But now she had a future husband—Kay heard from everyone that Metal asked Felicity to marry him daily, and she’d accepted without setting a date—and she was expecting twins. A full, happy household. “At least you know your kids will be gorgeous and have IQs off the charts.”
Felicity’s father had been a Nobel Prize winner in physics and she herself had been tested at genius level.
“Yeah.” Metal tried to smile, but his big plain face was creased with worry.
“She’s got morning sickness,” Nick said.
“Morning, noon, afternoon, evening and night sickness,” Metal answered. “It’s awful.”
“Oh my God.” Kay was horrified. “I asked her to decrypt those files while she was sick? I didn’t know! I had no idea, I would never have asked her if I’d known—”
“Nah.” Metal held up a huge hand. “There was no way to stop her. As a matter of fact, she was so engrossed in your files that she wasn’t sick for hours. A first. So thanks for that. And Felicity would have kicked me in the balls if I’d tried to stop her. You did her, and me, a big favor.”
He was half turned toward the back of the vast room, his hand clutching the back of the chair so tightly his knuckles were white. He was champing at the bit to get to Felicity.
“Go see how she’s doing, Metal,” Kay said gently. “It’s up to me now. As soon as I know anything, I’ll let you know.” He blew out a breath of relief and was already on his way to Felicity when she called him back. “Metal!”
He stopped himself with difficulty—he was practically vibrating with impatience.
“Send me John, if you can.”
He nodded and nearly ran across the room.
A minute later, John Huntington popped up on the screen. He was in his private office, which was amazingly elegant and as silent as a church.
He was…intimidating. That was the only word for it. Sharply handsome, he always looked grim and cold. The people who worked for him worshipped him, but Kay was just a little—a teensy bit—frightened of him.
He was one of the good guys. He’d founded one of the best security companies in the world. He’d managed to make a beautiful, gentle, highly creative woman fall in love with him and he had two little girls he hadn’t eaten like the big bad wolf. Yet.
But still she was a little scared.
“Dr. Hudson.” That cold, handsome face looked, as usual, as if he’d just received news that World War III had broken out.
“Mr. Huntington.”
He dipped his head, lifted it. She swore his eyes could see inside her head though he was in the heart of Portland and she was on the slopes of Mount Hood. “Good to see you alive and well, Dr. Hudson.” His dark eyes shifted to the man behind her. “I am counting on you to keep her that way, Nick.”
“Yeah. You can count on me.” Nick respected John Huntington a lot, but he wasn’t intimidated like she was.
“This feels like bad business, Nick.” Huntington scowled.
“It is bad business, sir.”
Kay lifted her hand and Nick grabbed it, held it. He might have thought it was her way of showing John Huntington that they were together, but that wasn’t it. John unnerved her.
“Mike Hammer’s body was recovered and autopsied. The ME said that if he hadn’t been ordered to carry out the autopsy, he wouldn’t have bothered. He said it looked like a natural death.” Huntington’s eyes narrowed.
“Except that he drowned in a back alley.”
Huntington dipped his head again. “Exactly. His lungs were full of fluid.”
“Not water.” Kay shook her head. “Transudates.”
He briefly consulted a sheet in front of him. “Exactly.”
This was safer ground; this was her field. “I understand Captain Morrison asked for the blood panel to be tested for cytokines.”
He dipped his head again. “As you asked. And again, he said he wouldn’t have tested for cytokines if there hadn’t been a special request.
“And the count was high.”
“Off the charts. I assume that is significant.”
Time to share what she knew. The time for secrecy was gone. “Very significant. I need to study Dr. Anand’s files, but I suspect that someone—probably a biochemist called Bill Morrell—perfected a bio-weaponized form of the Spanish flu.”
Huntington winced. “Didn’t that kill off more people in 1918 than World War I?”
“It did. This one will be worse.” She nodded, while keeping eye contact. “This version is highly aggressive, fast-acting and airborne. From what I observed, the weaponized virus is in aerosol form, in this case delivered by drone.”
His mouth tightened. “Insane. We could have a pandemic on our hands.”
