Monkey See, Monkey Do

  He turned and set the computer on the back seat. “You believe me?”

  “Son, at any time in this process you could have betrayed me to Hannibal for the reward, or betrayed me to your Drunk Monkeys for them to come grab me. I’m sure you knew I was in Atlanta before I even told you, didn’t you?”

  He blushed. “Yeah. Sorry, Mom.”

  “No, don’t apologize. You’re good at what you do, thank goodness. At some point, I have to trust and believe something. I can’t second-guess everything or everyone. Logic tells me I would already be in custody by now if you were going to betray me.” She reached over and patted him on the thigh in a motherly way. “Now, let’s go home and start planning.”

  “Planning?”

  She smiled. “Yes. I think I know what we should give ourselves for Christmas.”

  “What?”

  “Hannibal’s testicles roasting over an open fire.”

  He laughed, but then his smile faded. “You’re not kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. I haven’t wasted a single moment of my freedom up to this point. I guarantee you I’m not only in far better physical condition than Hannibal is right now, but mentally I’m a lot better off.”

  “Do you mind me asking how?”

  “Not at all. People with nothing left to lose are completely unpredictable and extremely dangerous under the right circumstances. I have nothing left to lose. Hannibal does. Hannibal has everything left to lose. When we take him out, he won’t be expecting me to kill him, because he can’t conceive of any universe or situation in which I could get the better of him. He’s still probably thinking that I’m helpless and under someone else’s control, even though by now he’s likely guessed that I weaned myself off the drugs.”

  “Dr. Isley’s dead,” Ax flatly said. “Supposed suicide. Drank a cocktail laced with Ketamine before shooting himself up with po-clo.”

  “Heh. I know. I read about it. I sincerely doubt it was a suicide. Most likely Jerald did it. Or they hired it out because Isley was a loose end. I know he had something to do with what happened in LA. I remember hearing them discussing him traveling there multiple times, and having him recruit research team members for it.”

  Ax buckled his seat belt. “Why did Isley help your husband for all these years?”

  “The same reason most everyone who isn’t getting paid by Hannibal ‘helps’ him. Hannibal had a whole lot of incriminating dirt on the man.” She looked at Ax. “The only reason Jerald has helped him for so long is the money and power he wields because of it. Hannibal’s hubris and narcissism plays to our advantage now. He’ll never see us coming.”

  Chapter Four

  “Dr. Gaebel, can you please review this chart for me?”

  Leta didn’t even open her eyes as she held out her hand, palm up. She thought it was Karen, a nurse of over twenty-five years at the hospital, and a damned fine one, too.

  But at this point Leta was so exhausted, she couldn’t be sure.

  The nurse put a tablet in Leta’s hand and closed her fingers around it. That’s when Leta finally opened her eyes and lifted her head from the desk at the nurse’s station, where she’d been sitting and trying to grab a few minutes of sleep. In her sleep, her surgical mask had slid down to her chin. Instead of pulling it up, she pulled it down around her neck, out of her way.

  “What am I looking at?” Leta mumbled.

  Yep, it was Karen, who was wearing her mask over her nose and mouth. “Blood work results on the patient in 502A. Congestive heart failure. Do we need to adjust her meds?”

  Leta sat up and sat back in the chair, squinting, opening her eyes wide, then ultimately squinting again until her addled brain could start to recognize…things.

  Karen tugged her face mask down. “Would you like me to get you a cup of coffee, honey?”

  “Oh my god, I’ll marry you and have your babies if you would, please, yes.”

  Karen smiled. “A thank-you and instructions for that patient will suffice. I’ll be right back. We just made a fresh pot.” She walked away as Leta took a deep breath and once again tried to make sense of what she was looking at on the tablet.

  By the time the nurse returned with a steaming cup of coffee, Leta had managed to compare the patient’s last three blood work results to the current one, along with her vitals, and review all her meds.

  “Let’s keep her at her current levels unless her condition deteriorates,” Leta said. “Her regular cardiologist isn’t in today, and his on-call didn’t leave any emergency instructions for her. I don’t have all the details of her history. I really don’t want to change stuff without a good reason just to mess around.”

  Leta traded her the tablet for the cup of light brown and perfectly sweetened hot braining juice.

  “How much sleep have you gotten?” Karen asked. “You were here most of yesterday, weren’t you?”

  “Counting my nap just then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh, maybe ten minutes in the past two or three days? I lost count somewhere.”

  The nurse arched an eyebrow at her. “Okay. I know I technically don’t overrule you, because you’re an MD, but I’m overruling you and playing the ‘I’m older than you’ card.”

  Karen stepped into the room behind the nursing station, where Leta had stashed her bag earlier when she didn’t have time to make it to the locker room, brought it out, handed it to her, and caught Leta’s elbow, pulling her up from the chair.

  “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?” Leta shouldered her bag.

  “I’m banishing you from the floor for an hour. Go down to three. The research department is empty today, and they have that damned comfy couch in their lobby. I’ll come get you in an hour, I promise. It’s almost nine. I’ll wake you up at ten.”

  They stopped in front of the elevators and Karen pushed the button.

