“You didn’t believe them,” Bix said. “So you made sure I was on the case.”
“I knew immediately when I heard about the elementary school in the District that it had to be related. And that there would be others.”
“How did you know already that it was an unusual strain of salmonella?” Platt asked.
“Because they told me the exact strain they had created and put in.”
SIXTY-THREE
NEBRASKA
The first ten feet were the worst. A sharp drop straight down sent Maggie falling into a black abyss. A ledge caught her, pine needles breaking the impact. Somehow she had managed to not cry out though she landed on her right shoulder again. If Griffin had heard the scuffle it would only be seconds, maybe a minute if she was lucky, before he realized where she had gone.
She forced her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Even the parking lights didn’t add a glow of illumination. She knew the ridge continued down, she just didn’t know how far. She pushed up to her knees and tested the small ledge she had landed on. Then she turned around, started scooting down on her butt, feetfirst, testing and feeling. It wasn’t quite as steep.
She glanced up. Still no flashlight aimed down to find her. She allowed herself to slide, bracing her hands in front of her. She wouldn’t be able to grab onto much but she could protect her face and head from slamming into a tree.
The sand gave way and she began to skid. She lost her balance. Her body twisted and she was sliding on her side.
Too fast, way too fast.
Branches lashed out, stabbing and scraping her skin. She needed to slow down, but she couldn’t get a grip. Couldn’t stop. Her bound wrists kept her from grabbing a rock or branch. Her hands became fists trying to protect and getting battered. Her body became a toboggan rolling over anything in its way, her hip bumping a tree trunk and sending her up against another. Branches snapped and cracked, stinging her arms, whipping at her face, catching her hair.
Then suddenly she landed a second time. On her back.
She stared up at the pine trees. In the complete darkness the patches of sky were bright with twinkling stars. She saw the top of the ridge above her. Dear God, it had to be at least sixty feet, more than six stories tall.
In the silence she heard an owl and the constant hum of cicadas. She lay perfectly still, knocked out of breath, certain that if she lifted her head she’d feel the dizziness at full force.
A branch snapped. Somewhere to the left of her there was a rustle of leaves. She forced herself to stay quiet, to not move. It wasn’t possible. Griffin couldn’t have made it to the bottom of the ridge before her.
Just an animal, she told herself. Then in the same breath she remembered it could be a coyote or cougar.
Calm down. Please heart, stop racing. Breathe. You need to breathe.
Her body ached. Her knuckles and elbows were scraped raw and bleeding. The zip tie had dug into her wrists and cut deep. The pain in her shoulder burned. But she had made it to the bottom. She’d gotten away.
That’s when she saw the beam of a flashlight sweep over the ridge.
SIXTY-FOUR
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“Their original intent was honorable,” Baldwin tried to explain. “A war without soldiers. Isn’t that the wave of the future?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bix hadn’t recovered from his anger.
“Genetically engineered bioweapons,” Platt said in almost a whisper. It was exactly what he and Bix had discussed at the airport.
“I understand you visited the facility next door.” Baldwin paused but she wasn’t waiting for their acknowledgment. It was as if she was deciding what and how much to reveal. “There are similar facilities across the country. Most of them independently contracted so the government can deny they exist. All of them hidden in plain sight. Some as small as a field house in one of our federal parks or a test field in the middle of a farmer’s corn crop.”
“So this contamination was intentional,” Platt said.
“Yes.”
“Son of a bitch.” Bix palmed his forehead and shook his head.
“But it was not intended for schoolchildren. Someone made a mistake on one of the three orders. It was not supposed go to the NSLP.”
“Where was it supposed to go?” Bix asked.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Right.”
“I came to this party late. They’re not going to tell me those details. But I do know this much—it wasn’t supposed to stay here in the United States.”
“How did they think they’d get away with this?” Bix asked. “We have higher standards on our beef and poultry exports than on our imports. And our trading partners certainly wouldn’t accept contaminated beef.”
“Even in the best of systems it slips by, especially if it’s a new strain no one is testing for. Why do you think they chose a processing plant that tests for bacterium so often? Plausible deniability.”
Bix couldn’t restrain his anger any longer. “You know the teenagers that recovered in Norfolk are becoming ill again? This bacterium is mutating, changing … oh, but wait, that’s exactly what it was engineered to do, right?”
Baldwin didn’t answer. Bix didn’t expect her to.
He continued: “Why send us to Chicago? Why not tell me all this that first day?”
“I was told it was being taken care of. Don’t you understand? I was told to stand down by my superior. You remember who my boss’s boss is.”
She calmed herself down and glanced over her shoulder. The last of the tours had trouped through long ago.
“His boss is the president of the United States. It’s not like I can just go knock on his door and say, ‘Oh hey, by the way. That bioweapons program your secretary of agriculture and your secretary of defense developed, it almost killed over one hundred schoolkids.’”
“Might still kill them,” Platt said. Bix’s scientists were busy coming up with an antibiotic cocktail, hoping to combat the strain before it caused irreparable damage.