“We could, yes. But I think something else is happening, something less devastating to society but highly dangerous all the same.”
He leaned forward a little. “Something else?”
She put it in words for the first time. “I suspect that the virus has been encoded with specific DNA.”
He just stared, looking blank.
“In other words, the weaponized virus is being tailored to specific people. That virus was encoded to Mike Hammer’s DNA and not mine, which is why he died and I walked away. They didn’t know I was going to be there, so they only prepared the virus for him. They could have gotten his DNA from anywhere. Hair from a hairbrush, a glass he’d drunk out of, a plate, a tiny bit of blood from a cut.”
He looked stunned. “How is that possible? Something that is lethal for one person and not another? Wouldn’t it take a vast scientific apparatus?”
“Well, the CDC is a vast scientific apparatus in itself. It can be done using a machine called a CRISPR-Cas9. CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. It’s a machine for editing genes.”
“But that’s—”
“A perfect murder weapon. A virus tailored to someone’s DNA, delivered by drone. Essentially a natural death, put down to a sudden allergic attack, a stroke or a heart attack. The murderer can be far away, guiding the drone by a tablet, waiting for the right moment. Who knows how many people have been killed so far.”
“My God.” His jaw tightened. “Shouldn’t we—”
“Shouldn’t we what, Mr. Huntington? Look for sudden deaths with high cytokine counts? Most of the bodies won’t have been autopsied. The cytokines dissipate quickly. And it would be the job of the CDC to note this kind of pattern. I think—”
Her throat seized up. Just saying the words hurt, like knives slicing her inside. She swallowed and when she spoke, her voice was a raw whisper. “I think the CDC is involved. We can’t go to them. Do you think your police captain friend can inquire discreetly about any sudden unexplained deaths nationwide?”
His eyes narrowed and he looked more dangerous than ever. “Count on it.”
“A deadly virus tailored to a specific person’s DNA is incredibly dangerous. You can widen the scope. You could target an individual, a family, a tribe. Without endangering anyone who might be physically close who doesn’t share DNA with the victim. It’s the perfect weapon, surgically precise. We have to stop this. Imagine being able to target a people in the Middle East, a family in Washington, one specific person in a crowd.”
“Someone’s going to pay for this,” he said in a deep, low voice.
Kay repressed a shudder. Huntington was scary in a way Nick, Metal, Joe and Jacko weren’t. His partner, too, was frightening. Former SEAL Senior Chief Douglas Kowalski, who was not only terrifying but spectacularly ugly.
Both of them were worshipped by the men under them.
And loved fiercely by two gentle, elegant, artistic women.
Go figure.
Whatever her personal feelings, though, this man and his partner had made the entire resources of their company—and they were considerable—available to her. They were making a real effort to keep her safe and to help her unravel the mystery. She was nothing to him. A friend of one of his e
mployees. However important to the company Felicity was, Kay wasn’t a sister or a cousin. Was he doing this for Nick? Nick had made it clear that his first priority was Kay, and they seemed to be okay with that.
She owed them. She owed them her best efforts to finish this quickly and well.
They’d done their share. More than their share. Now it was up to her. Well, this was what she did. She wasn’t a warrior, she wasn’t a computer genius. But this?
“Okay, Mr. Huntington—”
“John,” he said. His lips moved in what for normal people would be a smile.
“What?”
“You must call me John.”
Her own smile froze. “Of—of course.” God. It would be like calling the Pope “Frank”. There was only one thing to say. “And you must call me Kay. Remember, John. This is pure conjecture. I think I’m right, but I’ll know for sure only after studying the data on the flash drive.”
“You guys stay out of sight for the moment. I’m liaising with Captain Morrison and I’ll let you know what emerges from the investigation.”
She leaned closer to the screen. “Hammer was killed by a drone.”
“Yeah. We got that. Felicity traced the frequency back to a spot on the road. It was being piloted by someone in a vehicle who then left. We’re working on that. Soon we’ll know who was piloting it. One way or another, we’re hoping to wrap this thing up soon.”
