He was racing to kill the woman he loved.

Dec’s heart beat heavily with anxiety and fear. He heard the mournful howl from the back of the house. He realized as he rounded the corner of the house that she was no longer the woman he loved.

She had been taken over by evil.

He pulled the vials out of his pocket and drew a cc of tetradotoxin into the syringe. He watched her, standing in the middle of the yard, arms thrown wide in celebration and triumph.

She was a stranger looking back at him with Markie’s eyes.

“Hi, honey,” he said, smiling as he had always smiled when they met.

Markie felt the darkness inside her try to force her to reach out and hurt…. “Dec…”

He leaped at her, knocking her to the ground. He dropped to his knees beside Markie, beside the love of his life, whispering, “God help me…I’m sorry….” He plunged the needle into her arm and rammed down the plunger.

Markie grew still. Dec felt for her pulse.

It was gone.

Something Deadly
Rachel Lee

www.mirabooks.co.uk

SOMETHING DEADLY

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Epilogue

Prologue

Shadow smelled it first. He lay on the living-room floor at his owner’s feet, sprawled on his left side with a rawhide chew bone a whisker’s length from his nose. He’d worked the knot for a while earlier, massaging his gums, as close as he was likely to get to the satisfaction of gnawing fresh, warm meat from the bones of a kill. Now the comforting scents—the half-chewed bone; the master’s feet wrapped in old leather slippers; the rug still rich with the aroma of pipe tobacco, though the master had long since stopped smoking; beef and potatoes and carrots and red wine in the pot on the stove; the barest remnant of the master’s wife’s perfume, even though she’d gone out the door; the salt air that was ever-present; loam on the master’s slippers from the garden; the varied and precious scents of Shadow’s world—were displaced by something else.

He drew in the air in quick, rapid sniffs, emptying his lungs when he could hold no more, repeating the process again and again, focusing, letting his agile mind filter out the familiar to pinpoint the new odor. Cold. Earth. Must. Decay. Chill. Death. Evil.

Woof.

One quick noise, as much to chase the horrid scent from his nostrils as to alert the master. But the smell would not leave. The growl grew low in his chest as he rolled onto his haunches, not yet standing, still sampling the air.

Go away!

“What’s wrong, buddy?”

The master’s voice, so soothing with its deep rumble, barely reached his mind. In a smooth, graceful motion, he rose and trotted to the front window, his nose still foul with the air. Couldn’t the master smell it? Probably not. The master and his wife missed so much of the world.

His pupils widened as he approached the glass, beyond which lay the dark world, full of the rising scents of nighttime. But they held no interest. It was there. It was right out there.

Arrf-arr-arr-arr-arr-arrf!

Begone! This is my master’s home! You may not enter!

If it heard him, or understood, it paid him no heed. But his friends in the other houses heard, and understood, taking up the cry.

“What, Shadow?” the master said, now at his side.

Shadow looked up at him, then out the window again, growling an angry warning as it approached.

“There’s nothing there, boy! Stop that racket.”

The master couldn’t see it? Of course he couldn’t smell it, but couldn’t he see?

ARR-ARR-ARR-ARR-ARRUFF-ARR-ARR-ARRUFF-ARRUFF!

No! You can’t have him! I will die before I let you near him! Begone! Evil! Danger!

Shadow looked up, his teeth bared, as it came through the glass—how could that be?—and leapt up at it, snarling and snapping, clawing at it and finding nothing.

“Calm down, boy!” the master said, though his scent now held the tiniest inkling of fear.

Be afraid, Master! Run!

Shadow grabbed the cuff of his master’s pants and pulled.

Run! Please!

The master reached down to push him away. Noooooo! Shadow made one last lunge, then turned to the foul horror that seemed to stab at his nostrils like the quills of a porcupine and let out a savage growl, leaping between it and the master.

But it passed right through and into the master’s body, now curling and ripping inside him. The master crumpled to the floor. Shadow pushed at him with his firm nose.

Fight it!

He pawed the master’s arm, then his face, carefully, so that only the soft hairs between the pads of his paw touched the skin.

Don’t go!

But the awful evil would not be deterred. With a horrible, joyful cry, it tore something deep inside. Shadow heard the ripping sound and saw the light go from his master’s eyes.

Noooooo!

But the master’s spirit wouldn’t listen. It floated up and off, leaving nothing but the limp husk on the floor. Sated, the evil left, though Shadow was only dimly aware of its leaving.

The master’s spirit was gone.

No more morning walks to talk to Shadow’s neighbors.

No more of his rough hands behind Shadow’s ears, working fur and skin and flesh as joy danced in Shadow’s heart.

No more easing his feet into the slippers to settle in for dinner with his wife.

Shadow turned his nose to the heavens and howled at the master’s soul.

Please don’t leave me!

Please don’t leave!

Please don’t!

Please!

1

Kato wanted to take a walk. The barking of the neighborhood dogs a while back had seemed to unsettle him. Kato, more wolf than Siberian husky by nature, temperament and appearance, often paced for hours, mimicking the forebears who traveled thirty or forty miles a day through the woods.

Thanks to his husky sire, Kato was smaller than the ordinary wolf, only about eighty pounds. But he had inherited the long legs and huge paws of his wolf mother, as well as coal-black coloring and tawny eyes. There was no mistaking his maternal heritage.

Markie Cross, his owner, kept him only by virtue of the fact that she was a veterinarian and there was no local law against wolf hybrids.

But a half hour ago, the neighborhood dogs had burst into a frenzy of barking. Kato hadn’t joined them, but Kato rarely barked. He sat at the sliding glass doors that opened onto the back lanai and stared out into the darkness, listening to the cacophony of yaps and woofs that seemed to come from every direction.

Markie hardly paid it any mind at first. As always, it had begun with a lone dog in the distance and steadily spread, until all the dogs outside their homes were engaged in the chorus.

But as the sound built, she realized she was feeling a shiver of unease. It didn’t sound like the usual howl-fest that dogs would start and stop for no reason other than sociability.

Finally she looked up from her book and paid full attention. These were definitely barks of warning.

She glanced at Kato, her closest connection to the canine world, but he was sitting with his back to her, staring out the glass doors. He didn’t join the chorus, nor even move as if he were impatient to be out there howling along.

He simply sat, his ears pricked. Staring at something she couldn’t see.

Shortly, the dogs fell quiet again. Kato stayed at the window for a while, as if awaiting a reprise, then finally yawned one of those big yawns that said he wasn’t quite certain about something.

And then the pacing had begun.

Markie ordinarily ignored his pacing. He did it a lot, and she was inclined to let him and all other animals be themselves.

But tonight his pacing disturbed her. There was something about the way he was doing it, the way he was pausing at each window and sniffing, that wouldn’t let her go on reading.

Finally she put her book down and asked, “Walk, Kato?”

With a huge leap and a skitter of claws on the wood floor, he headed for the leash. No mistaking that message.

Smiling, she clipped the leash to his collar, grabbed her keys and stepped out into the balmy tropical night.

The nightly breeze was blowing, a gentle, moist kiss filled with the scents and sounds of the Caribbean Sea that surrounded the island of Santz Martina. It was a tropical paradise, where the wealthy could hide away from the rest of the world in geographic privacy, with all the advantages of being a U.S. territory.

At this end of the island lay Martina Town, home to over half the island’s population. All but the very old and the young had jobs. The schools were excellent, the shopping ample. The best of everything provided by the best at everything.

The houses here in old town, and the businesses, retained the flavor of the old Caribbean, with doors that were open all day, Bahamian storm shutters and courtyards rich with tropical blooms. The narrow streets created breezeways that kept the town surprisingly cool even on hot days. Life was slow. Life was good.

At the north end of the island, on the shoulder of Mount Cortez, the expansive estates of the island’s elite looked out over the teal glitter of the sea, rivaling the best the Monterey Coast had to offer.

Tonight, though, Markie and Kato strolled west along Second Avenue. Normally she would have turned left at her office, at the corner of La Puerta, and ambled down to the waterfront park. Tonight, however, Kato was having none of that. He practically dragged her past the businesses and shops and on westward, past rows of houses, narrow alleys and tiny yards occupied by unnaturally quiet dogs.

When she had come here, Markie had realized that she had stepped into a sort of adult Disneyland, where everything was, and was expected to remain, perfect. On the other hand, the people were warm and friendly, the climate wonderful, and the pay too much to refuse. She was on salary, had the most modern equipment known to veterinary medicine and was able to perform everything from surgery to dental cleanings. How could she possibly complain? She didn’t even have to charge her patients.

And so far, being beholden to the elite power structure had proved to be no burden whatever.

Kato tugged firmly on his leash, saying in no uncertain terms that they had not yet reached his chosen destination. Markie shrugged and decided to let him lead. It was rare that he ever did such a thing, and she was disinclined to argue with eighty pounds of stubborn wolf. She had no agenda, and she’d long since learned the wisdom of picking her battles when it came to dealing with this particular canine.

They strolled down another block, Kato’s head up in the air as if he were scenting something above him. How far up it might be she had no idea. Dogs could smell faint odors in the air three hundred feet above their heads. Kato, with his heritage, might be able to do even better.

But he was definitely following something. A bird, probably. Or a person.

Her thoughts had started to drift again, and then they reached the end of Second Avenue and Kato yanked her left onto Harbor Street. Fifty years ago, before developers had added subdivisions and suburban sprawl, this street had marked the western edge of town. Beyond this point, Caribbean charm gave way to planned perfection.

But not tonight.

An ambulance and a couple of police cars stood out in front of a house, lights swirling. Something bad had happened. She meant to walk right by as quickly as she could, but Kato once again had other plans.

When they reached the edge of the yard, Kato sat. He planted himself firmly, his entire posture saying that he wasn’t going another step, no matter what. Markie felt embarrassed. She didn’t want to stand here like a ghoul, but even tugging sharply on Kato’s collar didn’t persuade him to move.

A police officer walked her way. Tom Little, she realized, owner of one of her more frequent patients, a toy poodle with digestive problems. Tom was a Jamaican who spoke with an accent at once British and lilting, and whose skin was the most beautiful shade of coffee. “Hi, Tom,” she said.

He nodded. “Hello, Doctor. Is Kato giving you problems?”

“He seems determined to stay right here.”

