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Avery stepped out into the hall and turned left. She could see the door to Grant’s office from here, and despite her resolve to remain professional at all times, her stomach flopped about like a landed fish. Part of her wanted badly to tell him off—to let him know in no uncertain terms how much pain he’d caused her. But another, more rational part recognized that was a bad idea. It just wasn’t worth the effort, and in the end it wouldn’t bring her the satisfaction she craved. Better for her to stop looking back. She couldn’t change the past, and if she got mired in memories she wouldn’t be able to work effectively.
Was Grant having the same problem? Likely not, she thought with a soft snort. Unless she missed her guess, he’d moved away after college and hadn’t looked back. And why would he? He’d dodged a bullet when she lost the baby—he’d made that much clear.
Avery shook her head, drawing deep inside herself for strength. She was going to walk into his office with her head held high and her shoulders back, and she’d keep her chin up for the duration of her stay here. She wasn’t about to let Grant know how much the past still haunted her after all these years. No, she was going to project the image of a calm, capable professional, not a woman forever changed by his actions.
And maybe after a while, she’d believe it herself.
* * *
Grant sat behind his desk and took a deep breath, his mind going a million miles a minute. What was he going to say to Avery? The shock of seeing her had begun to wear off, but he still wasn’t feeling terribly articulate. The last thing he wanted to do was say the wrong thing and increase the tension between them.
She definitely hadn’t been excited to see him. He recalled the look on her face when she’d realized it was him, and a sense of shame made his skin prickle. It was his fault Avery looked at him like he was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Once upon a time they’d meant the world to each other. But a few careless words had killed her feelings and ruined his chances of ever finding happiness with her again.
He thought he’d managed to put that painful episode of his life behind him, but seeing Avery brought it all back up again, and Grant was surprised to find the heartache was still fresh, ten years later.
So much for time healing everything.
Should he just start with an apology and get it over with? I’m sorry I said the miscarriage was for the best. Straight and to the point. No way for her to misinterpret his words. It was a hell of an opener, but maybe it was the best approach. When a patient had an infection he didn’t hesitate to use aggressive treatments. This wound had festered between them for far too long—perhaps it was time to air things out and start the healing.
Or maybe not.
Avery had always been a stickler for rules and protocol. She probably wouldn’t appreciate him bringing up the past, especially since she was here in a professional capacity. It was one thing to talk about their shared history over a beer, quite another to discuss it as part of an outbreak investigation. It might be better for him to ignore the past and focus solely on current events.
Besides, it was entirely possible Avery had moved on with her life and no longer carried the burden of her loss.
Not likely, he thought, dismissing the prospect almost immediately. Avery wasn’t the type to pretend something hadn’t happened. Grant could still remember the look in her eyes, that haunted, hopeless grief eating her up from the inside... He shuddered, and goose bumps broke out along his arms. No, he did not think Avery had gotten over the loss of the baby.
But maybe she had found someone new and started a family. The thought filled him with equal parts pleasure and dismay. Grant would never wish for her to be unhappy, but the idea that she’d moved on with her life stung, especially since he certainly hadn’t.
He’d dated a few women over the years, but his heart really hadn’t been in it. He made a point of warning the women up front that he was not the marrying kind, but they always seemed to take it as a challenge, like they would be the one to change his mind. The experience left a bad taste in his mouth, and so he’d chosen to remain single rather than break someone else’s heart.
Had Avery been wearing a ring? He closed his eyes, trying to remember. But all he could recall was her face, those bright blue eyes growing cold when she realized who he was...
Grant shook his head to clear the memory and focused on his immediate problem. What should he say to her? He glanced at his watch, and his heart kicked hard against his breastbone. She was going to be here any minute, and he still had no idea how to talk to her.
A knock on the door told him he’d run out of time. He’d just have to wing it, and let her take the lead. No matter what had happened between them, they had to work together now. He wasn’t going to be the reason this investigation failed.
“Come in.”
