Antivirus (The Horde Series Book 1) (18 page)

“So, you’re saying this Jon Sherrard is responsible for all of this?”

“Do you have a better explanation?” Alders snapped. “All these deaths are similar and all the deceased are missing organs, brains, and, in these last two cases, complete muscle mass.”

“But eating them?”

“Maybe not exactly eating them, but he’s ingesting them somehow.”

“But why?”

“Why do you eat, major?”

“Well, to live and grow, I suppose.”

“Or to heal.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Sherrard took a bullet to the head,” Alders stated. “Once they do a DNA analysis on that blood spatter on the wall at the hotel, they’re going to find out that it’s his.”

“How can you know that?” Bolson asked. “From what I saw all over the wall, there’s no way anyone could have survived that.”

“He did,” Alders stated matter-of-factly. “And regardless of what he’s becoming, he’s going to need to some serious nutrition to survive that.”

“And you’re saying he did survive?”

“With the amount of blood and brain matter on the wall, he should have been laying on that floor, as dead as Chavandar. Yet he somehow not only survived the gunshot, he killed Chavandar and now these two poor souls.”

“And you think it’s because he’s healing?”

“He’s healing or growing…or both.”

Chapter 25

Sherrard Residence, Helena, Montana:
Jennifer Sherrard pulled herself up painfully from the couch as the doorbell rang for a second time and someone’s voice called out from the porch, asking for Jon. Running a hand across her feverish forehead, she wrapped the blanket tightly about her body and shuffled to the door. She opened it as it rang for the third time. There were three of them.

“Jennifer Sherrard?” the first one asked. He was dressed in a suit, while his two companions wore military uniforms. Smiling, the man stuck out his hand.

“Yes?” she replied tiredly, ignoring the offered handshake. “What can I do for you?”

“Agent Rick Alders, Homeland Security,” he answered, withdrawing his hand, but not his smile. “My partners here work directly with the government. Are you okay, ma’am?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped just a little more sharply than she intended. She recognized the name. Jon had told her about his visit with him at FutureTek headquarters. It hadn’t been a pleasant meeting, from what she had gathered. “Can I help you, agent?”

“Miss Sherrard,” Alders said, picking his words carefully. “Is your husband at home?”

“No, I haven’t seen him since yesterday,” she replied, feeling the hurt rise up within her chest. He had disappeared yesterday after Dakota had attacked him. Thinking he was just going out to cool off and get his thoughts together, she had fully expected him home in a few hours. But when the afternoon had moved into evening and then into the next day without her hearing anything at all from him, she had been incredibly hurt. She didn’t know what was going on with her husband other than he was struggling with something, and it was something he hadn’t shared with her. It was worse than when he and Bethany Edwards had gotten a little too frisky under the mistletoe a few Christmas’s back.

“Miss Sherrard, are you alright?” Alders repeated his earlier question, genuine concern in his voice.

“Just under the weather,” she sighed. “I want to go sit down. You’re welcome to come in, if you’d like.”

“Thank you,” Alders said, stepping across the threshold as Jen turned away and shuffled back to the living room. The three of them followed her and allowed her to get settled into a large easy chair.

“Please, sit down,” she said, uncovering her bandaged hand and motioning toward the empty couch.

“Did you cut yourself?” Alders asked, nodding toward her wrapped hand.

She pulled it back under the covers and snuggled down closer. She was cold and couldn’t seem to get warm. “Just got nipped, nothing serious,” she answered. “Why?”

“Your husband didn’t do that, did he?” Alders pressed, preferring to be straightforward and not beat around the bush.

“Now why would you ask me a question like that?” she asked, her voice strained. Jon hadn’t caused the injury, but whatever had happened between him and Dakota had certainly done it. How would Alders know to follow that line of reasoning?

“Just concerned, that’s all,” Alders answered, before leaning forward and fixing her with his gaze. “Miss Sherrard, can I be honest with you?”

“I imagine you’re going to be whether I want you to or not, so by all means.” She didn’t mean for it to come out as snarky as it did, but she was miserable and feeling like she was growing worse by the minute. Whatever bug she had come down with, it was doing a number on her.

