Her Last Defense (13 page)

He just hoped she didn’t have to.

An attendant closed the hatch on the CDC jet and the plane rolled down the runway, gaining speed. Macy watched until it disappeared on the horizon, then came to Clint.

“I already miss them,” she said. “I feel so alone without them.”

He took her hand, walked her toward the parking area. “You’re not alone.”

They headed east on Highway 10 in a rented SUV, and in minutes, walls of trees appeared on both sides of the road.

“So what now?” she asked. “You want to know how to find a sneaky virus by fluorescing tissue samples, I’m your gal. But I’m afraid I don’t have a clue where to start looking for a man who could be anywhere by now.”

“Basic detective work.” Clint spied a diner called Mama Joe’s ahead and eased off the gas. “How do you feel about apple pie?”

“So-so. Why?”

He turned into the gravel parking lot under Mama Joe’s blinking neon sign and cut the engine. “Because it’s the one thing you count on to get a country waitress talking. And we need to talk to a lot of waitresses.”

After an afternoon full of waitresses and apple pies, Macy was glad to settle into her room at the Lonesome
Pines that evening. When knuckles rapped on her door, she set down the glass of water she was drinking, tugged at the hem of her thigh-length nightshirt and turned the knob to see who it was.

All she saw was the big sole of a big boot plant itself on the wood with a
whump,
and the door burst open like it’d been hit with a ramrod. Her hand flew to her mouth. Ten years flew off her life.

Clint stepped over the threshold, frowning at her furiously.

“What the hell was that?” she managed to gasp.

“A demonstration of why you should always hook the safety chain when you answer your door. Especially when you’re staying at a two-bit hotel in Nowhere, Texas, chasing terrorists.”

Subtly, she reached for the water she’d put down, then jerked her hand up, sloshing the water in his face. While he was blinded, she hooked a foot behind his calf and shoved his chest, knocking him on his butt.

Wearing a smug grin, she turned around and walked to the bed, where she sat cross-legged on the faded paisley spread.

“What the hell was that?” he asked, picking himself up.

“A demonstration of why it’s not good to mess with me after you’ve dragged me to every greasy spoon in southeast Texas.” She lifted her chin. “I get irritable when I overeat.”

“Hey, I didn’t force you to eat at those last three places. I told you we could just get coffee.”

“But did you taste that banana cream? Or the caramel apple? It was worth a little irritability.”

“So says you,” he said, still drying his face with his sleeve.

He turned around to close and lock the door. For the first time, she noticed the pillow and blanket he carried under his arm. “What are you doing here?”

“Moving in.”

“So says you.”

When he turned around, she could see he was through joking. “Look, I meant what I said about chasing terrorists. We don’t have a real good handle on this thing yet. They could be in Afghanistan or in the room next door.”

“Kat is in the room next door.”

“Then you can bet Bull is in the room beyond that.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “Never mind. I’d just feel better if I stuck close to you until this is over.”

She started to argue out of habit and pride, but stopped herself. “To tell the truth, so would I. There’s only one bed.” Which sagged in the middle like an overloaded clothesline.

He looked down. “And a perfectly good floor.”

“If you call two-tone green shag carpet perfect.” The Lonesome Pines Motel—all twelve rooms of it—out on the highway between Hempaxe and Johnson City, Texas, looked as if it hadn’t had its decor updated since it was built in the early sixties. Add to that, the rooms were about twelve feet square with painted cement block walls growing mold cultures in the corners and no padding she could detect beneath the carpet, and she wasn’t going to let him sleep on the floor. She couldn’t.

Sighing, she got up, pulled a pair of sweatpants out of her suitcase and yanked them on as if they were a chastity belt, then sat again and patted the pillow beside hers.

“Not a good idea,” he said.

“You stay on your side, I’ll stay on mine.”

He climbed onto the bed as warily as a rabbit might poke its head out of its den with the scent of fox nearby. She snapped off the light and settled beneath the covers, trying not to think about the hard planes of the body lying next to her. Trying to ignore the slow spread of his body heat, the mingled scents of soap and leather and pine drifting from his side of the bed to hers.

Trying not to imagine how easy it would be to roll over into his arms. To let him hold the dreams of terrorists and snakelike viruses and corpses and trees, always the towering, dark trees overhead, at bay.