Tom chuckled. “Well, let him. You won’t see anything gruesome. He probably smells it, though.”

“Smells what?”

Tom jerked a thumb toward the house. “Carter Shippey passed on a little while ago. His wife came home and found him gone. Looks like a heart attack.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s sad. Cart wasn’t but sixty-three.”

Prime age for a heart attack, Markie thought sadly. “Is someone taking care of Mrs. Shippey?”

Tom nodded. “A group of the neighbors carried her away to one of their houses. She won’t be alone tonight.”

“Good.”

She looked down at Kato, but he still wouldn’t budge. Every fiber of his being seemed to be pointing toward the house.

“Don’t worry about him, Doctor,” Tom said, giving Kato a quick scratch behind one ear. Kato flicked the touch away with an impatient twitch of his ear. “He’ll go when the body’s removed.”

“I hope so. I don’t want to be stuck here all night.”

Just then a car pulled up, a BMW that Markie recognized. Declan Quinn, one of the island’s dozen or so full-time physicians. She hadn’t had cause to need any of them yet, but she knew them by sight, the way she was getting to know most everyone, little by little.

Dr. Quinn climbed out of his car, dressed in khaki chinos and a blue polo shirt that somehow emphasized his dark Irish good looks: black hair, brilliant blue eyes. But he didn’t just walk past the police cordon. He flipped out a badge.

So he was here as the medical examiner. Something inside Markie twisted a little. Somebody didn’t think this was an ordinary heart attack.

Declan signed in at the door, another indicator that this was being treated as a crime scene, then disappeared inside.

Maybe, she thought, this was standard procedure. Maybe all sudden deaths were treated this way initially. That would make sense.

She looked down at Kato again and realized his ears were not only at high alert, but they were twitching, twisting this way and that as if scanning the entire area for something. He sniffed at the air again.

Then he did something she’d never before seen him do: he curled back his lips, baring his teeth. Just a little. But even that little was unnerving. She shivered in the steamy, still night air.

Part of her wanted to scoop him up, right then and there, and stagger down the street with him in her arms. Another part of her was afraid to walk off down the darkened streets right now. He sensed a threat of some kind, and Tom Little’s presence nearby was comforting. A block away, she and Kato would be on their own.

“Kato.”

He looked up at her, his golden eyes dilated so wide they appeared nearly black. And somehow she felt a warning from him.

“Home?” she asked.

Apparently not. He returned his attention to the house, and she wound up standing there like the obedient owner she was. Under other circumstances, she would have found this funny. But not tonight.

Well, she told herself, indulging in a silent lecture in order to avoid thinking about what was really happening, what did you expect from a mix of the two most independent breeds in the world? Not a lapdog, certainly. Wolves were wild animals that could be tamed just so far, and Siberian huskies were only one step removed on the genetic chain, bred to think for themselves, sense dangers a musher couldn’t see, and protect the sled and their teammates, even to the point of disregarding the musher’s commands.

The result: Markie Cross was stuck standing on a street in the middle of the night, like a ghoul waiting to pick over the bones, because her damn dog wouldn’t budge.

She tried again. “Kato. Bedtime.”

He huffed at her, that unmistakable sound of disgust. Not yet.

A gurney appeared in the doorway, bearing its load in a black rubber bag. Instinctively Markie crossed herself and said a quick prayer for Carter Shippey. Kato watched the gurney’s journey to the back of the ambulance, his gaze intent and unwavering. Then the ambulance door slammed, and the vehicle pulled away. No lights, no sirens, the silence speaking volumes.

Declan Quinn appeared at the door. He spoke to a couple of officers, his words too quiet to hear.

Then he spied Markie. For some reason, she didn’t like the way he walked toward her. It wasn’t the way he moved—with a supple, graceful ease—but rather the look on his face. He bore down on her as if…as if she were guilty of something.

Kato, however, chose this moment to assume his best “I’m a cute doggie” pose, lying down with his head between his paws and looking upward soulfully. She almost huffed back at him.

“Dr. Cross,” Declan said, extending a hand.

“Yes. And you’re Dr. Quinn.”

“That’s me. Not the medicine woman.” His mouth twisted into a roguish smile.

“I never would have made that mistake.” Impossibly, she felt herself smile back.

His smile evaporated as quickly as it had appeared. “Is there a reason you’re waiting out here? Did you have something you wanted to tell someone?”

This could get embarrassing, she thought. “Uh, no. I’m here because my dog dragged me here and won’t let me leave. He’s stubborn.”

Declan squatted and looked at Kato. “What’s his name?”

“Kato.”

“Hi, Kato.” Declan held his hand out, palm up. Kato lifted his head, sniffing the hand at a distance. His ears flattened back against his head.

“He’s part wolf,” Markie said. “He doesn’t make friends easily.”

“I can see that,” Declan said. “Should I be worried?”

“No. Putting his ears back is a submissive posture. It means he’s wary of your strength.”

He looked up. “Well, he has no need to be.”

He reached out and brushed his fingertips over Kato’s head. The dog accepted the touch, but Markie could see the tension in his haunches.

“Better to let him come to you,” she said quietly. “When he’s ready.”

Declan stood, and Kato rose to his feet, sniffed the air again, and made a low, mournful sound. Markie felt the hair on the back of her neck rise.

Declan seemed to sense something, too, and took a half step back. “Does he do that often?”

“Only when he’s trying to tell me something.”

Those brilliant blue eyes fixed on her. “What’s he trying to tell you?”

“I haven’t a clue. Did you hear the dogs barking earlier?”

“Sort of. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“It was like every dog on the island was sounding off. After that, he got nervous, so I decided to bring him for a walk.”

“And you wound up here?”

“He dragged me here. And once we got here, he wouldn’t let me leave.”

Declan gave her a long look, as if measuring her truthfulness. Apparently satisfied, he squatted again. Kato sat and met the man stare for stare.

“What do you know, boy?” the doctor asked quietly. “Do you know something?”

The question chilled Markie. “It wasn’t a heart attack?”

Declan looked up at her. “I won’t know for sure until the autopsy.” The apparently straightforward statement seemed to Markie to be withholding something. As if there were more, but he wouldn’t discuss it.

Once again, he straightened. “Can I give the two of you a ride home?”

“That’s up to Kato.”

Declan took a step in the direction of his car. “Come on, Kato, time to go home.”

To Markie’s surprise, the dog followed.

“Make a liar of me,” Markie said under her breath.

Kato looked up at her and yawned.

Across town, a telephone rang. Tim Roth hit the pause button for the DVD player and picked up the cordless receiver at his elbow. “Yes?”

“Carter Shippey’s dead,” Steve Chase said.

“And?”

“There are cops all over the place.”

“So?”

“If they find the hole…”

“If they find the hole, it’ll mean nothing at all. It’s under his house.” Tim paused, his fingers drumming on the arm of his chair. “How did he die?”

“I’m told they think it’s a heart attack.”

“Those happen.”

“What if it wasn’t? What if she’s back?”

Tim sighed heavily. “That’s myth and local legend. Carter was aging, and not well. He’d been sedentary ever since he sold his fishing boat. Not a good recipe for longevity.”

“What about his wife?”

“Nothing’s changed. She thinks we’re looking for a leak in the water main.”

“All right. All right.”

“Relax,” said Tim. “We’re not doing anything illegal.”

“I know, but…”

Tim sighed again. “No buts. Send flowers to the widow Shippey, from the Senate. Express your deepest, most heartfelt condolences. Then get back to work.”

He hung up, shaking his head, and returned to his movie. Some people would panic over anything. They had no taste for life.

Or death.

2

At six the next morning, Declan stood outside the hospital morgue and waited for his assistant to show up.

Over the door was a beautifully scripted sign in black on red that said Rue Morgue. Beneath it was another sign, this one carved in natural wood: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.

He’d put the signs there eight months ago when he had first arrived on the island. He’d left his job as chief trauma surgeon at a large inner-city hospital to take a surgical post on an island paradise. By dint of his prior experience, he had also been appointed to the post of territorial Medical Examiner. He had one-and-a-half jobs, which, together, were a million times less stressful than his previous position. And nobody had ever complained about the mordant humor of the signs.

Nor should they, he thought. Hell, in addition to his surgical-cum-general practice, he was the only qualified pathologist on the island. The latter job was something he needed to grin and bear.

His assistant, a nurse named Hal Devlin, showed up at last, carrying two takeout coffees.

“Latte for you,” Hal said. “Cappuccino for me.”

Even in the middle of nowhere, Santz Martina boasted not one but two Starbucks. “Thanks, Hal.”

They stepped into the small anteroom together; then Declan unlocked his office. Hal followed him in.

The office was just big enough to hold a desk and bookshelves fully loaded with every imaginable up-to-date reference on pathology, autopsy and homicide investigation. Declan was the only one who ever opened most of them. The unsparing, graphic photographs were worse than Hollywood’s most vivid imaginings.

“What’s on the agenda today?” Hal wanted to know, flopping into the chair across from Declan’s desk.

“Male in his early sixties, sudden death. No obvious signs of foul play.”

“Heart attack,” Hal said, with the surety of one who has seen it before.

Declan shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Both of Hal’s dark eyebrows rose, his eyes widening. He was a trim young man in his late twenties, his skin and broad cheekbones kissed golden by his native heritage. “You mean we have a mystery?”

“I’m not sure what we have. When I saw the body last night, it felt squishy everywhere.”

Hal shrugged. “Congestive heart failure.” In congestive heart failure, the body could retain thirty or forty pounds of excess water.

“Ankles weren’t swollen.”

Finally Hal frowned, getting the message. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“I don’t exactly know, Hal. It could be edema, but if it is, it’s the worst I’ve ever heard of. It was more than a spongy feeling.”

“Lovely. Who was it?”

“Carter Shippey.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

Declan nodded. “I gave him a physical a month ago. He was fine.”

He put his feet up on the desk and sipped his coffee, pretending that he hadn’t been anxious since last night. Coming to the island had been his attempt to unwind, to leave behind the tension that had been nigh on to killing him. Unfortunately, the nightmares hadn’t been left behind, and unpleasant events reminded him that his natural tendency was to stay wound up tighter than a drum.

It didn’t help that Carter Shippey hadn’t looked like any sudden-death heart attack victim he’d ever seen.

