Deadline (6 page)

Speaking of distractions, there was something poking me in the knee. I cracked one eye open and found the pigeon was now industriously pecking at my jeans. “Dude, I’m not a breadcrumb vending machine.” It kept pecking. “Has Becks been putting steroids in your birdseed or something? Because don’t think I don’t know she’s been feeding you. I found the receipt from the last time she hit the pet store.”

“Since I haven’t made any attempts to hide it from you, it would be a little bit upsetting if you didn’t know,” said Becks, from about three feet behind me. “As it is, you noticed the receipt and not the twenty-pound bags of birdseed in the office coat closet. That doesn’t say much about your powers of observation.”

“But it says a lot about my attention to detail.” I twisted around to face her, sending the pigeon fluttering off to find a safer place to perch. “Is there a reason the sanctity of the roof has been violated?”

Becks crossed her arms across her chest in a gesture that was only semidefensive. I don’t know why she looks at me that way. I’ve never hit her. Dave a few times, and I broke Alaric’s nose once, but never her. “Dave says you’ve been up here for three hours.”

I blinked. “I have?”

I thought you needed the sleep,
George said.

“Gee, thanks,” I muttered. You’d think having my dead sister living inside my head might have some helpful side effects, like, say, insomnia, but no such luck. I get all the negatives of being insane, with none of the bonuses.

“You have,” said Becks, with a small nod. “We’ve
been going oway. Ithe footage. We got some great shots, especially from the sequence where Alaric was holding the crowbar. Before everything got bad, I mean.”

“You checked your license allowances before you let him do that, right?” I asked, levering myself to my feet. My back was stiff enough to confirm that whole “three hours” thing; I’d been sitting in one position for way too long.

“Of course,” she said, sounding affronted. “As long as I stayed within five feet and he was in no immediate nonconsensual danger, I was totally within my legal rights as a journalism teacher. What do you think I am, some sort of field newbie?” She sounded even more offended than the question would justify, because there was another question underneath it:
When did you stop being any fun?
Becks hired on as a Newsie under George and switched to my department almost before the ink on her contract was dry. She’s one of nature’s born Irwins, and she and I worked together really well. That’s why I gave her my department when I stepped down. And that’s probably also why she seems to really believe, deep down, that all she needs to do is find me a stick and a hole to poke it into and I’ll be fine.

It’s really a pity that I don’t think it’s ever going to work that way for me. Because damn, it would be nice.

“I don’t think you’re a field newbie, Becks, I just think there are some people who’d love to have an excuse to slap us with more violation charges. I mean, how much did we pay to get those ‘standing too close to a goat’ charges off Mahir’s record? And he’s in England. They still
like
goats over there.”

“All right, fair enough,” she admitted. “But still, Alaric did really well out there today. I think he’s almost ready for his exams.”

“Well, good.”

“He just needs a senior Irwin to sign off on him.”

“So sign.”

“Shaun—”

“Was that the only reason you came up here to poke at me? Because it doesn’t seem like enough.”

You’re trying to distract her.

I gritted my teeth and didn’t answer. No one heard George but me; everyone heard me when I talked to her. Not exactly the fairest deal I’ve ever been a part of, but, hey, I’m the one who gets to keep breathing, so I probably shouldn’t complain all that much. George wouldn’t complain if our positions were reversed. She’d just glare at people, drink a lot of Coke, and write scathing articles about how our judgmental society called her crazy for choosing to maintain a healthy relationship with a dead person.

Becks gave me a sidelong look. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said, teeth still gritted as I willed George to shut up until I’d managed to get Becks to go away. “Just stiff. And that didn’t answer my question. What else made you come up here?”

“Ah, that. You have company.” Becks unfolded her arms, shoving her hands into the pocketsof her jeans. She’d changed her clothes, which only made sense; the clothing she’d worn in the field needed to be thoroughly sterilized before it was safe to wear again. The logical need to change didn’t explain why she’d put on new jeans and a flowery shirt that wouldn’t offer any protection in an outbreak, but girls have never made much sense to me. I never needed them to. George was always there, ready and willing to play translator.

I raised an eyebrow. “Company? Define ‘company.’ Is this the kind of company that wants an interview? Or
the kind of company I have a restraining order against?” Most people don’t think I’m handling Georgia’s death very well, what with the whole “hearing her inside my head even though she’s not here anymore” aspect of things. Well, if I’m not handling it well, the Masons aren’t handling it at all, since they’ve spent the last year alternately pleading with me to see reason and threatening to sue me for ownership of her intellectual property. I always knew they were vultures, but it took someone actually dying for me to understand just how appropriate that comparison really was. They’d started hovering around before the man who paid her killer was even cold, looking for a way to make a profit off the situation.

I mean that literally. I checked the time stamps on the first e-mails they sent me. I don’t think they even took the time to pretend to grieve before they started trying to make sure they’d get their piece of the action. So yeah, I took out a restraining order against them. They’ve taken it surprisingly well thus far. Maybe because it’s done wonderful things for their ratings.