Macy had always been impulsive. Since childhood she’d been swayed by her emotions, led by her heart, not her head. She’d made a mistake with the man who had taken her virginity and her innocence in every other sense, the married visiting doctor. She’d made a mistake with David.

She didn’t want to make another mistake. She’d told him she needed time, and she meant it. She knew it was the right thing to do, for both of them.

But that didn’t make it any easier, and what her mind wouldn’t allow when she was awake, her body took out of her hands while she slept. She woke to the feel of the sun streaming through the window and warming her back, crisp male chest hairs under her cheek and a hard male erection pressed against her abdomen.

She opened one eye to find herself curled against Clint like a kitten to its mama.

“Before you throw another glass of water at me,” he droned. “I want you to know I am not responsible for this. You are clearly on my side of the bed.”

She shifted back to get a better look at him, and found to her dismay that one of her legs was wedged securely between his denim-covered thighs and her arms were locked around his back. Under his shirt.

No wonder she’d slept so soundly.

“I’m sorry.” She wrenched herself away, pulled the covers up to her chin even though she was still wearing her sweatpants and sleep shirt. Maybe that way he wouldn’t see that her nipples were as hard as he was or smell the arousal on her.

“Yeah,” he said, rolling out of bed on the opposite side. “I figured you would be.”

She wished she hadn’t heard the hint of wry disappointment behind the words. What had happened to her unreadable Ranger?

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said in that same tone. “Don’t worry, though. There’ll be plenty of hot water left for you when I’m done.”

What was she supposed to say? “I’m sorry” again wasn’t going to cut it, so she let him go without saying anything and busied herself packing up her things. She didn’t know if they’d be checking out today or not, but she figured she’d better be prepared. Besides, having something to occupy her mind kept her from dwelling on Clint.

In the shower.

Naked.

Wet.

Aching.

Stop it! She made herself smooth out the shirt she’d wrung in her hands like an old dishrag while she’d been imagining, pressing it with her hands against the bedspread. It was her last clean shirt, dang it, and now she was going to look like a wrinkled mess.

Maybe she was crazy, denying them both what they so clearly wanted, but she’d lost her confidence in herself, and in her ability to know what was right.

She straightened when the bathroom door creaked open and Clint strode out. He had yesterday’s jeans on, but his feet were bare and his shirt was slung over his right shoulder. The play of lean muscles across his back mesmerized her. The narrow waist. The corded strength of his forearms as he filled a glass at the sink and swished water in his mouth. The—

Gradually she noticed something else. The water in the half-full glass he still held sloshed against the sides. His hand was shaking. A tremor moved visibly up his arm to his shoulder. A few drops of water splashed onto the counter in front of him.

Just then he glanced up and met her eyes in the mirror. Caught her watching him.

She cocked her head, confused. “Clint?”

“Jesus.” The glass slipped out of his hand, shattered on the linoleum floor. He bent to scoop up the shards.

Her moment of shock passing, she hurried to help. He took a step back to pick up a large piece and she warned him. “Careful! Don’t cut your feet.”

“I can take care of my own goddamn feet!” He swiped at the glass fragment like a bear yanking a trout from a stream, then tossed it into the sink. Left-handed.

His cheeks were ruddy. His eyes hard, flat discs. She just stared at him, trying to figure out why he was so angry. In her hand, she held a piece of the broken glass. He grabbed it from her and threw it into the sink with the others, this time too hard. The piece broke into smaller fragments, several of which bounced back out onto the floor.

“Let me see your hand,” she said.

“Forget it.”

She ignored him, knowing she was risking his wrath, and reached for his hand, turned it over in hers, gently curling his fingers in and stretching them out. He stood stock still, and she wondered if it was of his own free will, or if there was simply too much glass on the floor for him to walk away.

“How long have you been having the spasms?”

His jaw went hard. “Long enough to know it isn’t a temporary problem.”

She probed his elbow, massaged his bicep, then moved his shirt away to get a look at his shoulder. He flinched, and it took only her a moment to realize why. She traced her fingers over the round, puckered scar just beneath his right clavicle. “This looks fresh.”

“About six weeks.”

“Nerve damage?”

He pulled his arm away from her and made one giant leap over the area scattered with broken glass to the safety of the carpeting beyond.

She followed him across the room. “What did your doctor say? Did he suggest a course of action?”