Hal was still shaking his head in disbelief.

“Of course,” Declan continued, “a fatal arrhythmia could strike without warning. That’s why it’s called sudden death. But the way Cart looked, the way his body felt when I knelt to examine him last night…”

The dead were always flaccid until rigor began to set in, but Carter Shippey had been more than flaccid. He’d almost felt like…dough. As if there had been nothing rigid beneath his skin at all. That degree of edema was extraordinary, and congestive heart failure didn’t usually come on so rapidly.

“He should have been having other symptoms,” Declan said, more to himself than Hal. “Shortness of breath, coughing, swelling of his extremities.”

“Yeah.” Hal took a deep swig of coffee. “Well, let’s go see if we can figure it out. No point waiting.”

The hell of being the M.E. on an island this size was that you were apt to know the person who had lived in the body you were cutting open. Declan still had a bit of difficulty with that. On rare occasions it even made him long for the anonymity of the big city E.R.

They suited up in scrubs, Tyvek surgical gowns, rubber gloves and, finally, plastic face shields. Declan pointed to the cooler door, and Hal opened it. Carter Shippey’s body, covered by a paper sheet, slid out on its tray.

A chill crept along Declan’s spine, and he found himself ardently praying that he was wrong, that he’d missed something at Carter’s physical, that the doughy feeling had indeed been edema from congestive heart failure. The thought surprised him, for he would feel awful if he’d missed the diagnosis on an easily treatable condition and cost Carter Shippey his life. But the alternative frightened him more.

He pulled the sheet back and gasped.

Carter’s body was still fully clothed, and that was all that made him identifiable as a human being. He looked like an inflatable mannequin that had sprung a leak. Last night he’d been flaccid. This morning he was flat, as if his body were nothing but a puddle within his skin.

“Jesus Christ,” Hal said.

“Make that a prayer,” Declan said. “For me, too.” Even though he didn’t believe. He hadn’t believed in God for years now.

Their eyes met across the body.

“Don’t touch him,” Declan said. “Get out of here now, and strip your suit this side of the door.”

Hal didn’t hesitate to obey. Declan felt an equally powerful urge to get out, but he stood a moment longer, looking down at his friend’s remains, astonished that someone he knew could become unrecognizable so fast. With a rubber covered finger, he pressed Carter Shippey’s side and felt his finger sink in as if into jelly, meeting no resistance at all.

Then he took his own advice. He left the body on the table. The less it was handled the better. Outer-wear and gloves went into the biohazard chute, and he hurried into the office where Hal was awaiting him, trying to steady his cup of coffee in an unsteady hand.

Speaking the words out loud wasn’t easy. Even to Declan they sounded a little nuts. But his instincts, honed by years of experience and training, and an innate honesty that sometimes got him into trouble, wouldn’t allow him to dissemble about something like this.

“It’s got to be infection. I’m reluctant to say a hemorrhagic fever…there was no hemorrhaging from the body orifices, nor apparent ulceration of the skin. But…” Declan looked past him, reconsidering all the unhappy thoughts that had been troubling him since last night. “Ebola and Marburg don’t kill that fast, anyway. And I don’t know of anything that dissolves bone.”

“Bone?” Hal looked sickened and reluctant to believe it, though he had just seen it. “Can I resign now?”

Declan met his gaze directly. “Sure. You didn’t sign on for Biohazard Level Four.”

Hal took a slow, deep breath. His gaze lifted slowly. “Neither did you.”

Declan nodded. “We follow the strictest sterile procedures. I’m calling the local Haz-Mat guys to deliver us a couple of their decon suits and masks.”

Hal sat and settled back in his chair. “Good. Time to finish my coffee.” The milky liquid sloshed as his hand shook.

Declan made the call, then stared through the glass window between him and the body on the tray and hoped to hell that whatever killed Carter Shippey wasn’t airborne. Because if it was, a whole lot of people were in trouble.

Chet Metz, of the island’s fire department, showed up twenty minutes later with two gray-blue decontamination suits. Santz Martina’s Haz-Mat team had never been called out before, as far as Declan knew. The island had the usual small-town collection of hazardous materials: dry cleaning fluids, petroleum products, fertilizers, insecticides. The fire department maintained a team for the sake of preparedness.

“So what’s going on?” Chet wanted to know as he helped Hal and Declan into the suits. He was a beefy man in his early thirties, with steady gray eyes and a thick head of hair.

“I just don’t want to take any chances,” Declan said.

“Chances, huh?” Chet looked him straight in the eye. “Must be a big chance.”

“Don’t say anything.”

“You know I won’t, Dec. Okay, let’s tape you in.”

Chet wound yellow duct tape around their ankles and wrists, making airtight seals for their rubber boots and gloves.

As they hefted their masks, Chet said, “You know, there’s no way to decontaminate you here after you’re done. Not if it’s a biological hazard.”

“There’s a shower in there,” Declan said. “And plenty of bleach. We’ll wash down.”

“If you think that’s enough. I’ll wait.”

Declan nodded at him. “Thanks, Chet.”

Biohazards were part of hospital life and of autopsies in particular. Ordinary care was usually enough: rubber gloves, a face shield to protect the eyes, nose and mouth from any kind of spray from the victim, Tyvek gowns over scrubs. But Declan wasn’t going to be happy with ordinary precautions this morning. He was very, very nervous about what was inside the body.

Once the masks were in place, he and Hal were breathing the purest air in the world. The micron filters would capture even the smallest virus.

“That’s as good as we can do,” Chet said. “I hope to God it’s not airborne.”

“If it is,” Dec said, “we’re all already dead.”

“Oh, cripes, thanks,” Hal muttered.

If Carter Shippey had died from an airborne infection, the chances were high that dozens of other people had already been infected. Carter, after all, was active in the Rotary and his church, and volunteered in the high school shop classes.

Declan and Hal walked into the autopsy room and faced one another across the body. Metz was watching from the other side of the glass, and when Declan glanced up briefly, their eyes met.

Hal picked up the camera he brought to every autopsy and began shooting from every angle, even climbing on a ladder to shoot from above. No step of this process would be overlooked.

The first task, after initial photos, was to remove the victim’s clothes intact. The job proved nearly impossible with a body that sagged formlessly. They managed it, though, and after examining each piece of Carter’s clothing, they put all the pieces into red biohazard bags.

“Nothing,” Declan remarked. Nothing other than the usual loss of bodily control at death. No blood. Not a smidgen anywhere. Nor did an examination of the body itself, now little more than a fluid-filled sack, reveal any sign of wound or blood.

“Well,” Declan said, “it’s not Ebola or Marburg. Or any other known hemorrhagic fever.”

“Thank God for small mercies,” Hal muttered.

“I’m not sure that’s a mercy,” Declan said. “Those take time to kill you, and with proper treatment a lot of people can survive. This was fast. His wife said he was okay when she left for her bridge club and dead when she came home.”

“And it’s still working,” Hal said. “He didn’t look like this last night, did he?”

“Hell no.” Declan picked up a scalpel. He wouldn’t need a bone saw. Nor did he want to make a large incision into this body until he knew what might come out.

His hand paused over what had once been a man’s abdomen. He looked toward the glass.

“Chet? This island has to be quarantined immediately.”

Chet didn’t answer for several seconds. His gaze was fixed on the body on the tray as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Uh…can I do that? I don’t have authority.”

“I do,” Declan said. “It’s under my emergency powers. Call the Emergency Management Office and tell them. I want this island shut down. No one in, no one out, until we find out what the hell did this.”

Chet nodded.

“Then get back here,” Declan said. “Because after I open up this body and take some samples, and Hal and I hose each other off, I’m sure as hell going to need help getting out of this monkey suit.”

“Right.”

Looking green, Chet turned and disappeared.

Hal didn’t look too much better. “Do we have to open him?” he asked. “It’s obvious something’s eating his insides. I mean…what if it explodes all over us?”

“We’re covered,” Dec said, refusing to admit that he had any qualms. “Look, Hal, we’ve got to do it. We’ve got to find out what did this before somebody else dies.”

Hal nodded. He drew an audible breath. “Okay. I’m documenting.”

Declan made the first cut with his scalpel.

Carter Shippey hadn’t rotted. He had liquefied inside his own skin. There were no identifiable organs left to remove, and what remained of the bone had become rubbery, almost like cooked cartilage. Declan saved as many samples as he thought would be useful, telling Hal to freeze them all.

Carter Shippey’s brain and spinal cord were the only parts still intact, though they showed violent hemorrhaging. More samples were frozen.

Declan sewed up his incisions as quickly as possible and put the body back in the cooler. He didn’t allow himself to think much about what he’d just seen, beyond the clinical notes he’d dictated to Hal. Interpretation would come later. Right now, he was simply collecting evidence.

Inside, deep inside, some quiver of unease refused to be silent, though. It wouldn’t let him completely ignore what faced him. What might face the entire island.

Dec and Hal scrubbed the entire autopsy room, then poured bleach over each other and took turns under the overhead high pressure shower. When they were done with the shower, they hosed each other and the entire room. The water and the contaminants flowed down a drain into a deep septic tank where hazardous waste was chemically treated and could decompose safely.

Out in the antechamber, Chet helped strip them out of the suits. For the first time, Declan realized that sweat had plastered his clothes and hair to him.

“What did they say?” he asked Chet, when at last he could sag into his chair. His legs felt weak, as if he’d just run ten miles. His hands were shaking, an old and familiar reaction.

“Well,” Chet said, “they weren’t happy about it. But I told them if they’d seen what I saw, they wouldn’t hesitate. So the order’s going out. The flak should begin any minute.”

“Yeah.” Flak. For some reason he thought of Jaws and the mayor who didn’t want to close the beach. “I need to call the Centers for Disease Control. This is way beyond my expertise.”

“You know,” Chet said, “this is going to freak out the whole damn island.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Declan said, “but we can’t be irresponsible. Anybody who’s worried is better off staying at home anyway.”

Hal’s dark eyes reflected doom and gloom. “Remember what they tried to do to that town in Outbreak?”

“Oh, jeez,” Chet said. “Let’s not even go there, okay?”

“Right,” Declan agreed. “We don’t know what we have here. It might not be infectious at all.”