  Leta stared at her over the edge of her cup of coffee. “I don’ wanna.” She pouted.

  Karen laughed. “Uh, I got three older than you. That ain’t gonna work with me, Doc.” The elevator door opened, and Karen herded Leta inside. “One hour.” Her expression gentled. “Please, we’ve had six doctors quit this month already,” she softly said. “We can’t lose any more than we already have.”

  Leta pondered that as the door slid shut. She hit the button for three and slurped at her coffee, which reminded her she hadn’t remembered to pull her face mask back into position.

  Fuck it.

  They didn’t have any Kite infections in the hospital. And if they ever did get any, they’d have bigger worries than face masks.

  Yes, she’d heard rumblings about doctors quitting, but as a third-year resident who’d almost finished her time, she kept her head down and her mouth and nose out of hospital gossip and politics. She’d heard several of the hospital’s most senior specialists, in areas such as neurology and oncology, had resigned and boogied to parts unknown as the Kite crises worsened.

  She couldn’t and wouldn’t blame them. They had families to worry about, and the means to escape to a less-populated area.

  Like maybe the middle of Montana.

  They were only human, mere mortals. Entitled to protect their families. The public tended to think doctors comprised some super-human, altruistic race of people who put everyone else’s needs before their own. Sometimes they were better than average, but they were still just human. No one wanted to see their family ripped apart by something as vile and unstoppable and damned scary as Kite.

  Fortunately, they hadn’t seen a single case of it yet in south Florida, east or west coast.

  Leta wasn’t so sure if a case of it cropped up there at their front door in Ft. Myers that she might not be gassing up her SUV and boogying down the road herself.

  She couldn’t help people if she was dead. Not that she’d turn her back on patients, but she wasn’t there to commit suicide. Would she risk her life to help someone? Yes, in many cases, she would.

  But not in a situat
ion that was unwinnable.

  In fact, she’d stopped reading the daily CDC updates a couple of months ago because they depressed the hell out of her. The only hope she had was that they would find a vaccine soon, and she knew the hospital administrator would immediately announce it if they did.

  Barstow. Los Angeles. Most of the Asian continent.

  Gone.

  Events she never dreamed would happen in her lifetime. Hell, the flu epidemics hadn’t been this scary. At least with the flu you knew you had pretty damned good odds of beating it.

  This was one of the reasons she’d shied away from joining the military, because she was in no hurry to hasten her own demise. She’d lost her parents to the military.

  They wouldn’t get her. If that made her a coward then she’d own it.

  Leta walked down the deserted hallway until she reached the research department. Yes, it was empty, and most of the lights were off, but in the lobby area a single lamp softly glowed in the far corner.

  Swiping her hospital ID opened the door for her. Since she was a senior resident MD on staff, there were very few areas in the hospital her ID badge wouldn’t grant her access.

  The comfy sofa lay on the other side of a chest-high room divider just inside and to the left of the door, one that had once been a check-in counter before the offices had been converted for use as research. The fake ficus tree on the end of the couch closest to the divider also helped shade the couch from light filtering in from the hallway through the window in the door.

  The research team had set the lobby up that way because it wasn’t uncommon for members working overnight and waiting on test results to use the couch for napping. And they didn’t begrudge others using it that way, either, as long as they weren’t there working.

  Today, she’d have the comfy couch all to herself.

  Walking around the end of the divider and over to the couch, she set her cup down on an end table, dropped her bag to the floor, and then collapsed onto the couch, almost immediately falling asleep.

  * * * *

  Uncle and Zed both had tablets. Once Uncle had parked the car on the outskirts of the public parking lot and checked his tablet, he looked at Zed. “Ready?”

  “I guess I won’t get any readier. You still feeling weird?”

  Uncle stared at the hospital entrance. “Not sure.”

  “Is this a ‘we’re about to get our asses shot at’ kind of weird? Or just a general ‘this doesn’t feel right’ kind of weird?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  And he didn’t. He’d felt unsettled ever since awaking from his nap before they left. “Don’t think it’s a ‘shot at’ kind of weird.”

  “Don’t like stealing from a hospital?” Zed asked.

  “Maybe.” Lord knew he’d spent his fair share of time in a hospital with his mom before brain cancer finally took her. He’d just entered the military when he’d received word from her doctors. They’d given him a compassionate leave and delayed his basic training.

  She died eight weeks after the diagnosis, and he’d spent pretty much every day and night there in her room, at her side, going home only to take a shower and check the mail.

  No, hospitals were not his favorite places in the world. Still, it felt weird and wrong, mission or not, to actually be stealing from one. Almost like stealing food from an orphanage.

  Bubba assured them the facility wasn’t doing Kite research, so it wasn’t like they were stealing from the potential vaccine finder. The lab here wasn’t authorized for that kind of virology research. They were focused on non-communicable types of research, but still used many of the same supplies.

  Supplies their team needed to continue their work. Work that would, hopefully, save the human race.

  Uncle took a deep breath, pulled up his surgical mask, and reached for the door handle. “Let’s roll.”

  Neither man was a stranger to memorizing a building’s layout. This was what they did for a living, to keep them alive. So they knew they’d be going to the third floor. With the holidays, hopefully it would be empty.