The door swung open and he stood to greet her, gesturing for her to take the seat across from him. “Sorry it’s so crowded,” he said as she maneuvered into the small space. The room was a narrow rectangle, carved out from the slightly larger staff break room. Grant’s desk sat at the far end, opposite the door. Bookshelves lined the walls, crammed full of texts on every conceivable medical subject. It was a testament to the preinternet days when a base physician needed access to information on a wide variety of conditions. As Grant had already learned, there was no telling what might walk through the door.
Avery glanced around, taking it all in as she moved forward. Her eyes landed on the cot shoved to one side of the room, topped with a tangle of sheets. She quickly looked away again, and Grant felt a sudden stab of embarrassment. Why hadn’t he thought to make the bed? She probably thought he’d turned into a slob.
“It’s cozy,” she said, the corner of her mouth lifting in a half smile as she sat. Grant did the same and promptly forgot how to breathe when she leaned forward to pull something out of the bag she’d set at her feet. The V of her scrub top gaped open, giving him an unobstructed view of her lovely attributes. His face heated and he turned his head, looking for something—anything—else to focus on while he willed his body’s response to go away. Of all the inconvenient times to be reminded of her as a woman... Dozens of memories rushed in, overwhelming him with visions of them together. His hands on her. Her hands on him. Her mouth—He shifted in his seat and cleared his throat, then eyed the bottle of water on his desk. Would it be too obvious if he dumped the contents into his lap?
“Everything okay over there?”
Grant glanced back to find Avery watching him, a curious expression on her face. Damn. He was going to have to be more careful about controlling his reactions around her. Thanks to their shared past, she could tell when something was bothering him.
“I’m good,” he said. “Just had a little tickle in my throat.” He unscrewed the cap on the water bottle and took a healthy swig to lend more credence to the lie.
She nodded, apparently accepting his answer.
“How have you been?” Grant asked. He knew she’d probably rather talk about the outbreak, but he wasn’t going to be able to focus until he knew more about her life and what she’d been up to in the last decade.
“Just fine, thanks.” She kept her head down, flipping through the notebook in her lap.
“That’s good.” He paused, but when she didn’t speak again he forged ahead. “I guess you live in Atlanta?” That was the location of the CDC’s headquarters, so it stood to reason she’d live there.
“Yes.” She continued to flip pages, the rustle of paper the only sound in the room.
“Ah, apartment or house?” he asked, needing to fill the awkward silence.
Avery apparently found her place in the notebook and looked up. “Apartment. Look, Grant. I appreciate the chitchat, but let’s just get down to business, shall we?”
“Sure,” he said, nodding in agreement. “I’m just glad to see you’re okay.”
She smiled, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m great. You look fine, too. And now that we’ve established that, I think we’ll both be better off if we focus on the outbreak.”
She was right, of course. And really, he should be relieved that she didn’t want to spend time going over their past. But part of him was disappointed—how was he going to apologize if she didn’t want to talk about the elephant in the room?
“What can you tell me about this outbreak?”
“It started two weeks ago,” he replied automatically, shoving aside his personal concerns. There would be time enough to chat later, once he’d hopefully figured out how to broach the subject. “The first two patients presented on the same day, a few hours apart.”
“Can you tell me about their symptoms?”
“Low-grade fever, congestion, mild cough. Typical upper respiratory stuff. It’s the kind of thing that cycles through here on a regular basis, so I gave them the usual treatment and sent them on their way.”
“And then what happened?” Her pen flew across the paper as he talked, taking notes on everything he said.
“The rest of the patients presented in the same way over the next two days. I put out a notice, reminding everyone to focus on hand-washing, cover coughs and sneezes, that kind of thing. But I didn’t realize anything was wrong until the third day.”
Avery pulled another piece of paper from her bag and consulted it. “That’s when Patient Zero came back?” she asked, referring to the first patient.
“Yes,” Grant confirmed. “And he looked like death warmed over.”