But he could feel they were sitting on a time bomb.

Ken Wilson died today. No one knows why, or if they do, they’re not saying. I asked the medic about it. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about Caribbean bugs. Wouldn’t that be my luck. Get drafted, avoid the Nam, and end up on an infected island.

I should’ve left those bones alone. Bad luck to mess with bones.

3

At her clinic, Markie Cross repaired a dachshund’s torn ear, quilting the two pieces of cartilage back together. It would never look quite right again, but it was better than leaving the cartilage separated. So much damage from another puppy’s bite.

She twisted her head, easing the tension in her shoulders. Mornings were for surgery. She’d already done one neuter, one spay, a tumor removal and extracted an infected tooth. If all went well, the ear should be the last surgery of her day. Then she could move on to the office visits, which she generally enjoyed, because they allowed her to interact with both patients and owners.

A movement to the right caught her eye, and she glanced over to see Kato standing on his hind legs, looking through the window that separated the surgery suite from the rest of the clinic. He was looking more somber than usual this morning.

Not that she blamed him. Last night hadn’t exactly been pleasant, and it must have been worse for him. She had no doubt his nose had given him a far better picture of what had happened to Carter Shippey than the words had given her.

He had seemed to like Declan Quinn, though, which was a rarity for him. Kato’s usual habit was to stand several yards away and watch new people until he’d made up his mind about them, a process that might take multiple encounters. Last night, though, it was as if Kato had known Declan was there to help someone.

She shrugged away the thoughts of last night and focused on her work. One more stitch, then done. The dachshund was already starting to wake from anesthesia.

Markie’s first routine client of the morning was one of her favorites, Dawn Roth. Dawn had more money than one person could possibly spend in a lifetime, but she remained amazingly unspoiled. Apart from volunteering in every conceivable way, she raised English mastiffs.

To Markie’s way of thinking, anyone who could handle two hundred pounds of slobbering dog was special. Someone who loved them enough to breed them, and love each of them as her own child, was a rare gift. To adopt one of Dawn’s mastiffs required a background check that would have put the FBI to shame.

Today her patient was Brindle Castlereagh, a champion female who was into late pregnancy. Brinnie, as Dawn called her, had gone into heat out of season. The result was going to be a litter that couldn’t be registered, because the sire couldn’t be identified. That didn’t faze Dawn; she was caring for this litter as carefully as all the rest.

“Isn’t it horrible about Carter Shippey?” Dawn asked as Markie palpated Brinnie’s belly, identifying two healthy and vigorous pups.

“Soon now,” she told Dawn. “Any day, in fact.”

“I thought so.”

“And yes, it’s terrible about Mr. Shippey.”

“He was only sixty-three.”

Markie nodded. “He wasn’t all that old.”

“No. To tell you the truth,” Dawn said, her voice dropping, “it put me into a tailspin about Tim. He works so hard at his fishing business, and lately he’s not even having time to play tennis or golf….”

Markie patted Brinnie’s shoulder, then turned toward Dawn. “Tim’s a lot younger and very healthy. You know that.”

“So was Carter, I thought.” Dawn shook her head. “Not that I really knew him all that well. I understand he was quite the character in his younger years, when he owned the boat.”

“So I’m told,” Markie said. She had only known Carter Shippey as a somewhat grizzled old sailor who loved his dog more than life itself. He’d sold the boat and retired just after she’d come to Santz Martina. “I didn’t know him well, either.”

“But I know his wife, Marilyn, from my work at the school. She teaches English, you know. A wonderful woman. She and Carter had such plans….” Dawn’s voice trailed off. “Well.” She visibly gathered herself.

Markie straightened and sat in the chair next to Dawn’s. Brinnie, sensing Dawn’s discomfort, gave her owner a sloppy kiss. Dawn managed a chuckle.

“I’m worrying for no reason,” she said. “Sometimes people die young. But most don’t, right?”

“Right,” Markie said. “But when it’s someone near our own age, it makes us really uneasy.”

“Yeah. I think I’ll go home and make Tim a key lime pie. He loves my pies. When we first got married, he was always so tickled when I’d bake one. I haven’t done that for him in years now.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea.”

“Yeah, it does.” Dawn was suddenly smiling again. “I’ll call you when Brinnie decides to whelp, then.”

“Yes, do. I want to be there.” Mastiffs sometimes had trouble giving birth, and none of Dawn’s ever whelped without a vet present. Markie loved the opportunity to be there; most dog owners didn’t bother, and nearly everyone on the island had their pets neutered anyway. Seeing puppies born was becoming something of a treat for her.

After Dawn left, Markie noticed that Kato had vanished from the back rooms of the clinic, no doubt gone to his cool retreat in the farthest reaches of the kennel. The reason was soon evident, as Markie discovered that her next three patients were cats.

Kato took after his husky forebears in his dislike for cats. At least he merely disdained them and didn’t look upon them as part of the food chain, as many huskies did. The cats, of course, weren’t insulted. They disdained him as the lower order creature he clearly was.

Once the cats were gone, and the iguana and the rabbit arrived, Kato reappeared, licking the rabbit comfortingly and regarding the iguana with sympathy as Markie cleaned and patched a festering wound in its side.

The day passed as so many others before it had, with only two differences: Declan Quinn popped into her mind dozens of times, and by the end of the day she was wishing she had invited him in for coffee last night. And she couldn’t shake the memory of Kato’s low, mournful howl.

“I am not going to quarantine this island,” Stan Freshik told Declan on the phone. He was the chief of the emergency management team, a good man who was used to dealing with hurricanes, not diseases. He had plenty of excellent evacuation plans, but no quarantine options. Such an eventuality had never been considered. “Do you have any idea what kind of panic that will cause?”

“It’s going to cause a panic anyway,” Declan told him flatly. “I can’t keep this a secret. That would be criminal. And CDC is already sending a biohazard response team. If you won’t shut us down, they will.”

“Jesus, Dec. You don’t even know what this is. You can’t say for sure it’s contagious.”

“But I can’t say for sure that it isn’t. I can’t even tell you how long its incubation period is, if it is contagious. I wish I could. But my point is, there’s going to be panic whether you declare a quarantine or CDC does. My advice to you is to get some planning underway and take the first steps, because you might be able to minimize the public response if you start right away. Because once CDC gets here, the shit is going to hit the fan.”

Stan’s sigh was both irritated and impatient. “God damn it!”

“That’s not going to help anything,” Dec reminded him. He was looking through the window at the cooler where the body was once more stashed. “You know I have the authority. I’m the chief medical officer on this island. Consider this a heads-up. CDC will be here by five.”

“By five? My God, that’s not any time at all.”

“Exactly.” Dec glanced at the clock on the wall. “Seven hours. I suggest you shut down the airport first. If you don’t call the Coast Guard, I will.”

“If this isn’t contagious…”

“Then you can have my head on a platter. Stan…” Declan hesitated. Finally he said, “I’m scared, too. But we have to do the responsible thing.”

When he hung up, assured that Stan would do what was necessary, Declan continued to stare into the autopsy theater. Because he had already had two unprotected exposures to Shippey’s body, he had canceled all his appointments for the day, not wanting to risk infecting a patient.

It was sort of like sitting on death row, he thought sourly. Trapped here with that body, basically. He’d already sent Hal home, with strict orders to stay there. At least Hal didn’t have a family.

But there were others who’d already been exposed: Carter Shippey’s wife, certainly. The cops, the crime scene team and all of Carter’s friends and family.

He could, he supposed, judge himself to be no more contagious than anyone else. But he was. Decon suit notwithstanding, from the instant he had cut into the body, this entire morgue had become a death zone. An airborne virus couldn’t be contained by a mere door.

The morgue had its own air circulation system because of the highly contagious diseases that were sometimes autopsied here, so whatever it was shouldn’t spread beyond the morgue very fast, especially since a slightly lower atmospheric pressure was maintained in here. Nothing was too good or too expensive for the wealthy.

But this wasn’t a maximum security biocontainment facility. It was state of the art for the routine types of contagion that were expected, but it was not proof against the worst that Mother Nature could offer.

Declan had never had any desire to be on the cutting edge of research. Doctoring people had been his highest ambition. It gave him no pleasure at all to consider that he might have discovered a brand-new disease.

Happiness filled Kato when the day was over and he and Markie began their evening walk home. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy being at the clinic. Being so near to other animals, especially dogs, filled him with joy, even when they hurt and needed his attention. But today there had been too many cats.

He’d learned from Markie at a very early age that cats were off-limits. He couldn’t begin to understand why—they clearly smelled like prey—but it seemed that many humans actually liked the creatures. So, to please Markie, he simply departed the vicinity of any feline.

Which was not to say he didn’t occasionally pretend that his tug toy was a cat. But dreams were only dreams.

Traveling down the sidewalk at a brisk pace, he noted that some human had recently passed, leaving a trail of illness in the air. He tested it, drawing quick bursts of air into his nose and expelling them through his mouth. No, it was not the smell of last night.

As they passed one house, a small dark dog yapped annoyingly from behind a window. Oh-look-oh-look-another-dog-another-dog-oh-look-oh-look! Kato gave the dog a dismissive turn of the head. Such a waste of energy. He preferred to remain silent and watchful. One’s voice was meant to sing, and singing was reserved for special occasions: play or need or union. Otherwise, silence aided the senses in being watchful.

The world was a plethora of smells: flowers, grass, trees, people, animals, insects…oh, the joy of filling his nostrils with the teeming life of the world.

But then the pungent scent of fear wafted to him. Faint, it seemed to come from elsewhere. He sucked it in, concentrating on it, following it along the sidewalk as best he could at the end of a leash. Markie was not cooperating. But then, he’d long since realized that Markie didn’t have a real nose. He sometimes pitied that little thing on her face, so useless. On the other hand, he could taste the wind for her. And her eyes and hands were far more adept than his. They worked well together.

The fear-smell went away, then returned as they rounded a corner onto his own street. He lifted his head, sucking it in, and felt his hackles stir.

Last night…last night he wasn’t sure what he had smelled. He had merely felt compelled to follow it, despite Markie’s objections. Sometimes she just didn’t know what was truly important.

But Kato found himself remembering last night, the smell he had followed, the way all the dogs around had grown frenzied, some with anger, some with fear. Not all barks were the same, though most had been protective.