He snorted, pulling on his shirt with his back to her. “Sure. He told me start thinking about a new career.”

The full weight of what he was saying sunk in, and sat in her belly like a lead ball. “You said you were on leave when you saw the plane crash,” she said. “Medical leave?”

His silence was enough of an answer.

“You haven’t told them yet, have you? Your teammates don’t know.”

“No.” He whirled. “And they’re not going to find out. Not yet.”

“Clint,” she said softly, an ache—for him—settling in deep in her bones. “It isn’t going to get any easier with time.”

“Funny, coming from the woman who keeps telling me how she needs time.”

The quick change of subject stunned her. No, the truth of what he said stunned her. Fact was, she was holding a double standard.

He stepped up close to her, so that her nose was practically brushing his chest, and held her by the elbows. “You’re not going to tell them.”

Statement? Or question? She wasn’t sure. She could hardly think with his heat seeping through her thin night clothes. His scent enveloping her once again.

His lips so close.

To avoid them, she stood on her toes and brushed her mouth across the abominable reminder of what a violent world they lived in at his shoulder. “Clint—”

A quick knock sounded, then the door swung open, banging when it hit the end of the security chain Clint had so carefully fastened last night. The crack was just wide enough for Del to stick his face through.

“Uh, sorry to interrupt, kids, but we got a lead on Ty Jeffries. We’re on the road in ten.”

D
el Cooper spoke over his shoulder so that Macy could hear as he pushed Baby Blue, his truck, over eighty down the two-lane county highway. “Kat and Bull hit the truck stop on I-10 early, hoping to catch the breakfast crowd. They scared up a long-haul trucker on his way back to Shreveport from Austin who said he picked up a guy matching Ty Jeffries’s description two days ago and dropped him off at a farmhouse outside of Hope Springs. They’ve got the house under surveillance now. No sign of life yet, but they’re waiting for backup to go inside.”

“Who’ve we got coming?” Clint asked from the passenger seat.

“Who’s not coming? We got local PD, county, FBI, you name it.” Del took a curve and the truck lifted onto
two wheels. Neither he nor Clint looked concerned, so Macy grabbed the door handle and gritted her teeth.

Fifteen hair-raising minutes later, Del skidded to a stop behind a dozen official vehicles parked haphazardly on the shoulder and in the center of the road. A uniformed deputy met them at the bumper. Clint and Del flashed their badges. “Captain Matheson?”

“Up there.” The deputy pointed to a hilltop. “House is about a quarter mile farther down, around a curve. Good view from the hill.”

They nodded and strode off. Macy ducked her head and followed, hoping no one would challenge her, but the deputy stepped in her path. “Ma’am?”

Clint reached back and pulled her around him. “She’s with us.”

The two men’s legs were a lot longer than hers. She had to jog to keep up. By the time she reached the rise, she was out of breath.

Clint pushed her head down below the bush they were using as a blind. “Anything yet, Cap?”

“Still no movement.” He checked his watch. “It’s a farm, there are animals in the barnyard. Someone ought to be out and about.”

“We going in?”

“Just waiting for Kat to call and tell me she’s got the paper.”

“Paper?” Macy looked from one man to the other.

“Search warrant,” Clint explained. “We go in without one, anything we find will be thrown out in court.”

She sat quiet and let them strategize after that. Not everything they said about tactical entry and booby trap
sweeps made sense to her, but she understood enough to realize that getting a team into the farmhouse was a lot more complicated—and dangerous—than it looked.

The captain’s cell phone rang. He answered it, listened for a moment, then said, “Excellent,” and flipped the phone closed. “We’re good to go,” he told Clint and Del.

She wanted to blurt out that Clint wasn’t good to go. The look on his face said he expected her to tell his friends he didn’t belong on the mission, but she couldn’t. He needed to decide that for himself.

She could only hope she didn’t regret her choice to keep silent later. Like at his funeral.

When he had his gear on—about fifty pounds of Kevlar, an assault rifle and extra ammunition—he pulled her aside.

“Thanks,” he said tersely, as if it hurt him to talk about it.

“Thank me by getting yourself out of there in one piece.”

“I always do.” He smiled, but she saw through it.

“We need to talk about this later,” she said softly.

“We will.” He pulled his helmet down. “Right now we have a plot to destroy the world to foil.”