“Miss Sherrard, you said you haven’t seen your husband since yesterday, correct?”

She nodded.

“Any particular reason for that?”

“We had a problem with Dakota,” she shrugged. “Dakota got worked up about Jon for some reason. I told him to leave so I could get Dakota calmed down. He did and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Dakota?”

“Family pet,” she answered, not willing to explain further.

“Dog?”

“Big dog,” she nodded. “He went after Jon for some reason.”

“Hmmm,” Alders said thoughtfully. “Your dog, is he okay?”

“Seems to be. He’s out in the back yard. Why?”

“I had a dog,” Alders said, keeping his own feelings at bay. “Someone broke into my house the other night and killed him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jen replied sadly and she truly was. “Why would anyone kill a dog?”

Alders cleared his throat. “Miss Sherrard, I have reason to believe that it was your husband.”

“My husband?” she repeated in shock, staring at him.

“The person that broke into my house and killed my dog also hacked my desktop system.”

“But how do you know it was Jon? I’m certain you have proof of some kind before making this kind of an accusation,” she warned him, suddenly upset that it had come to this. She was not in any mood to deal with this kind of garbage. She had enough issues to deal with herself.

“His prints were lifted from the desk chair in my office,” Alders explained carefully. “They also found some of his DNA in a biological sample left on my computer. Your husband was in my home, Miss Sherrard,” he stated plainly, carefully watching her reaction. “Of that, there is no doubt.”

“But this can’t be.”

“I assure you that it is,” Alders said. “Miss Sherrard, I know of your past with the Agency, so I know you are very familiar with investigative work. I’m sorry to have to say this, but we have reason to believe that Jon may also be involved in the murder of Bethany Edwards.”

“Agent Alders,” she said, feeling anger rise up within her. At the moment, it was her only defense and she latched on to it with a vengeance. “With all due respect, how could you possibly know that?”

“Because there were marked similarities in the bodies of both Miss Edwards and my dog.”

“I’m sorry, but what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that we believe the deaths will be attributed to the same individual.”

“But…how?”

“Miss Sherrard,” Major Bolson interrupted, leaning forward. “I’m going to level with you, because I studied your dossier and I think you would appreciate the direct approach. We think your husband may have had some kind of an accident during his journey into cyberspace.”

“What do you know about that?” she asked suspiciously.

“Our investigation has provided us with the chain of events that occurred at his place of business,” Bolson replied. “We know about the technology he was testing and we believe that he came into contact with a computer program that the government has been testing.”

“The Horde.”

“Yes,” Bolson agreed. “It’s a type of virus.”

“I know what it is, major,” she said acidly and then played a hunch. “Just how much of this is your fault?”

“Miss Sherrard,” he began, his voice faltering.

But Jen had heard enough to understand the implications of what the military man was saying. She was out of her chair and poised to strike before Alders stood up to try and stop her.

“Easy there, Miss Sherrard,” he tried to soothe, but she spun her arm out of his grasp.

“You bastards did this to him!” she nearly shouted.

“Now just hold on,” Alders said, finding himself strangely at odds with himself as he defended Bolson and his project. “They’re just here doing their job, just like me. And just like you did when you were in the field,” he finished softly. Motioning toward the chair, he added. “Please, sit back down. Let’s try to help each other.”

Jen suddenly felt deflated, and fell back into the chair, pulling the blankets tightly back around her. She’d been strong and professional when she was an agent, so the fact that the tears came easily and quickly shook her. She knew they were because of the pregnancy. Her hormones had begun rioting on her the moment she knew she was pregnant again.

Alders grabbed several Kleenex’s from a box that was conveniently on the table next to the couch and passed the tissues to her. She took them with a muttered thanks and wiped the tears from her eyes.

“Miss Sherrard,” he finally said as gently as possible. “It’s imperative that we find your husband. Is there anything you can tell us about his whereabouts?”

She sniffed and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she sighed. “He slept in late and was acting a little odd yesterday morning.”