Then there had been the scent. A different scent. One he had never before known. And it had led directly to death. Terror and death, two very powerful smells.

He would have left, but somehow it had seemed important to remain, to make sure his mistress knew there was danger. He hoped she had understood.

Now the lingering scent of fear led him to a palm trunk. He sniffed around it, getting glimmers of how local dogs had been doing lately. Most were happy and healthy. One or two were angry. A female was beginning to enter heat. And one… Kato sniffed the sad scent and made a whimper of sympathy.

“Kato?”

He ignored her. Moving upward, he finally zeroed in on the aroma that had called to him from so far away. Fear. Terror. Bad thing. Fresh. Recent. Large dog, healthy, but terrified.

The hair on Kato’s neck rose, and he backed away from the tree. Something was very wrong in his world. He would need Markie. And she would need him.

Declan watched the two CDC team members, fully suited, working on Carter Shippey’s remains. Remains seemed the only word for that travesty of a body on the table. But as far as Declan could see, there had been no further deterioration since this morning.

Behind him, another suited member of the team spoke. “The physical deterioration occurred overnight?”

Declan turned to face Marshall Wilcox, the team leader. “Most of it, yes. At least the part that was visible.”

“So let me see if I have this right. Last night you were called to a sudden death of a sixty-three-year-old male, retired fisherman.”

“That’s correct.”

“And you’d given him a physical only a month ago and found him to be fit?”

“As fit as a much younger man, yes.” It was unnerving talking to someone who was hiding behind a decon suit and hood, breathing his own air, a man whose voice was coming through a speaker.

“And upon examination of the body, the only unusual thing you noticed was a sponginess.”

“That’s correct. He felt doughy. But he wasn’t swollen as far as I could see. At that time his face appeared locked in a rictus of terror.”

“Not unusual with heart attack deaths.”

“No, I’ve seen it before.”

“Okay.” Wilcox came over to stand beside him. “And the way he looked when we got here was the same way he looked this morning when you pulled him for autopsy.”

“That’s correct.”

“And nobody else is sick?”

“Not yet. Not that I know of.”

“Not even his wife.”

Declan shook his head. “She called me a couple of hours ago, wanting my autopsy results.”

“And you told her?”

“That I needed to run some extensive blood work and tissue tests before I could say anything. That it might be a while before we pinpointed the exact cause of death.”

A slight movement of Wilcox’s hood seemed to indicate a nod. “Good. Well, from what I’ve seen so far, I’m going to support your quarantine of the island. In the meantime, I don’t see any need for you to hang around here.”

It was a clear dismissal. Declan felt pinpricks of anger in his face. “He’s my patient.”

“He’s our patient now,” Wilcox said flatly. “You don’t have the facilities or knowledge to handle this.”

Declan turned to face him, forcing Wilcox to do the same. “Just what is ‘this’?”

Wilcox hesitated. “I don’t know. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

The icy finger crept up Declan’s neck again. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“At this point, I’m not sure we even have a contagious disease,” Wilcox continued. “I can’t think of a single disease that dissolves everything in the body except the skin and nervous system.”

“Me, neither.”

“But…” Wilcox hesitated. “At this point, given the victim’s social involvement, I’d say that exposure has to have been extensive. So there’s no reason you can’t leave here and go on with life. If you really want to help…”

“I do.”

“Then you can help me with demographics. People know you and will talk to you more easily.”

Declan was only too willing to help however he could. “What do you need?”

“Start with his wife. Find out if she noticed anything at all unusual in his behavior in the past week or two. Then see if you can build us a list of everyone he routinely comes in contact with, so we can start interviewing them.”

“That’s going to be a big list.”

Wilcox nodded again. “As fast as this hit him, that gives me hope.”

“Hope?”

“You haven’t had a new case in nineteen hours. That you know of. Unless this has a long, silent incubation period, this may be the last of it. Or it might not be disease at all.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Declan said, for the first time admitting the nagging feeling that had troubled him all day. “The longer I sat here thinking about it, the more I began to think he had a toxic exposure of some kind.”

“That could well be. We’ll have a better idea after we complete the tests. In the meantime, Doctor, your help with demographics will be appreciated. We’re only five people.”

Declan left, stepping out into fresh air for the first time since six that morning. The tropical sunset was just beginning, a gorgeous display of reds, golds and pinks that filled the entire western sky. He filled his lungs with the soft sea air, washing away the taste of antiseptics and death that had permeated him…to his very soul, he thought unhappily.

Then, squaring his shoulders, he climbed on his Harley and rode through town toward the Shippey house. He had no doubt Marilyn was there, surrounded by friends, people who were now scared half to death because the island had been quarantined.

Marilyn was at home, but she wasn’t surrounded by friends. She was all alone, her face tear-streaked and swollen.

“Are you sure you want to come in here?” she asked him almost bitterly.

She was an attractive woman of sixty, with carefully tended, smooth skin and dark hair with a white streak. Right now she looked older than her years.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, only that everyone is treating this house as if it were full of lepers. Nobody wants to even get close. They’ll call me, make vague remarks about helping and dropping by soon, but not a single one has showed up.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I thought it was a heart attack.”

He hesitated. “I don’t think so, Marilyn.”

Her face twisted; then she stepped back, inviting him in. “Want some coffee? I’ve been living on it.”

“Sure, that would be great.”

He noticed that she didn’t lead him to the living room where her husband had died last night. Instead they went into the kitchen and sat at a small dinette with mugs of coffee. Under the table, at their feet, the Shippey’s King Charles spaniel seemed to cower.

“Sorry,” Marilyn said. “He’s a mess. He misses Carter.”

Declan reached down, gently scratching the dog’s ears. “I’m sorry,” he said. Sorry for the whole mess, though there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about any of it.

“So it wasn’t a heart attack. I knew you were going to say that. The minute I heard about the quarantine, I knew it was something else. Am I going to die, too?”

She looked at him straightly, her expression seeming to say that she hoped so, because right now life was past bearing.

At this moment, he didn’t have a shred of hope to offer her. She was locked too tightly in grief and shock to respond. Without thinking, he reached out and took her hand.

Something in her eyes tightened, then relaxed. “You’re not afraid to touch me.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

The tears came then, a flood of them. He held her hand, letting her squeeze his fingers until her nails dug in, and wondered what the hell was going to happen to all of them.

4

“He wasn’t sick at all,” Marilyn told Declan when her tears abated. “Just before I left for my bridge club, we were talking about taking the catamaran to Jamaica next week. He’d been looking forward to that for ages, and with Christmas vacation starting, we decided to sail around the Caribbean a bit.”

“So you didn’t notice anything amiss.”

She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears that this time didn’t fall. “I didn’t notice anything at all, Dec. Not a thing. He hasn’t been sick. He’s been eating normally. He even took a walk before dinner, like he’s always done.”

Declan nodded, gave her hand a comforting squeeze. Much as he’d been trying to hold his own feelings in abeyance since last night, they were still there, and right now his chest ached painfully for Marilyn and Cart. “Not even a sneeze or a sniffle in the last few weeks?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Dec. Everything was normal. He was healthy. So unless there was something he didn’t tell me, nothing was wrong.”

Riding toward his house, Declan noticed for the first time that the streets were empty. At nine at night on these balmy tropical evenings, there were usually plenty of people out for a stroll, or sitting on their porches. Despite the advent of satellite TV, few people regularly spent their evenings in front of the tube. The weather was too nice, the beach too inviting, the shops too attractive. And being such a small community, where everyone knew everyone else by sight, evening was a time to socialize.

Square dancers met in the park; street entertainers dotted the waterfront; ice cream was hawked from shops that were little more than a counter with an open window. The place had a flavor all its own, carefully nurtured by the wealthy inhabitants to be both exotic and Caribbean in nature. Or at least what they thought of as Caribbean. Sometimes Dec felt he’d been caught up in a Disneyesque version of Key West.

But tonight even the marimba band wasn’t playing downtown. The restaurant doors were closed, a shock in itself, since the doors of all the businesses were always wide open. Every shop was closed tighter than a drum. No music spilled from bars; no one strolled the streets; no cars were parked along the narrow side streets except near dwellings.

The word of the quarantine had scared everyone. The panic he had feared had transmuted into people hiding within their closed-up houses. He was driving through a dead zone.

Shaking his head, he turned left on La Puerta, past more closed shops, heading toward his subdivision north of town and its winding, palm-lined streets. As he passed the veterinary clinic, he realized he was only a couple of blocks from Markie Cross’s home. As if the bike had a mind of its own, he found himself on the street in front of her house.

She was home. Lights were on, and as he pulled up along the curb, he saw the head of her dog silhouetted in a brightly lighted window.

Her wolf. That probably explained a lot about the critter, Declan thought as he sat on his bike, engine still rumbling, debating whether to drive on or get out and go to her door. Kato’s silent watchfulness was a whole lot more unnerving than a dog’s barking.

But the wolf had been fairly friendly to him last night, so that was certainly no reason to drive away.

Finally, not even sure why he was there, but unable to forget Markie’s smile and feeling a need for something to brighten his day, he switched off the ignition, climbed off his bike and walked to her front door. As he approached, he saw Kato’s tail wag in a distinctly friendly fashion.

Well, at least one of the residents here welcomed him. With that amused thought, he rang the doorbell.

Markie opened it a minute later, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Dr. Quinn! What a nice surprise.” A smile spread across her face. “What’s up?”

“Not a damn thing,” he admitted.

Her smiled deepened. “Well, come on in. I’m just making dinner, and I made way too much. Stuffed mahimahi. You’re welcome to join me.”

Fish sounded good. He forced himself to remember that this was a professional visit, coupled with ordinary island hospitality. Because for some reason he wanted to read more into it.

He stepped inside and closed the door behind himself. Immediately Kato approached him, sniffing at him as if he were full of interesting information. Declan waited a few moments, then squatted down, letting the wolf continue his exploration.

“You’re good with animals,” Markie said, sounding as if that surprised her.

“Well, I figure Kato is in the driver’s seat. He’ll let me know when it’s okay to touch him.”

“Yes, he will. Most people don’t understand that. Listen, I’m going to put the mahimahi in the oven. Kitchen is straight back when you’re ready.”