One of Avery’s eyebrows lifted. “Is that your official clinical opinion, Doctor?” There was the slightest hint of amusement in her voice—not enough for a stranger to register, but Grant picked up on it. He gave her a little smile of acknowledgment and was gratified to see her own mouth curve up slightly in response.
“Indeed,” he replied solemnly. “Fever of one hundred and five degrees, productive cough, bloody mucus. Not to mention, his eyes were bloodshot—he’d ruptured the capillaries from coughing so hard.”
Avery grimaced. “Poor guy.”
“Yeah.” Grant shook his head, remembering that sick feeling in his gut he’d gotten when the man had stumbled back in. “And to top it off, he said his pain was an eight on a scale of one to ten.”
“What did you do?”
“Started him on a febrifuge and pain meds. His chest sounded crackly, so I ordered a chest X-ray. Came back almost entirely whited out.”
Avery’s eyebrows lifted. “There was that much fluid in his lungs?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll get you the medical records for all the patients so you can see the results for yourself. But essentially he was drowning in what I later learned was blood.”
It was a sight he’d never forget, a scene from a horror movie burned into his brain, made all the more terrifying because it had really happened. The man’s cough had grown steadily worse, and two hours after his admission, he’d begun to gag. They’d rushed to clear his airway only to find a rising swell of blood trying to escape. As he suffocated before their eyes, the team had flipped him onto his side. A torrent of blood had gushed out in a wet splatter on the floor, and a hot, metallic stench had filled the air.
Grant swallowed, clearing the memory of the smell from his tongue. “He died a few hours later,” he said softly. It always rankled to lose a patient, but it was doubly hard here. There was a finite number of people on the base, and Grant had made it a point to introduce himself to everyone. Even though he hadn’t known the man well, he did remember exchanging pleasantries with him whenever their paths had crossed.
Avery was silent for a moment. “It sounds like a very difficult case,” she said, a note of sympathy in her voice.
Grant nodded. She understood. Even though Avery didn’t practice medicine anymore, she was still a doctor and would have lost patients in med school. There were some cases that stuck with you, and Grant knew the death of the four men in this outbreak would haunt him for years to come.
“After he died, I tracked down the other patients who had presented with the same initial symptoms. I hoped this was just a one-off, but unfortunately, three others progressed too rapidly for us to save. I wanted to send the other six to South America for treatment, but my request was denied.” He shoved a hand through his hair and tried to keep the bitterness from his tone. “As soon as people heard what this thing does, they refused to take them. Didn’t want to risk it spreading.”
If he looked at the situation dispassionately, Grant understood the decision. Better to contain the pathogen here, where there were a finite number of potential victims. If this thing spread into the wider world, it could be a species-ending infection. But Grant hadn’t had the benefit of detachment. He’d touched those people, held their hands, comforted them as best he could. It was personal for him, and he was still angry his patients had been left to the mercy of a medical center that wasn’t equipped to handle this kind of disease.
Could the four victims have been saved if they’d made it to a larger hospital? It was a question that would undoubtedly dog him for a long time...
“I heard,” Avery said, a note of sympathy in her voice. “For what it’s worth, I think it was a crappy thing to do.”
He jerked one shoulder up. “Fortunately, we caught the other six before they bled out into their lungs. They got pretty sick, but at least they’re not dead.”
“What kind of drugs did you use on the ones who survived?”
Grant leaned back and ran a hand through his hair again, exhaling through pursed lips. “What didn’t we try is the better question. I pumped them full of anything I thought might help—steroids, antivirals, antibiotics, epinephrine, versed, Plasma-Lyte, albumin—you name it, I tried it.”
“Do you have any idea if one of the drugs was responsible for saving the other patients?”
He shook his head. “At that point, I was just trying to keep them alive. I don’t know if it was the combination of the medication, the supportive care or the fact that we caught them early enough that allowed them to survive.”
“Probably all three factors,” Avery said. She laid her notebook on his desk and set her pen down, then leaned back and met his eyes. “It sounds like you did a hell of a job.”