Plot foiling took a lot longer than she expected. She’d thought it would be like the movies. Lots of shouting, pounding feet. Maybe a battering ram on the door.

Instead, men crawled around the foundation of the old frame house on their bellies, inserting gadgets. Listening devices and cameras, a deputy told her. They wanted to know what they were walking into.

Minutes dragged into hours, and Macy began to sweat, though the autumn sun was weak and the sky overcast. Macy looked at the matching rocking chairs on the wide front porch and wondered who lived there. The chairs made her think it was a couple. Retired, maybe. Her stomach churned at the image of them sitting together with their gray hair, laugh lines around the eyes. She saw them holding hands, sipping lemonade and watching the sun set.

She shook her head to clear it. Man, her imagination was way too active. She had to stop thinking like that, thinking the worst. Yet still the images persisted in her mind.

Her stomach, however, had moved on, and begun to growl for its lunch by the time Clint walked back to her, his helmet in his hand. “The house is clear,” he said. “But there’s something you need to see.”

She followed him until the county road turned into a gravel drive. He bent low then and quickened his pace. “Stay down and stay behind me.”

“I thought the house was clear?”

“You’re the one who’s usually lecturing on precautions.”

“Point made.” She did as he said and wound up at the east wall of the house, beneath what appeared to be a bedroom window.

A man dressed similarly to Clint, but with FBI in big, block letters across his bullet-resistant vest, handed her a miniature monitor. A tiny ribbed tube led from the device to the window, where it was connected to a piece of plastic as flat as a credit card inserted beneath the sill.

“Use the buttons to angle the camera left or right, up and down,” the agent explained. “Like a video game.”

Clint leaned over her shoulder. “Pan left, to the bed. Stop. That’s it.”

When the image cleared up, she flinched as if she’d been hit. “Oh, God.”

A man lay on the bed in the corner, his arms and legs flung wide. His shirt was plastered to his body as if he were soaking wet, and blood trickled from his nose and the corners of his mouth. The man was Ty Jeffries.

“Audio,” the agent said, and tucked a bud in her ear. The man’s breath sputtered and coughed like an old engine.

She’d heard that sound before. It was the sound of a man whose lungs were full of blood.

A man dying of ARFIS.

She put the monitor back in the agent’s hand and tore the bud from her ear. “Get everyone back. Now. Call the CDC and tell them I need a Level Four team back out here, and have someone get me a bio suit. Fast.”

“Make that two bio suits,” Clint said, and his tone brooked no argument. “You’re not going in there alone.”

“Stay behind me,” Clint ordered Macy, and prayed to God she’d obey. He hadn’t realized how clumsy the full bio suits were. How the hell did she work like this every day? How did she handle lethal viruses as though she was plucking wildflowers? He would go insane. At least he didn’t need a microscope to see the killers he dealt with. And he sure as hell didn’t have to wear a spacesuit.

He needed to be looking for trip wires, checking for explosives, watching for motion sensors, feeling for pressure pads. The whole house could be one big booby trap. It wouldn’t be the first time terrorists had sacrificed one of their own to kill a few infidels. But it was all he could do to keep from falling on his face in the clunky rubber boots sewn into pant legs that were too short for him.

He reached up to wipe his face, remembered he couldn’t when his hand thunked the face shield.

“You okay?” Macy asked.

“Yeah.”
Just getting a taste of what you deal with every day.

Working meticulously, they made their way back to the bedroom where Macy confirmed the diagnosis. It took another hour to get Jeffries ready for transport to the same hospital in Houston that Brinker had been taken to, the only one in the area with adequate isolation facilities.

When it was over, a team waiting out front hosed off their bio suits, then they stepped behind hastily hung curtains, stripped and scrubbed their skin until it hurt.

Bull was waiting for them when they’d dressed and rejoined the troops. “I had ten men around that house. What’s their risk of exposure?”

That was the Bull, concerned about his troops first.

“Low to non-existent,” Macy said, and Bull’s shoulders relaxed visibly. “The house was closed up tight and no one went inside. We’ll keep an eye on everyone, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

He nodded. “Did Jeffries say anything?”

“He was out of it.” Clint rubbed absently at his shoulder. He saw Macy watching him and stopped.