“Thanks.” He smiled up at her, then returned his attention to Kato. Fascinating animal, coal-black with golden eyes. His tail was down right now, as if he were a bit uncertain, but his ears were pricked with full alertness and even a bit of caution as he sniffed the man.

Declan found himself wondering what the dog was learning. Smells of the morgue. Smells of Cart’s body or disease? He hoped not. The taco he’d had delivered for lunch, a decision he’d been regretting ever since? The scent of Marilyn Shippey. That would be fresh. The odors from his drive through town?

But Kato’s world remained beyond his reach, and Declan could only imagine what it must be like to have your most important sensory input through your nose. Did it create visions? Or just feelings? Was it pleasurable? Or merely informative?

Sphinxlike, Kato completed his examination and sat back on his narrow haunches, looking straight at Declan with those golden eyes.

“Hi, Kato.”

The tail twitched a little on the oak flooring and the ears relaxed backward a bit, not submissive, but a hint of welcome. Declan held out his hand, palm up. Kato considered it a moment, then nosed it aside.

Okay, they weren’t that far along.

Then Kato rose and trotted toward the kitchen, honoring the man by being willing to turn his back to him.

Declan straightened, accepting the honor and ignoring the way his knees—battered by too much basketball and soccer—creaked at the change in position.

The kitchen was bright, a mix of stainless steel countertops and appliances, with glass-fronted oak cabinets. The backsplash was steel, too, but the soffits over the cabinets were painted a delightful Chinese-red, bringing a huge burst of color into the nearly monochrome room.

Markie stood at an island, tossing a salad. She greeted him with another one of those smiles and said, “It won’t be long. Have a seat.”

He perched on the stool across the island from her and realized he was salivating for that salad. Physician or not, he didn’t eat nearly as well as he should, for lack of time.

“Somebody’s into cooking,” he said, indicating the kitchen, which did a fair job of impersonating a high-quality restaurant kitchen.

“Yeah.” She gave a little glance, her eyes dancing as she looked at him. With practiced ease, she sliced the fillets open and spooned in a homemade bread-crumb stuffing packed with minced sautéed zucchini, mushrooms and onions. “It’s my hobby. And my therapy. It cuts me loose after a long day at work.”

“I’m surprised you’re not too tired to bother.”

“What else would I do? Watch television?”

“You could walk on the beach.”

She laughed and put the fish in the oven, then began dicing a tomato. Her hands were nearly a blur, moving what was obviously a razor-sharp chef’s knife with a confidence that made him wince.

“That comes later. Although the longer I’m on the island, the less peaceful that becomes. It’s more like going to a huge party.”

He grinned. “Amen. The mountain can be a pretty good bolt hole, though. In the daytime, anyway.”

“I’ve been meaning to climb the volcano cone. I hear the view up there is breathtaking.”

“So is the smell of sulfur.”

She laughed again. “I still find myself wondering sometimes why I’m living at the foot of a volcano.”

“Dormant volcano,” he corrected. “It hasn’t erupted in three hundred years.”

She was a fascinating woman. He felt as if he had her full attention, even while she monitored a pot of boiling pasta and stirred a creamy white wine sauce.

“Just yesterday, in geological terms,” she retorted. Satisfied with the sauce, she turned it down to simmer, retrieved tableware and dishes, and set two places at the bar with cloth place mats and wineglasses. From the refrigerator she returned with a bottle of chardonnay and poured them each a glass.

Dec reached for his and offered a toast. “To hope.”

“To hope,” she agreed.

The wine was crisp on his tongue, and he rolled it around, savoring it.

“So,” Markie said as she began to serve salad into bowls, “what’s going on with the quarantine?”

“Maybe nothing.” Which was true.

“And maybe something?” Her eyes caught and held his, drawing him to places that seemed as haunting as her wolf’s gaze. “Something to do with Carter Shippey?”

“We don’t know what killed him. That’s all.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, letting him know she didn’t believe that was the full story, but that for now she was going to let it pass.

“How was your day?” he asked her, seizing on any safe topic he could think of.

“The usual,” she said, as if he would know. “The same thing you do, I expect, except I do it on animals.”

A smile flickered across his face. “Dogs and cats?”

“Mostly. Today I had an iguana and a rabbit, too.”

“Your job is harder than mine. You have to know about many more species.”

She laughed. “You know, the basics are pretty much the same for mammals. I have a different slew of diseases to know, that’s all. It gets interesting with the exotics, though. Since coming here, I’ve had to do some cramming. Iguanas, turtles and snakes weren’t something I focused much on before. But if worse comes to worse, I can always call a specialist.”

“The way I do.”

Smiles again, exchanged over the wineglasses.

“I bet,” he said, “you do more sterilizations than I do.”

At that she laughed outright, her eyes dancing merrily. “By far.”

The mahimahi was just coming out of the oven when Kato suddenly appeared in the kitchen, standing at the counter and staring out the window over the sink.

“Kato, get down.”

He ignored her.

“He listens well.” The remark was offered with a laugh.

Markie rolled her eyes. “It depends. When he’s in the mood, he’s obedient. It’s just that he’s rarely in the mood. Kato, get down.”

The fish, on its baking pan, sat on the nearby stove, but the dog didn’t spare it a glance. He was intent on something out back, something in the darkness. And his tail was down.

“I hate that,” Markie sighed.

“When he doesn’t listen?”

“No, when he stares out the window like that.”

“Maybe you’re picking up on his feelings.”

“Could be.”

Then, low in Kato’s throat, a deep growl began.

Markie swung around quickly to look. The chef’s knife had returned to her hand as if by magic, seemingly without her awareness. Declan saw Kato’s hackles rise.

“There’s someone out there,” she said.

“I’ll go look.”

But her free hand shot out, gripping his forearm. “Don’t, Declan. Whatever it is, it won’t try to get past Kato. It’s probably just somebody crossing the backyards.”

The knife in her other hand belied the confidence in her eyes.

“Maybe,” Declan said. “Does he do that often?”

Her gaze wavered. “No.”

“Then maybe I should look anyway.”

“Please. Don’t bother. Whatever it is, we’re safe in here.”

He forced himself to relax onto his stool because it seemed her wish, but he looked at the dog again and didn’t at all like what he saw. Maybe that was what Markie was reacting to, the strength of Kato’s response.

The hair was raised along Kato’s entire spine. His head was lowered between his shoulders as he stared out the window, a definite don’t you dare come near me posture.

“Kato?” Markie called him again.

This time he glanced at her, his golden eyes inscrutable, a small whine coming from his throat. Then he turned back to the window.

The neighborhood erupted.

Declan had his limits, and he reached them as the barking spread like a wave through the surrounding area. Dogs did that sometimes, he knew, but rarely were so many barking at the same time, both indoors and out, and he remembered how they had done that last night, about the time that Carter Shippey had died. It made him wonder about things like poisonous gases. Surely the dogs couldn’t smell a virus?

But maybe they could. Recent studies seemed to indicate that they could smell nearly undetectable enzymes in cancer cells. Why not a marauding virus?

Leaving the delicious aromas behind, he ignored Markie’s protest and stepped out through the sliding glass door onto her patio. The night smelled the same to him as it always did, the soft scents of the sea, the greener scents of the growing things. The ceaseless breeze blew gently.

A sliver of moon rode above, and the light from street lamps helped illuminate the backyard areas of the nearby houses. There was nothing to be seen, except the tossing of palm fronds and shrubbery in the stiffening breeze…and a few dark, deeply shadowed places where nothing appeared to move.

But there was plenty to hear. The yapping and barking filled the night. This wasn’t the idle barking of canine conversation. Something was seriously disturbing the dogs.

He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Kato firmly planted at the sink, still looking out the window. Their gazes met, and there was something in Kato’s stare that made a shiver run down his own spine.

Gradually, however, the barking stopped, a wave of silence moving across the island. Then Kato dropped down out of sight. Whatever the threat had been, it was gone.

Back inside Markie’s kitchen, Declan tried to brush aside the chill that insisted on creeping up his nape. Kato certainly didn’t appear distressed anymore. He was sitting at Markie’s edge of the island, nose lifted hopefully toward the mahimahi.

“Do you feed him from the table?” Declan asked.

“Sometimes. I’m a softie.”

He managed a grin he wasn’t feeling. “Somehow I expected that.”

Markie scooped a serving of pasta into a glass bowl, then put a dinner plate upside down atop the bowl and flipped them over. She quickly spread a ring of diced tomato around the lip of the bowl, and lifted it away, leaving a perfect circle of pasta. Next she gently laid a slice of fish atop the pasta, drizzled the sauce over the fish, and finally added a few sprigs of fresh parsley as a garnish. When both plates were ready, she set them on the place mats with a flourish.

“I give you baked stuffed mahimahi over angel-hair pasta, with a creamy white wine sauce and diced tomato.”

“Five-star cuisine,” Declan said, taking in the aroma. “It’s too beautiful to eat.”

“Thank you, but please do,” Markie said. For just a moment, her eyes sparkled. “You wouldn’t want to offend the chef, after all.”

But he noted that her eyes darkened, and she toyed with her food, seeming uninterested in it. He paused, realizing he hadn’t said grace. Not that he believed a God existed or was interested in his prayers—he didn’t—but it was a habit his mother had ingrained in him from his earliest childhood. Even in his current state of atheism, he did it for his mother, whispering the words and crossing himself before taking up his knife and fork.

Except he didn’t exactly feel like eating, either.

Finally he sighed and swiveled on the stool to face her. “What’s wrong?”

She looked at him, her eyes a bit hollow. “I don’t like the way Kato was behaving.”

“Why didn’t you want me to go out there?”

She looked down at her plate again. Finally she murmured, “The dogs know.”

The back of his neck prickled anew. “What do the dogs know?”

A couple of seconds ticked by; then she shook herself visibly. “I’m sorry. I’m just…a little unnerved.”

“I can’t blame you. After all, they were barking the other night.”

“Exactly.” She smiled wanly. “They have senses we don’t have. Sometimes it can be…scary.”

“Yeah, it can.”

“Do you have a dog?”

“No, it wouldn’t be fair. I’m not home enough.”

“Cat?”

“I’m, uh, not at all fond of cats.”

“No wonder Kato likes you.” She managed a laugh. “He thinks cats should be on the menu.”