Her praise washed over him like warm summer rain, and he wanted to close his eyes and savor the feeling. He had always respected her opinion, and it meant a lot to know that she thought his actions had been appropriate. “Thank you,” he murmured.
There was a flash of warmth in her eyes, there and gone in the space between heartbeats. “You say there have been no new cases in the past three days?” she asked, getting them back on track.
“No. At least, no one has come to me with symptoms.”
“And none of the staff that treated the patients have been affected?”
“No. I think we really dodged a bullet here. Whatever this thing is, it doesn’t seem to be very contagious. Otherwise, the whole base would have come down with it by now.”
Avery tilted her head to the side, apparently considering his words. “Possibly,” she said. “But we don’t know what the incubation period is. For all we know, more people have already been infected but haven’t started to show symptoms yet.”
A cold chill washed over Grant as the implications of her suggestion sank in. “My God,” he whispered. “This thing could be a ticking time bomb.”
“Let’s hope not,” Avery replied, her mouth set in grim lines.
“What do we do now?” That helpless feeling was starting to creep up on him and he pushed it away. They would come up with a plan, and it would work. It had to work. The alternative was unthinkable.
Avery sighed quietly. “I’d like to look at the patient files for all the cases. We need to identify common behaviors or exposures that might tell us something about where they picked up the agent. Do you have any samples we can analyze to try to identify the pathogen?”
“I think there are some blood samples left, but I don’t know what state they’re in now.”
“That’s fine.” She waved away his concern. “The tech I brought has a reputation as a miracle worker. We’ll see if she can find anything.”
“What can I do?” Grant wasn’t going to just sit on his hands while they worked. He would go mad if he didn’t have something to do, some way to contribute to the investigation. Even though he’d only been on-base a few months, he felt a sense of ownership of the place. Not in a material way. But this was his home for the next few months, and these were his people. It was his responsibility to take care of them, and he’d already failed four times. Logically, he understood those deaths were not his fault. His internal scorekeeper saw things differently, though, and he felt a strong need to redouble his efforts. Perhaps he could somehow make up for their deaths by saving others.
Avery eyed him across the desk, her expression assessing him as if she was trying to determine what he could handle. “First of all, I need you to get some sleep. You’re no good to me exhausted.”
He couldn’t stop the laugh that rose in his throat at her unexpected order. “That obvious, huh?”
“Quite.” She gathered her notebook and pen and stood, and Grant rose to his feet, as well. “Come find me after you wake up.”
He waited until she got to the door before asking the question burning in his mind. “Can we stop this thing?”
Avery paused and glanced at him over her shoulder. “If we’re lucky,” she said, suddenly sounding as tired as he felt. Then she walked out of his office, closing the door softly behind her.
Chapter 3
“I have results.” Paul glanced around out of habit, but there was no one nearby to eavesdrop on his conversation. Still, it didn’t hurt to be cautious...
“I’m listening.”
He took a deep breath, feeling very much like he was about to step out onstage in front of a roomful of people. Would his contact be impressed with his results? Were his findings dramatic enough?
Only one way to find out...
“I was able to infect ten people. All became symptomatic, and four died within forty-eight hours after showing signs of illness.”
“What about the other six?”
“They survived. But I’m not sure if they suffered permanent damage. I haven’t been able to see them yet.”
The man on the other end of the line made a noncommittal sound, and Paul felt his stomach clench. I did what you asked. What more do you want from me?
He heard a muffled noise and imagined the man had placed his hand over the receiver, likely so he could talk to someone nearby. A few seconds later, he was back.
“It is not enough.”
Despair washed over Paul and he put a hand against the wall to steady himself. “What do you mean?” he asked softly.
“We need more information. You must infect additional people.”
“But...” He stopped, knowing his protest would fall on deaf ears.
Apparently, his reluctance came through loud and clear. “Now is not the time to back away,” his contact said, a note of steel in his voice. “Finish the job, or your family will suffer for your incompetence.”