Bull swore under his breath. “The monkey was clean and the virus on the plane was secure. How the hell did he get ARFIS?”

“Only one way to find out,” Macy said, already walking back to the vehicles, shaking her head and fingering her long, wet hair. “Get him well enough to talk, and ask him.”

“Ty, can you hear me?” Macy sat beside the bed David had occupied—had it only been two days ago?—in the isolation unit of Houston Community Hospital. David had been flown to a VA hospital in Virginia where he could recover under the watchful eye of the military, and Ty lay where he had been.

Outfitted in another full environmental suit, Macy held his hand as she had David’s. On the other side of the bed, Clint, also in protective gear, watched with a wary eye. The Ranger captain, Kat and Del listened in from the other side of the observation window.

“Ty, it’s Macy. Can you talk to me?”

They’d pumped fluids into him and given him stimulants to bring him around so the Rangers could question him. They were only going to get one shot. Soon he would have to be intubated to provide respiratory support, and he wouldn’t be able to talk. After that…despite the fact that doctors are trained never to give up hope, Macy didn’t think there would be an ‘after that’ for Ty Jeffries.

She squeezed his hand. “Ty, please. We need to talk to you.”

He moaned. His eyelids flickered. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

She dabbed blood from his lips, for once glad to have the double barrier of latex and rubber gloves to protect her.

“ARFIS,” he mumbled.

“I know.” Her chest tightened. It hurt her to see another human suffer, no matter what he was accused of. “Do you know how you got the virus, Ty? Where did it come from?”

“Bastards. Bastards!” His throat convulsed. “They gave it to me.”

“Who?”

He mumbled again, and Macy couldn’t make out what he said. With any luck the tape recorder running on the table would capture enough that they could figure it out later.

“Where did they get the virus, Ty?”

“Brought it with ’em.”

“From where?”

His eyes were open now, wide and bloodshot. “Everywhere. They got people everywhere.”

“Ask him what the name of their organization is,” Clint said in a low voice.

“Ty, does their organization have a name? Who are they?”

“Secret. Secret. Don’t tell me anything. I just take orders. Deliver things. But I figured it out. Know what they’re doing.”

“ARFIS. Malaysia was a—” He fell into a coughing fit. “Malaysia was a test.”

Macy’s heart lurched into her throat. Her gaze locked on to Clint’s. His was filled with rage.

“A—” She could hardly say it. “A test?”

“See how fast it spreads. Vaccinate some. Infect some. See who dies. Dress rehearsal, they called it.”

Clint leaned over, rested a gloved hand on Jeffries’s shoulder. “Dress rehearsal for what?”

“Main event.” His fevered eyes shone brightly under the harsh hospital lights. “Big city.”

“In the U.S.?”

“They were going to wait. But. Plane crash moved up their plans. Big city. New York. Maybe Los Angeles. Chicago. Dallas.”

Macy gasped. “My God, we’ve got to stop them.”

“Too late,” Ty said. “They’re already here. Already here. Told me they were giving me the vaccine. Injected me with the virus instead. Bastards. Bastards.”

His hands clenched to fists and he beat at the mattress. Tears tinged pink with blood scrolled down his cheeks. “Killed me. Freaking killed me and lied about it.”

“Do you know any of their names?” Clint asked, his tone urgent. He seemed to sense they weren’t going to get much more time with Ty.

“No,” Ty sobbed quietly. “No.”

“What did they look like. How many were there?”

“Four. Two Middle Eastern. Two with accents I didn’t recognize. Dark-skinned. Like South African, maybe.

“Where did they go? Do you know how to find them? Contact them?”

“No.” Ty was fading fast. He struggled to draw a shallow breath. “Too late. Too late.”

“Macy.” Ty looked up at her, his eyes barely open. “Back door. Heard them say they left a back…” He stopped to wheeze. “Back door to the virus when they created it. A way to kill it. Find it, Macy. Help me, please.” Another wheezing breath. “Please!”

“Ty, what were they driving? How were they dressed? Come on, give me something!” Clint demanded.

But Ty couldn’t. His chest heaved, but no sound came out. No words. No raspy breath. No air. Macy waved Clint out of the room and picked up the intubation tray to insert an airway to the man’s swollen lungs, knowing it would sustain his life a little longer, but in the end, it wouldn’t help.

ARFIS would win.