Declan chuckled, but it sounded hollow. “Tell me about a dog’s senses.”

She poked at her fish again before looking at him.

“Well, their eyes are extremely sharp. Most people think they’re color blind, but they’re not. The only color they can’t see is green.”

“Really?”

“Yup. When you think about it, it makes sense. An awful lot of the natural world is green. For a predator, it would be a distraction.”

“That’s fascinating. I had no idea.”

“Most people don’t. Another myth is that dogs can’t process two-dimensional images. Kato loves animal shows on TV. He prefers bears, horses, deer…and most especially other dogs. Sometimes I put on movies that have dogs in them just for him.”

Declan smiled. “I like that.”

She shrugged. “On the other hand, people generally bore him. He’ll sit on the recliner through a full hour show about bears, but the commercials bore him.”

“He has good taste.” He shook his head, still smiling.

“If you take a look at my TV screen, you can see how many times he’s poked his nose at it in the last few days.”

Now Declan laughed, and his uneasiness began fading. “Trying to smell?”

“Yes.” She was totally ignoring her dinner now, wrapped up in a favorite subject. “That’s a dog’s most important sense. I think they read entire novels with their noses. When I’m out walking him and he stops to sniff a tree…well, I call it pee-mail.”

He laughed again. “I like that.”

“We know dogs can discern sex in each other’s urine, and whether a female is in heat. Some studies suggest they can also sense the dog’s emotional state—fear, pain, joy—although we’ve really no idea how much they can read. It might be far more than we can imagine.”

“Our noses certainly don’t come close.”

“No, they don’t. But there are some things we do know. A dog can follow a scent that’s weeks old, despite overlaying scents. We’re talking about a nose that’s sensitive to a few parts per billion.”

“I’ll be the first to admit I can’t imagine that.”

“None of us can. It’s a whole different world. And we can’t begin to guess how they process that information. We know they react to it, but we don’t know how they piece it together into their view of the world.”

Declan looked at Kato with new respect. “I wish I could find out.”

“Me, too.” Finally she forked a piece of fish and put it in her mouth. After she swallowed, she added, “Pascal justified vivisection by claiming that dogs were nothing but a bundle of hard-wired responses without any real consciousness, that everything a dog does is instinct, that they’re not self-aware, that they have no ability to reason. That view was widely held for a long time.”

Markie shook her head. “I defy anyone to truly pay attention to a canine and believe that. They feel guilt and shame, they feel jealous, and they make decisions. And they love.” She trailed off and suddenly blushed, a very charming blush. “Sorry. I’m on my soapbox again.”

“That’s okay. I’m enjoying it. Unfortunately, I’ve never owned a dog, so I don’t know any of this.”

He looked at Kato, who was still waiting patiently for a tidbit from Markie, and all of a sudden felt the acute intelligence in the animal’s gaze, sensed that he was being weighed, measured and judged.

“So,” he said, still looking at Kato, “when he gets upset about something, it’s natural for it to unnerve you.”

“That’s the whole point, isn’t it? We allied with dogs a hundred thousand years ago because they have better senses than we do. Because we can rely on them to alert us and protect us.”

“True. He alerted. I was going out to check on it.”

She looked at him again, and her eyes held something almost as unnerving as what was in Kato’s. “But don’t you see, Dec? That wasn’t just an alert.”

“But…”

“No, wait. Kato doesn’t bark like other dogs. His way of alerting me is to stare out a window in silence. A trespasser wouldn’t raise his hackles. This was something a hell of a lot more threatening.”

At that instant, for some utterly unknown reason, Declan felt his own hackles rise and a chill pour down his spine.

His gaze drifted from Markie back to Kato. Golden wolf eyes were heavy-lidded now, as if to convey that the threat had passed, that it was okay to relax.

Declan flaked off a bit of fish, twirled some pasta with it, and finally ate. “It’s delicious.”

The flavors melded perfectly, each bite a bright taste explosion that very nearly drew an ecstatic moan from him. Markie smiled at his obvious enjoyment and joined in the feast. For a few minutes they ate silently.

“Wow,” Declan said, looking at the empty plate. “Just…wow.”

“Thank you,” Markie said, a wide smile creasing her delicate features. “I’m honored.”

“The pleasure was entirely mine, I assure you.”

Markie put the plates on the floor, allowing Kato to satisfy his palate. But the dog gave them barely a sniff. His golden eyes were still fixed on the window.

Declan stayed to help with the cleanup and was just about to leave when his cell phone chirped a chorus of Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville.”

“Dr. Quinn, it’s Tom Little.”

Declan felt his hand tighten on the tiny phone.

“I’m at the Shippey house. You need to get over here. Now. And bring your friends from Atlanta.”

“On my way.”

“What’s going on?” Markie asked.

He looked into Kato’s eyes before turning to her. The dog seemed to know already. “I think somebody just died.”

5

Declan called Marshall Wilcox from Markie’s driveway, then climbed on his bike, waved a distracted goodbye to Kato and headed back to the Shippey house. What could have happened? he asked himself. After all, she’d been fine just a couple of hours ago. It didn’t make sense.

He parked his bike across the street and strode over to where Tom Little was interviewing a middle-aged woman and her husband.

“Kathy and Larry Bridges,” Tom said, by way of introduction. “They were bringing her dinner.”

“She’s still inside?”

“Yes.”

Declan nodded. “Okay. They don’t leave. You don’t leave. CDC will be here in a few minutes. We need to lock this scene down. Nobody in or out.”

“What’s happening?” Kathy Bridges asked, fear evident in her eyes.

Declan considered how to answer. He decided on the truth.

“Ma’am, I honestly don’t know. And until I have a better idea, we need to do things right.”

“When can we go home?” Larry asked.

“Soon, I hope. But that’s up to the doctors from Atlanta. They’ll know what to do.”

As if on cue, the CDC van rolled up the street and parked in the Shippeys’ driveway. Declan nodded to Wilcox and summarized what little he knew.

Wilcox turned to the Bridges. “Did you touch her?”

“I…I might have,” Kathy said. “I thought she was asleep at first. I don’t remember.”

“You didn’t,” Larry cut in. “We called to her, remember? She didn’t answer. Then her dog nosed at her hand, and it fell limp beside her chair.”

“That’s right,” Kathy said. “That’s how it was.”

Declan didn’t know if they were telling the truth or simply trying to hide from the reality that they might have touched an infected body. Regardless, Wilcox wasn’t buying it. He reached into the van and pulled out a green squirt bottle.

“Hold out your hands please,” he said.

“What is that?” Larry asked.

“It’s ordinary Lysol. If you don’t have any cuts, and you haven’t put your hands in your mouth or around your eyes, this ought to kill anything on your skin. It’s for your own protection.”

They held out their hands, and he sprayed them liberally, until the liquid foamed as they rubbed their hands together.

“We’d like to admit you overnight,” he said, passing them sterile towels. “For observation.”

And to quarantine them, Declan thought. Lysol would indeed kill any pathogens that were still on their skin. But it wouldn’t do anything for microbes that had already been absorbed. What would? That was the million-dollar question.

While an assistant accompanied the Bridges back to their home and then to the hospital, Declan and Wilcox donned biohazard suits and made their way into the house.

“I was just here,” Declan said as they entered the living room.

“When?” Wilcox asked.

“A couple of hours ago. I stopped by to see how she was doing. She seemed healthy then.”

Wilcox nodded. “We’ll need to quarantine you, too, then. Overnight, at least.”

Declan shook his head. “I already attended Carter Shippey. Without any protection. If I were going to get sick, it would’ve happened already.”

“You might be a vector. Do you want to pass this on to your patients and friends?”

That gave Declan pause. He was willing to take the risk for himself. But what if he were simply immune to whatever bug this was? Still…

“Look,” he said, “Carter had contact with a hundred people, if not more, in the last week of his life. A quarantine, at this point, is an exercise in futility. Anyone who hasn’t been exposed yet will be within a couple of days, regardless. It makes sense to keep an eye on Larry and Kathy Bridges, to see if they go symptomatic. But I have to keep working. The people here expect to see a familiar face when they come in for treatment.”

Wilcox seemed to weigh the point for a moment, then finally nodded. “Okay. But you work for me, at the hospital. No private patients.”

“I can live with that,” Declan said.

“Let’s hope so,” Wilcox replied. “Or we can all die with it.”

Marilyn Shippey was in a dining room chair, already turning flaccid. She seemed to sag lower with every second that they looked at her.

“Damn,” Declan said. “Whatever this is, it works fast.”

“We need to get her out of here and into post,” Wilcox said, using the medical shorthand for postmortem. “And the dog.”

The Shippeys’ dog hadn’t budged from its post beside the woman’s chair, not even when they moved around the body. From time to time, he turned and chewed at his own leg.

“I should get him to the vet,” Declan said.

“No can do,” Wilcox answered. “We can’t lock down the people on this island, but we sure as hell can lock down one dog. There’s no reason to risk putting him in a kennel where he can infect other people’s pets.”

The logic was inescapable but terrifying.

“All right,” Declan said. “Let’s get this done.”

Just before ten the following morning, Declan was summoned to a press conference. The island’s lone TV station had brought a crew to the hospital’s conference room. The station usually broadcast town commission meetings, educational programming for the schools, and a handful of locally hosted arts, crafts and fishing shows. The programs were more often an exercise in vanity for the hosts than a source of information for the viewers. On most days, nobody watched the island station, preferring instead the satellite feed of mainland U.S. programming. Today, everyone would be watching.

Tim Roth hosted a fishing program. No one else from the station had wanted to come near the hospital, so the job had fallen to him. He didn’t look to be relishing his role. Joining him was Steve Chase, president of the territorial senate. Apparently Abel Roth, the governor, didn’t want to flirt with danger, either.

Chase, who held his job by virtue of his membership in one of the island’s elite families, wasn’t looking very healthy this morning. Declan studied the man’s ruddy face and wondered if his blood pressure had broken the bonds of beta blockers to hit the roof somewhere around 180 over 110. He would have to check on that.

And Tim Roth was looking like a man who needed to be in a hospital bed. His face was pale, despite his perpetual tan, and beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead.