It was the first time they’d explicitly threatened his family. He’d known it was coming, but a sense of bone-deep terror gripped him nonetheless. Not for the first time, he kicked himself for getting involved with this group in the first place. The promise of financial security was not worth the cost, but he’d been too desperate at the time to recognize it.
“Very well.” There was no other acceptable answer, and they both knew it.
“We have arranged for you to have some assistance.”
“What?” He couldn’t hide his incredulity. How was that even possible? He wasn’t aware of any incoming flights scheduled in the near future, so how on earth were they going to bring someone in? Unless they were already on-base...
Just how many people were working for this shadowy organization? And did they all have the same mission? His mind spun with possibilities and questions, but he knew better than to ask.
“He will reveal himself to you soon. I think you will find him quite helpful.”
“Excellent,” he lied. Any “assistance” was likely a spy in disguise, sent to make sure he complied with his orders. It was just another subtle tightening of the noose wrapped round his neck.
“Report back in a week. We look forward to hearing your progress.”
There was a click followed by the loud drone of a dial tone. Paul tucked his phone back into his pocket and rubbed his hands together, chafing some warmth back into his frozen fingers. It was cold in the storage room. Hell, it was cold everywhere.
Seven days. That didn’t give him much time. Frustration gnawed its way up his chest, filling him with the urge to hit something. Every time he did what the Organization asked, they told him it wasn’t enough. They kept moving the goalposts on him, making it impossible for him to meet their expectations. It was enough to drive him insane. If this was a normal situation, he’d simply walk away. But nothing about this was normal, and Paul knew if he burned this bridge, he wouldn’t be the one to pay the price. The kids had already been through so much. He couldn’t risk them—not now, not ever.
He closed his eyes, seeing the faces of the ten men he’d infected. Nice people, all of them. Friendly and decent, the kind who probably had families of their own back home. Paul’s heart tightened at the thought and a swell of regret surged, threatening to drown him. What had he done?
Needing a distraction, he grabbed his phone and pulled up the most recent picture of his family. There they were, all smiling into the camera, squinting a bit thanks to the sun. Noah was getting so tall, and the dark shadow of a sprouting mustache on his upper lip drove home the fact that his son was no longer a little boy. His younger daughter, Lisa, still had a bit of baby fat clinging to her slight frame, but he could see the promise of the woman she would become in the slope of her brow and the angle of her jaw. They were growing up so fast. And while he hated knowing he had killed four men, he consoled himself with the knowledge that they were adults who had lived their lives. It was a hard thing he had done, but he couldn’t let his sympathy for relative strangers outweigh the promise of his children’s future.
One week, he thought grimly. Time to go back to work.
* * *
Avery glanced at her travel alarm clock for what felt like the millionth time that night. While she normally didn’t have trouble falling asleep in a new place, she was too keyed up to relax right now. She was itching to dive into the investigation and figure out what exactly was going on at this frozen research base. If this really did turn out to be a new strain of influenza, then her work would go down in medical history, right up there with the men and women who had studied the Ebola virus or HIV. It was an exciting thought, and she allowed herself a moment to imagine how this case could push her into the upper echelons of her field.
Part of her recognized how strange it was to be so excited about a disease, and such a nasty one at that. She truly didn’t want anyone to suffer, and she felt bad for the families of the four people who had already died. But she knew the best way to honor the patients who had lost their lives was to dive in and figure out how to keep others from sharing their fate.
And if the work went well and she happened to wrap things up quickly? That would be the icing on the cake.
Seeing Grant again had been unnerving, to say the least. She felt like a snow globe that had been violently shaken, her previously settled emotions all stirred up and swirling around like so many white flakes. It was frustrating to revisit a period in her life she’d thought was over. She’d worked hard to process her grief at losing the baby and the pain of their breakup. Slowly, but surely, she’d put the pieces of her heart back together and had moved on, always looking forward, never daring to look back for fear she would get sucked into the black hole of despair again. Escaping it once had been hard enough—she didn’t think she would get so lucky a second time.