“What do you expect us to do?” Bix asked.
“I’m just a new undersecretary. But if the CDC and USAMRIID, along with the United States Army, take charge? Maybe it’ll make a difference.”
“Tell us what you want us to do,” Platt said before Bix could argue.
SIXTY-FIVE
NEBRASKA
The darkness gave Maggie an advantage. Down here the moonlight broke through in rare streaks which Maggie tried to avoid. Her eyes had adjusted but some parts of the forest floor remained too dark to see. She still had to depend on her other senses, feeling her way as much as seeing.
When had it gotten so cold? It seeped beneath her shirt. And why had she worn shorts? Her knees were scraped raw, her legs scratched and bleeding. She heard her teeth chattering. She needed to keep moving.
The ache had not left her chest, but the night sounds worked to her advantage as well. The constant chirp of cicadas covered her raspy breathing and the crackling of dried leaves underfoot. She felt like someone was watching her. Stalking her. It couldn’t be Griffin. She could still see the jumps of the flashlight beam shooting over the ridge. He hadn’t come down, instead trying to find her from above.
At first he called her name. Made promises that quickly turned to taunts. Then he cursed her. But he didn’t venture down the steep slope. She wasn’t naïve enough to think that she had an edge on him. He knew this forest. He would know a shortcut, guess her direction.
She had recognized the goggles in the back of the SUV— infrared night vision. Could he see her? Was it that easy to track her movement? Maybe he was simply waiting for the right time to pounce. Perhaps he was letting her run out of energy. She’d put up less of a fight. She expected him at every turn. Thought she saw a shadow standing behind trees. Swore she could hear his footsteps catching up with her.
She wanted to hide, find someplace she could curl into a tight ball. Bury herself under branches and leaves.
Keep herself warm with pine needles. Wait until morning. Her muscles screamed at her to do just that. The pain in her shoulder had taken on a life of its own. She tried to block it out.
Breathe. Keep moving. Listen. It became her mantra.
When she came out into a clearing she skidded to a stop. She saw a building, but no movement. No lights. She moved back into the forest, hid behind a tree, and stared at the corrugated metal. It was like a mirage. She wondered if she might be seeing things.
Then she remembered—there was a nursery out here. And a field house. Lucy had told her about it. She couldn’t remember what it was. The Taser had blocked off portions of her memory.
She tried to concentrate. Griffin had said something about the field house. That he wanted to keep the teenagers away from it. Why? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. He had a connection to this place. He had to know she would stumble across it. That she’d be tempted to consider it as a shelter. In fact, he probably counted on it.
And yet, she had to believe there would be something inside she could use to cut her wrists free. And warmth. If only for a few minutes.
SIXTY-SIX
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Julia hated hospitals. She told Rachel she’d wait outside the exam room but the crowded ER made her feel even more anxious. Her mother had died in a place like this. Almost twenty years had passed and they still looked the same. It was as if she were seeing it through the eyes of a ten-year-old girl, instead of those of a homicide detective.
Across from her a woman cradled her bleeding arm. Knife wound. Under the thin stained gauze Julia recognized a tear in the flesh. Probably a kitchen knife, serrated blade. All she needed was a glance at the red-faced man accompanying the woman to guess it had been a domestic case, an endgame compromise—I’ll forgive you but you have to take me to the emergency room to get patched up. No incident report would be filed. The exhausted intern would ask the volley of questions but end up writing in whatever “accident” the woman invented.
Julia was moving on to the next victim when Rachel stepped out of the exam room. Her eyes were wild and frantic and searching for Julia.
It took Julia a second or two before she could stand. Oh God, this can’t be good.
She couldn’t remember the last time her knees actually wobbled. Is this what being in a relationship was all about— anxiety, stress, fear? Why did she think she was missing out on something? She had been fine on her own. Just fine.
No, that’s not, true. You were lonely, she told herself.
She weaved her way through the line waiting for the desk clerk. She steeled herself, the way she did when entering a crime scene. This was different. So different.
The relief on Rachel’s face when she finally saw her made Julia’s stomach fall to her feet. She was looking to her partner for strength. That expectation, that obligation fell like a weight on Julia’s shoulders. She couldn’t do this. Didn’t have it in her.
Rachel reached for her hands.
“They’re running an IV. CariAnne’s really dehydrated.” Rachel’s lower lip trembled. There was something more. Julia could see it in her eyes. “They said other kids from the school are ill, too. They won’t tell me what all is going on.” She shot a look over her shoulder, not wanting CariAnne to hear her. “It’s bad. I think it’s really bad,” she whispered.
Her grip on Julia’s hands was so tight it hurt.
“I can’t lose her,” Rachel said.
“You’re not going to lose her.”
In the past Julia had always left herself escape hatches. She constructed them almost as soon as she entered a relationship. It was—she truly believed—a smart survival tactic. She never allowed herself to feel so much that she couldn’t resurface. She was Houdini, looking out for number one because if she didn’t, who would?
“Go back in with CariAnne,” she told Rachel.