He wore a white cotton shirt and shorts, the island’s interpretation of daytime formal, and kept fussing at his neck as if his open-throated shirt collar was too tight.

“Okay,” he said, turning to the camera. “In case anyone on the island hasn’t heard by now, Santz Martina was placed under quarantine yesterday before noon. If anyone doesn’t know what that means, it means that nobody gets on or off this island. If anyone tries to leave, the Coast Guard is going to stop them. So don’t even head for your boats, friends.”

Declan waited, saying nothing, knowing the best strategy was to see how things unfolded before jumping in.

“This decision,” Tim continued, “was made by one of our local doctors, Declan Quinn. As most of you know, Dr. Quinn is also the Territorial Medical Examiner and head of Emergency Preparedness, Medical Section. Apparently, the Centers for Disease Control, represented here by Dr. Joseph Gardner, agree with Dr. Quinn’s decision.”

“Yes,” Joe Gardner said. “At this point in time, we do. We can’t afford to take chances.”

Joe was a young hotshot—thirty, maybe—who’d made a point of letting Declan know he’d graduated from medical school at nineteen and specialized in rare communicable diseases of the Biohazard Level Four variety. The awful, terrible bugs, like hemorrhagic fever. Ebola. Marburg. The stuff of nightmares.

“But,” said Tim, stabbing his finger at Joe, “do you know it’s a disease?”

Joe took a moment to reply. “No,” he said finally, “we don’t. We don’t know what it is. But we have two people dead, and the symptoms don’t fit with any chemical exposure I’ve ever heard of. That leaves disease.”

“Is it contagious?”

Joe seemed to bite back anger at being challenged by a layman. “At this time we have no idea.”

“But if it is contagious, does it make sense to keep us all here so we might get exposed to it?”

Declan intervened, sensing that Joe’s patience was wearing out. “Tim, let me explain, please.”

Tim nodded, making an impatient gesture with his hand. “An explanation would be very much appreciated, I can tell you. You should have at least approached the Senate before you did this.”

“There was no time to waste. I’m sorry, Tim, but I had to act immediately. Now, if I can explain…” He cocked a brow, and Tim nodded.

“Very well. We don’t know what killed Carter or Marilyn Shippey. I can say with absolute confidence, and I’m sure Dr. Gardner will agree, that whatever killed them is something we’ve never seen before. Never.”

Joe Gardner nodded. “That’s a fact.”

“That’s comforting,” Tim said sourly.

“I know it isn’t,” Declan agreed. “Frankly, it terrified the hell out of me, too, when I started the autopsy yesterday. The thing is, we don’t know what it is. But what we do know is, if it’s contagious, a lot of people have already been exposed. Cart volunteered at the high school woodshop. Marilyn taught English there. That’s a couple of hundred kids they’d have had contact with. Plus they were active at church, and Cart was in the Rotary. Add in all the people they came into contact with there, and all their families and friends, and the odds are that if you live on this island, you’ve been exposed already.”

“You’re not making us feel any better, Dec.” This time Tim’s voice was less belligerent. Quieter, as if unhappiness was overtaking anger.

“I know I’m not. I wish I could be reassuring. But the simple fact is, if this is a contagious disease, this is the best place in the world for all of us to be.”

That evidently shocked Tim, and even Joe Gardner looked a little surprised.

“Think about it,” Declan continued. “If we find out it’s a disease, it’s only a short step or two to finding a cure or a treatment.” Gross exaggeration, but he didn’t want to start a riot. “If we’re all here, we can receive treatment quickly. If we’re scattered all over hell and gone, that won’t be true.”

Amazingly, Tim was nodding.

“Moreover,” Declan said, “we have a moral responsibility here. If this is a contagion, we can contain it here. So any way you look at it, the smartest thing we can all do is hunker down on the island and get through this together.”

Tim nodded again. Then he looked at Joe. “You agree, Dr. Gardner?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve treated outbreaks of some of the worst diseases known to man. I can assure you, even with Ebola, if you get treatment in time, you can survive. So it’s important that everyone remain here on the island. We will bring in whatever resources are necessary to solve this problem.”

Tim’s choler was fading a bit. “Why aren’t you wearing one of those fancy protective suits, Dr. Gardner? Aren’t you afraid?”

Joe Gardner smiled. “We’ve found no evidence the disease is airborne. The best analysis we can make right now is that it seems to spread by direct human contact.”

“How can you know that?”

“There’ve been two cases. The victims were married. We have no other patient reports. If it is a disease, it’s apparently hard to spread.”

Tim sank back in his chair. “I think that’s the best news I’ve heard since yesterday morning.”

“I agree,” Gardner said. “But it seems quite clear to me that if this disease were airborne or waterborne, we’d have other cases by now.”

That wasn’t entirely true, and Declan was sure Joe Gardner realized it. So much depended on incubation periods, as well as type and duration of exposure. Gardner was betting, a very dangerous bet indeed.

Outside the conference room, Dec took a minute to warn Steve Chase about his blood pressure and to tell him to come by that afternoon. Then he caught up to Joe Gardner, who was walking back to the lab.

“You’re a fool,” he said.

“Maybe,” Gardner replied. “But Carter Shippey hasn’t been off this island in months, has he?”

“No. He and his wife were planning a vacation, but they’d had to do a lot of work on their boat. It was banged up in a tropical storm last year.”

“And you don’t get a whole lot of strangers here?”

“Just occasional houseguests at the other end of the island. Deliveries at the airport and the harbor, but everyone there checks out clean.”

Joe nodded. “Then whatever it is started here. And it’s my bet that it can’t be highly contagious. No way. Anything highly contagious that had been introduced on this island over the past couple of months would have affected other people besides a retired fisherman.”

Dec nodded thoughtfully. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Not yet. So far we haven’t found a single living or partly living thing in Shippey’s body. Not so much as a prion.”

“What about chemicals?”

“Nothing unusual so far. But we’ll keep testing.” Joe yawned and stretched. None of them had slept since the previous morning. “So tell me again how this island works. If you had an outbreak of say, influenza, what kind of epidemiology would you expect to see?”

That was an easy question. The other doctors at the hospital had often talked about that, since they’d had an influenza outbreak two years before. “We all live pretty closely on this end of the island. I’d expect to see a number of cases reporting simultaneously, and then a rapid spread through the town and schools. It’d hit the other end of the island somewhat later, carried over there by household employees.”

Joe nodded. “How long?”

“Last time it was flu, and it only took a week for full contagion.”

“I would have expected that.” Joe yawned again. “Between you, me and the fence post? This isn’t going to be an easy solve.”

“Do you have to sound so damn happy about it?”

Joe laughed. “Admit you’re intrigued, doctor.”

Declan was. But he wasn’t happy to admit it. Not at all.

Tim Roth wasn’t happy, either. He’d cornered Steve Chase on the way out of the hospital.

“Let’s take a drive,” he’d said, his hand tightening on the man’s forearm.

They’d climbed in his Land Rover and wound their way up into the hills, where he pulled off onto the shoulder. To their right, six hundred feet below, a white beach was empty despite the picture-perfect teal expanse of the Caribbean. To their left, a handful of blackened, chiseled stones fought a losing battle with the underbrush. They were the sole remains of a plantation house that had been burned to the ground two hundred years before.

“Why here?” Steve asked, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Why here, of all places?”

“You need to calm down,” Tim said. “Quinn had his eyes on you. You’re a public figure.”

“Declan Quinn is my doctor,” Steve said. “If he was concerned, it was strictly medical.”

“Maybe. Probably. But we don’t need the attention.” Tim pointed to the ruins. “It’s rubble, Steve. Dust and ash, just like she is.”

Steve’s chin set. “Carter Shippey said he saw her. Carter wasn’t the type to make up stories.”

Tim hesitated, then met his gaze. “Carter was a fisherman. He’d spent his life at sea. Tall tales are as much a part of a sailor’s life as salt spray.”

“You’re a fisherman.”

“I’m a businessman,” Tim countered. “I send rich people out for day trips with a bottle of champagne, a case of beer and the hope that they’ll catch a marlin to hang on a wall. The sea isn’t a mystery. It’s a cash cow.”

He paused for a moment. “And Annie Black isn’t a ghost. She’s a legend you tell to make people feel like they’re buying a slice of the supernatural with their five-thousand-square-foot Colonial Georgian with verandah and pool. She’s an extra five grand on the asking price. That’s all.”

“And the Shippeys are still dead. Of unknown cause.”

“Exactly.” Tim sighed and repeated the words. “Of unknown cause. Could be a virus. Could be some chemical he got hold of at the high school shop. There’s just no reason to assume they were killed by a two-hundred-years-dead murderer.”

Steve shifted uneasily, eyeing the blackened stones again. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, but it’s crossed your mind ever since Cart opened his damn mouth.”

Steve nodded, and Tim pressed on.

“Look, we’ve lived on this damn island most of our lives. If the ghost of Annie Black were hanging around, don’t you think somebody would have seen something at some time? But nobody ever has. So relax. Besides, ghosts are bullshit, and you know it.”

“My sister saw one in our house in New York.”

Tim sighed. “Yeah. Right. A twelve-year-old hysteric home alone at midnight sees a ghost. That’s one for the headlines.”

Steve flushed, but this time it wasn’t an unhealthy color. “Okay. Okay.”

Tim clapped Steve’s shoulder bracingly. “Annie Black’s ashes were strewn all over this island two hundred years ago. That’s a lot of time for wind and rain to work. There couldn’t possibly be enough left of her to do anyone any harm.”

At that Steve laughed nervously, and the two men headed back into town. Steve even managed not to look over his shoulder as the burnt-out husk of the old plantation fell away behind them.

But he felt Tim was somehow lying to him. And he felt someone watching.

Jones and Perlman bought it today. Shit, this is starting to be like Nam. Nobody will say anything. But I know. Hell, everyone knows. Jackson said he saw it happen to Jones. One minute he’s sitting in his barracks room, working his damn crosswords. The next minute, he’s shaking like a leaf. Then he’s dead. Flat dead.

Word is the CO called Washington last night. Of course, he’s not going to tell us anything. We’re just peons. Bunch of damn draftees who’d rather be sitting home, smoking some weed, listening to Jimi Hendrix and painting flowers on the VW minibus. That’s how they see us. Worthless.

They’re going to kill us all.

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