“Odd in what way?” Bolson asked, clearing intrigued. If her husband was indeed infected with an computer virus, they were in unknown territory.

“He seemed distracted. I had taken a strange phone call for him and somehow he heard me through the door.”

“That doesn’t seem so odd,” Martz added, cocking an eyebrow.

“I was in the basement,” Jen explained. “He was in our bedroom on the other side of the house.”

Martz and Bolson exchanged surprised glances, as Alders picked up the conversation again. “You said you had taken a call for him,” he said. “Do you know from whom?”

“Some CDC rep,” she answered. “He said his name was Doctor Chavez. He was at the Red Lion and had come from Atlanta at the behest of Jon’s doctor.”

Alders nodded and kept his voice carefully neutral. “Miss Sherrard,” he said quietly. “I have to be honest with you, and I am only doing so out of respect for your past work for the government. That caller was not from the Center of Disease Control. He was not a doctor. He was an international assassin, likely sent here at the behest of whoever Perry Edwards was working for.”

“But…why?”

“The conventional thought process is that Jon and Perry might have been working in concert to sell this technology to someone else.”

“Jon would never betray this country,” Jen replied dangerously.

“I believe you,” Alders tried to comfort her. “But it doesn’t change the belief that we think this man had come here to kill Jon.”

“What happened? Did Jon meet with him? Do you have him in custody?”

Alders hesitated before answering. “Miss Sherrard, the man was found dead in his room at the Red Lion.”

At this, Jen did not even have a response. She only looked at the agent in shock.

“In addition,” Alders went on. “We believe that your husband may have been injured in whatever altercation occurred between them. We do have evidence that he was in the room with this man at one point. Will you help us find him?”

Jen looked at him helplessly.

“Miss Sherrard,” he added. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t believe your husband is wholly responsible for what has happened, but we must find him. If he has indeed brought something out of cyberspace with him, we have to find him before this thing really gets out of hand.”

“I just…I don’t know how to help you,” she finally said, tears again in her eyes. “I don’t know where he is. I just want him home. I need him home. The baby needs him home.”

“How long?” Alders asked with a nod.

“Seven weeks,” she sniffed.

Major Bolson began to say something, but Alders quickly stood up and motioned the man to be quiet. “Miss Sherrard,” he said gently. “We will do everything in our power to find your husband and help him. In the meantime, I wanted to thank you for your time.”

She waved him away and pressed a Kleenex to her eyes, dabbing at the tears again.

“We’ll let ourselves out.” With that Alders motioned for Martz and Bolson to precede him and the three exited the house.

Once outside, Bolson shook his head in irritation. “Well, that was a waste of time.”

“How so?” Alders asked, shooting him a quizzical look. The major was obviously much better suited sitting behind a keyboard.

“We don’t know anything more than we did when we came in.”

“On the contrary, we now know that Jon Sherrard is definitely our guy,” Alders explained. “He’s the host. He’s the one that’s running around with your
project
doing who-knows-what to his insides. And worse, he has a wife at home who’s pregnant and doesn’t know what’s going on with her husband. I’d say we know quite a bit more than before.”

“He hasn’t come home, either,” Martz added. “And if she doesn’t know what’s happening to him, we’re rapidly running out of places he might turn up at.”

“Shouldn’t you have asked her to call you if she saw him again?” Bolson put in.

“She’s a mess, major,” Alders replied. “He’s not going to come home now, with everything that he’s been up to. But even if he does, Jen Sherrard will not so willingly give him up again.”

“So what do you propose we do?” Martz asked.

“It’s getting late,” Alders said, looking at his watch and then up at the sun descending on the western horizon. “I’ll drop you back at the hotel and then pick you up tomorrow morning at eight.”

“Where will we be going, agent?” Bolson asked.

“I think we’ll pay a visit to FutureTek in the morning,” he answered. “There’s a familiarity there for Sherrard. Maybe someone there will be able to make contact with him or has some inkling as to where he might end up.”

“And if we don’t find him?”

“Then I guess we follow the trail of bodies until we do,” Alders answered grimly.