant’s chest heaved up and down
,
trying to breathe against the fluid building up in her lungs. Still
,
Jennifer used up some of her precious strength to press the phone into Amanda’s hand.

What could be so important in a text?

Amanda scanned the messages, mainly to keep Jennifer calm
,
but then stopped when she saw the word “vaccine.” Scrolling back
,
Amanda realized that her assistant had been in communication from someone other than the CDC. That wasn’t just against protocol or espionage
.
I
t was downright treason.

Then she realized that it hadn’t been Jennifer talking about the vaccine, but the other person stating they were en route to
retrieve
the vaccine.

“Who is this?” Amanda typed.

The response on the screen, “Um. Who are you to ask
me
who
I
am?”

Now was not the time to play semantics. “What do you know of the vaccine?”

There was a delay
,
so Amanda typed, “Jennifer is too ill to text. This is her boss, Dr. Amanda
Rolph
.”

Still
,
no response.

Who knew who was on the other end of this connection? Was it the people who had spread the plague
,
or could there really be another faction out there fighting the Black Death as hard as she was?

In the end, Amanda realized
that
if Jennifer trusted them,
then
she needed to as well.

“I might be able to help you find the vaccine.”

* * *

Quirk straightened up. “Ronnie, look at this
!
”

As she scanned the text, his boss’ eyes narrowed. “How well do you know Jennifer?”

“She’s my CDC BFF. If there’s an outbreak, she lets me know.” Ronnie didn’t seem to understand quite how close that made them. “Remember how we avoided that cholera outbreak in Micronesia last year?”

“Vaguely.”

“It was Jen
who
alerted me, way before the official alert went out. She’
s
solid.”

Still
,
Ronnie frowned. “But her boss? Can we be sure she isn’t Hidden Hand?”

Quirk typed rapidly. “Are you
part of
the Hidden Hand?”

“Not exactly what I meant,” Ronnie scolded.

Quirk arched his eyebrow, all the way. “Tell me that you have pinpointed the vaccine cache
,
and I’ll put this Dr.
Rolph
through a full
-
on
Rorschach
test.” Apparently
,
Ronnie could not oblige. “Jennifer trusts her
,
and I trust Jennifer.”

He didn’t bother to add that Jennifer was also his beauty BFF. How many nights had they plucked their eyebrows together, even if on separate continents? Lord knew
that
he needed someone girly
,
since Ronnie thought towel
-
drying your hair added as much body as blow-drying it.

Ronnie held out her hand and took the phone. She rapidly typed
,
“How?”

Yep
,
that was his boss. Miss Chatty.

* * *

Amanda rocked back onto her heels, staring at the text. Such a simple question that begged a thousand others. Not the least of which
—W
as she really going to go through with handing perhaps the most sensitive wartime information in the history of wartime information over to a stranger
?

A stranger who seemed in the position to actually act on her information
?

“I have data that isolates areas of probable vaccinated populations.”

Amanda wasn’t sure what to expect
,
but the word, “Stateside?” popped up.

“Yes
,
” Amanda answered. “Several.”

Another long pause
,
then, “Here is a secure link. Send me everything you have. Hopefully
,
we can compare the data and pinpoint a nearby location.”

“What’s your data’s source?”

This time
,
the response from the other end was nearly instantaneous. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

Amanda was about to ask for a slightly more scientific explanation when the door opened.

“Dr.
Rolph
?”

Tucking the phone into her pocket, Amanda rose, albeit stiffly. “Yes
?
”

She found Devlin standing in the doorway. He looked like hell. Dark circles
overtook
his eyes
,
and his shirt
was
streaked with blood.

Amanda glanced down at Jennifer. If this
was
where she chose to stay, so be it. Amanda reached down to the tattered towel that Jennifer had fashioned as a blanket and pulled it up over her shoulder, tucking the woman in.

“Oh
, G
od,” Devlin said. “How long as she been like this?”

Devlin’s hand flew to his own lymph nodes. “Jesus. We started showing symptoms at the same time.”

That they did. Amanda was about to walk past him when she realized that yes, in fact Devlin and Jennifer had come down with their primary symptoms at approximately the same time. Even spiking fevers within an hour of each other. Yet here Devlin stood, looking like hell but with no boils or blisters, and his fingernails looked pinker than even Amanda’s.

She was about to open her mouth
,
and
then slammed it shut again.

Who had been her most outspoken critic during the early outbreak? Who had Hidden Hand materials in his possession? Who refused to send her theories up his chain of command?

Sure
,
Devlin looked r
ough, but no
rough
er
than any guy without a shower for two days
who
had a mild flu. Where was the waxy cast to his skin? The reddened pustules along his arms? Amanda’s had ruptured hours ago.

Instinctively
,
she took a step away. Not because she feared he was infected
,
but because she feared
that
he
wasn’t
.

Unfortunately
,
her move allowed Devlin to see her computer screen
,
which was still uploading the data to Jennifer’s contact. His eyes darted
,
taking in the information. Devlin’s fingers gripped the edge of the table, his face flashing fury.