“I’m so scared. Come with me.”
Julia cringed. So this was what it felt like to have your heart break.
“I’ll be right here,” she told Rachel. “There’s something I have to do.”
She was surprised how convincing she sounded. Rachel nodded, wiped her face, took one more squeeze of Julia’s hands, and went back to her daughter.
Julia leaned against the wall. She sucked in gulps of disinfected air. When she pulled out her cell phone, her fingers shook so much she could barely hit the correct numbers.
The phone rang forever and she was torn between anger and frustration. He wouldn’t recognize her number. Please don’t send me to voice message. She wouldn’t know what to say and she wouldn’t have the nerve to call again.
Finally an answer.
“This is Benjamin Platt.”
“I need a favor,” she said, forgetting to even tell him who was calling.
SIXTY-SEVEN
NEBRASKA
When Maggie finally cut the zip tie it didn’t immediately fall from her wrists. Blood had caked and dried around it, and she had to dig the plastic strip out of the deep groove it had cut into her flesh. She found alcohol under one of the stainless-steel counters. Opened the bottle, held her breath, and poured it onto her first wrist. She closed her eyes tight and almost bit through her lower lip trying to silence her scream.
Don’t pass out. You cannot pass out.
The second wrist was easier. Everything would be easier now that her hands were free.
She hadn’t needed any light once inside the field house. Her eyes had quickly adjusted to the glow from several tanks distributed throughout. Without much effort she had discovered a pair of pruning shears. It had taken several attempts at handling the shears before she cut the plastic tie.
Now she stashed the shears in the pocket of her shorts and hunted for a better weapon.
One section of the building looked like a high-tech laboratory. Another section looked like a small processing center. Opening the thick glass doors Maggie immediately felt the difference. A gust of warm, dry air hit her in the face. It smelled of dirt and plants.
A blue fluorescent track lit up paths in the floor similar to those on commercial airplanes. It was enough to maneuver through the maze. And enough to see the clusters of plants hanging to dry from the ceiling.
Maggie didn’t venture far into the room. There would be nothing here to help her. But as she turned to leave she recognized a bundle of leaves hanging in the rows of drying plants. Even in the fluorescent light she was pretty sure the leaves were similar to the ones in the plastic bag Lucy had found at the crime scene hidden underneath one of the boys. The size of the leaf, the shape—and what she could make out of the color—looked like Salvia divinorum.
Back in the main section of the building Maggie quickly made her way around the counters, opening drawers while watching both doors on the opposite side of the room. Huge fans turned on and off overhead obscuring her ability to hear. Someone could already be inside and she wouldn’t know until he came up behind her. She focused on her other senses. She could smell something wet and musty and saw that her running shoes were caked with a wet sandy mud. Earlier inside the SUV, she remembered that same odor. Had it come from Mike Griffin’s boots?
Didn’t Dawson say he could smell river mud? Now she understood where it came from.
Maggie tried to get a sense of where in the forest she was. What did Griffin tell her? He just wanted to scare the kids. Didn’t want them snooping around the field house. This had to be where they had gotten the salvia. If he wanted to frighten them away, that meant the field house was close to the crime scene.
She couldn’t spend any more time inside. She had already exceeded what she told herself was past high risk. She started to zigzag her way to the back door and that’s when she found the tall cabinet with glass doors, holding a contraption that looked like a rifle.
She went to get a closer look, stepping around one and then another stainless-steel counter. She didn’t see the foot, didn’t see the man hunched on the floor until she was on top
of him. She jumped back, ready to run. But the man didn’t move.
In the blue glow she could see his face—eyes wide open, blood trickling from his mouth. Without checking she knew Wesley Stotter was dead.
SIXTY-EIGHT
She had to keep moving.
Don’t stop. Don’t look back.
She could do this. That’s what Maggie told herself as she stumbled under the weight of the backpack with the rifle slung over her shoulder. Up ahead she saw the yellow crime-scene tape flapping from several trees. Just the sight pumped another surge of adrenaline. She could do this. She couldn’t think about Stotter right now. She had to focus on the task at hand.
She had fired an assortment of weapons. How much different could this be from an AK-47? Except that it was very different with cords and packs and an energy source instead of bullets. But she wouldn’t have time to study it. Lugging it was challenge enough. She had also helped herself to a pair of dirty white coveralls she found hanging by the door. She had rolled up the cuffs and the sleeves, pulling it over her shorts and sweatshirt. The warmth helped her ignore the extra bulk.
As soon as she left the field house she thought she heard him. Leaves crackled, a branch snapped. Griffin wouldn’t even need night-vision goggles to track her. But why let her leave with the rifle?
Because he doesn’t think you’ll be able to fire it.
She pushed the thought out of her mind.
For a rare moment the cicadas were quiet but Maggie couldn’t hear Griffin. Again, he was giving her a head start.
Cocky son of a bitch.
She thought she heard a car door slam but she could no longer see the field house or the clearing. He knew she wouldn’t get far. He’d stop and get what he needed.