“Neither,” said Becks. “She says she knows you from the CDC, and that she’s been trying to get hold of you for weeks—something about needing to talk to you about a research program that Georgia was involved with back when you were—Shaun? Where are you going?”

I was halfway across the roof the moment the words “research program” left her lips, and by the time she asked where I was going, it was too late; I was already gone, hand on the doorknob, barreling back down the stairs toward the hallway.

My line of work, combined with George’s virological martyrdom and my ongoing, if somewhat amateur,
attempts to locate the people behind the conspiracy that killed her, has brought me into contact with a lot of people from the CDC. But there’s only one “she” who has my contact information and would even dare to bring up George around me.

Dave was waiting outside the office apartment door, looking agitated. I stopped long enough to grab his shoulders, shake briskly, and demand, “
Why
haven’t I been seeing her e-mail?”

“The new spam filters must have been stopping her,” he said, looking a little green around the edges. It appeared that I was scaring him. I was having trouble getting worked up about that when I was already so worked up about more important matters. “If she was using the wrong keywords—”

“Fix them!” I shoved him backward, hard enough that he smacked his shoulders against the wall. Turning, I opened the apartment door.

Alaric was in the process of handing my “company” a cup of coffee, making polite apologies about my absence. He stopped when I entered, turning to face me, and she half rose, a small, almost tim smile on her face.

“Hi, Shaun,” said Kelly. “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

T
he last time I saw Kelly Connolly, she was delivering George’s ashes for the funeral. The time before that, she was at the Memphis CDC installation where George, Rick, and I were taken into quarantine after an anonymous call claimed we’d gone into amplification. Not exactly the sort of encounters that lend themselves to easy companionship. I’m never really sure how to deal with people who aren’t a part of my team and aren’t trying to either kill or interview me. My usual tactics—gunshots and punches to the face—just don’t seem to apply.

Kelly was looking at me expectantly, the cup of coffee she’d taken from Alaric still held in front of her. I almost wished she’d throw it at me, just so I’d have some idea of what I was supposed to
do
.

Say hello,
George prompted.

“Why—” I began, and caught myself, snapping my jaws closed on my tongue so hard I tasted blood. Talking to George in front of my friends and coworkers was one thing: It weirded them out a little, but they were essentially used to it. Talking to her in front of
someone who was still practically a stranger was something else entirely. I didn’t have the time or the patience to deal with the questions it would inevitably raise.

Kelly was still looking at me with the same expectant air, now becoming slowly tinged with concern. I know that look. I get that look a lot. If I didn’t say something soon, she was going to start asking whether I was all right, and then I was going to need to decide whether or not I was going to deck her.

Kelly took my hand, the edge of concern not leaving her face. Her handshake was surprisingly firm. I looked closer and realized that the concern was masking an even more pronounced expression of fear. Fear? She was with the CDC. Short of Kellis-Amberlee deciding to jump species and start infecting birds, what did she have to worry about?

“You don’t need to be so formal, Shaun.” Her smile tightened for a moment before she dropped it. She let go of my hand at the same time. I kept studying her face, taking note of the dark circles under her eyes. The good doctor hadn’t been sleeping much recently… if she’d been sleeping at all. “I won’t call you Mr. Mason if you won’t call me Dr. Connolly.”

“Deal.” I stepped back, tucking my hands into my pockets. “Welcome to the madhouse, Doc. Have you had a chance to meet the rest of the team?”

“Well, I met Alaric here when he buzzed me into the building,” she said, smiling brightly at him. He ducked his head, blushing and slanting a glance toward
Becks at the same time, like he was checking her reaction. He shouldn’t have bothered. Becks was staring straight ahead, giving Kelly her best “I am an ice-cold action bitch and you’d better not forget it” look.

Dave had managed to slink back into the room while I was gaping at Kelly. He hunched his shoulders as he sat down next to the bank of monitors, trying to make himself look small. If we hadn’t had company, I would have rushed over to tell him I was sorry and promise—again—that this was the last time I’d ever lay a hand on him. I’d mean it, too, even if we’d both know I’d never be able to keep my word. Dave would say it was okay, that I hadn’t actually hurt him, and we’d both feel better… at least until the next time I lost my temper.

That’s how things worked around the office without George. We were used to it; comfortable, even. Having Kelly Connolly standing there, clearly waiting for an introduction to the rest of the team, was just screwing everything up.

“Uh,” I said. “Well, that cool cat over on the news desk is one of our Irwins, Dave Novakowski.” Dave raised a hand and waved. “Alaric here is Mahir’s second-in-command. Mahir is… uh… Mahir Gowda runs the Newsie division remotely from London.” I still couldn’t bring myself to call him George’s replacement. The word was just too bitter to say.

Kelly nodded, offering a quick smile in Dave’s direction. Dave answered with a distracted nod, hands beginning to move rapidly across his keyboard. “Mr. Gowda interviewed me earlier this year,” Kelly said, looking back to me. “He was a very nice gentleman.”

“He did?” I asked blankly.

Alaric was staring. A note of excitement crept into
his voice as he asked, “Wait—are you
the
Kelly Connolly?”