  If not, in the messenger bag slung over Zed’s shoulder were two dozen sets of plastic heavy-duty zip-ties and a roll of duct tape. They’d tie the people up and leave them there, making their escape. They had a spare license plate in the car and would swap out the one on the back after leaving the premises, just in case.

  The guard at the front desk looked up at them and simply nodded, going back to reading his tablet when he spotted them looking like two doctors coming in for the morning.

  Adrenaline buzzed through Uncle’s veins as he and Zed walked to the elevator bank and hit the button.

  They didn’t speak, both of them pretending to be focused on their tablets while they kept an eye out.

  The elevator in front of them slid open, empty, and they stepped in, immediately turning. Uncle reached out and hit the button for three.

  They still didn’t speak. They didn’t know if the security system here had audio on the feeds in the elevators or not, and they didn’t want to risk it.

  As the elevator slowed and stopped at three, Uncle took a breath and waited for the doors to slide open.

  So far, so good.

  Sometimes it bothered him when a mission went too slick, too easy. They were trained to anticipate, adapt, improvise, overcome anything thrown at them.

  When there was nothing to overcome, simply a plan playing out as intended, it could be…disconcerting.

  That’s probably why I’m on edge.

  In the face of danger they had to relax, stay loose, able to immediately change course or tactics. Anticipation was the worst, though.

  I’m sure we’ll get back and laugh about how wigged out I am and relax over dinner.

  Papa had ordered they would have a Thanksgiving dinner, all of them. The first and only holiday they’d actually celebrated since TMFU and their deployment on this mission. They would eat in two shifts so they always had watches on duty. The Atlanta team had been ordered to as well, even though the scientists insisted they would still keep working.

  There was no one in the hallway in this wing to even look at them as they passed. All patient rooms on this floor were in the other direction. Nothing but the research department and some other specialist offices down here.

  On Thanksgiving Day, all of them lay blessedly empty.

  As they walked they pulled on nitrile gloves. They found the door to the research department exactly where it should be. Exchanging a glance, Uncle swiped his ID and held his breath until the green light lit up and a beep chirruped from the lock pad.

  “Let’s do it,” Zed muttered as he reached down and opened the door.

  * * * *

  Leta was far from a stranger to sleeping in a hospital. Assorted beeps and chirps and buzzers and bells rarely awakened her, unless it was the distinctive blare of a cardiac arrest being alerted and a code blue getting called.

  So when she heard the chirp it didn’t really register in her brain except as part of the hazy dream she was currently having, of two hunky doctors entering the research offices.

  That dream took off into a life of its own. She was no prude by any stretch of the imagination, and she certainly hadn’t been a virgin before she met Gary. In med school, there’d been some pretty wild nights, even really crazy-good nights with a set of horny twin brothers who’d rocked her damn world sideways and back.

  One of the reasons her Kindle was full of such stories, because it reminded her of better days.

  Days when she wasn’t filled with self-doubt and second-guessing every decision she’d ever made.

  Untroubled sleep was a thing of the past for her, and had been ever since she’d set her feet on the path to med school. She’d always heard doctors were in short supply and made decent money. The recession/depression/financial disaster-proof profession. One of the things everyone would need more of regardless of the state of the country.

  One way she could protect herself for the future
from whatever might happen.

  Yeah, helping people—okay, fine.

  She wasn’t going to lie and say that was the only reason she’d chosen medicine, though. Hell, she couldn’t even decide on a specialty yet.

  If Kite wiped out the world, maybe being a doctor was the last thing she wanted to be.

  Especially when there wasn’t a damned thing she could do for the poor people, except watch them die or help speed them along with a shot of po-clo. Truth be told, she felt pretty damned useless a lot of the time. People expected doctors to fix everything, and they couldn’t.

  They couldn’t even fix some of the things, the worst things.

  Is this what hitting bottom feels like?

  Maybe. Maybe she’d hit her midlife crisis at twenty-nine. Nearly thirty, and the roadmap ahead of her wasn’t a blank slate, but a black void.

  Eventually, her dreams morphed into nightmares of the world ending and she was the only one left uninfected, unable to stop people from dying, helpless against the nameless mobs of Kite-infected, so she’d hid until she was the only one left.

  Not the first time this nightmare had raked through her sleep.

  When Leta’s eyes snapped open, she immediately knew it wasn’t a code blue that had awakened her, more like an…awareness.

  Something wasn’t right.

  In the bowels of the research department, she heard someone moving around.

  And she was supposed to be the only one in there.

  Now wide awake, she sat up. Through the receptionist’s window, she spotted a flashlight’s beam occasionally bouncing off the ceiling, like someone was in the back, in the storeroom area.

  Okay, that’s farking weird.

  All sleep had vanished from her system.

  Again.

  Standing, she got up and walked into the back. Sure enough, through the open storeroom doorway, she spotted two men hefting backpacks and getting ready to leave.

  Looking around, she found the light switch.

  I don’t know what’s going on, but this damn sure ain’t legit.

  She switched on the lights and turned to confront the two men.