Soon. They were in a hurry. Kay nodded. “I imagine you need Nick back in the office.”
A veil of coldness dropped across his face. Just amazing. She realized that he had been warm and fuzzy before in contrast to now. Now he looked like he was about to kill someone. “No. That’s not it. Yeah, we’d like Nick to come back when he can, but he’s doing good work right where he is. This company doesn’t stand for murder, for threats to good people. And I’ve heard enough to understand that there’s the possibility of a dangerous bio-weapon in play that could go wide. We were born to fight things like this. And we will. We’ll talk soon.”
The monitor winked off.
It was like a powerful source of energy had just been switched off and Kay slumped in her chair.
“He’s something, isn’t he?” Nick asked, amused.
It was very cool in what she thought of as the command module. All those electronics. The chill in the air was the only thing that stopped her from sweating like a pig. John Huntington was a force of nature.
“I’ll say.” She switched gears, turning to face Nick. “So—Felicity’s pregnant. How long have you known?”
“Couple of days now.”
“Do you think she’s freaked?” During Kay’s visits and when they Skyped, she and Felicity had talked about this. Metal was eager, really impatient to start a family. Felicity wanted to start one too but, unlike Metal, she’d never really been part of a happy family. She doubted herself, not Metal.
Kay didn’t doubt for a second that Metal would make a great father. Metal’s father had been an incredible role model and his uncles were all really good family men. Felicity’s parents had been cold and secretive, shutting her out. She said she wasn’t too sure she was cut out to be a good mom.
“Yeah. Metal’s more freaked, though.”
“He is? Felicity said he was really ready, raring to go.”
“Mm.” Nick smiled grimly. “He didn’t calculate that in order to have kids, Felicity would have to be pregnant. Apparently, she’s having problems and it’s making his head explode. He wants kids with Felicity but he doesn’t want her to have to be pregnant.”
“Little cognitive dissonance there. Hard to have the one without the other.”
“Well, they’ll work it out. Eventually, Felicity will give birth. To two kids at once. That’s really super-efficient, just like her. Now.” Nick leaned forward, grasping the arms of her chair. His face was sober and serious. “There’s not much I can do to help you go through the files, but I can fetch and carry and make sure you’re comfortable.” His hand lifted, moved over her hair in a caress. “I suggest you stay here, it’s the place where there’s the most computing power. You can have music if you want. Any kind except heavy metal. Drives me crazy.”
Okay, so cool dude Nick Mancino didn’t do heavy metal. Interesting. Kay usually worked to new age music or Mozart. But when she had heavy-duty focusing to do, she needed silence.
“No, no heavy metal, promise. As a matter of fact, I think I’d prefer silence.”
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “You got it. Anything else?”
“I understand that the room needs to remain cool because of all the electronics but it’s too cold if I’m going to be sitting in a chair. I’ll need a sweater and socks. And while you’re at it, some water, fruit and hot tea at hand. A Thermos would be great. Any kind of herbal tea. If Isabel stocked up, there’s bound to be plenty of herbal tea.”
“Dunno, I’m a coffee guy myself, but I’ll look around. Be back in a second.”
Okay, she thought, as she brought the contents of the flash drive up on the monitor in front of her. She also threw the data up on one of the big screens.
She scrolled, tapped on the screen, scrolled some more. The material was organized into several subsets. One was Bill’s normal work files, going back two years. That data had had normal CDC encryption, the same encryption all of them followed. His files were similar to her own, except of course he’d been working on different projects. But the structure was similar, and familiar.
She selected that data out, and threw it up on a second wall screen.
He had an extensive database of ongoing research throughout the world on Spanish flu and flu viruses. She recognized most of the papers. These were selected and put up on another monitor.
Basic research on viruses and gene manipulation. Selected and thrown up on a fourth monitor.
His work emails—up on a fifth.
Hello. There was a section that had been subjected only to his own heavy-duty encryption, not the CDC’s. Which meant it had never been on the CDC servers. This was his private email.
She opened the files, scrolling through the headings. Bingo. Goose pimples rose on her arms and neck.
Nick appeared by her side holding a tray. He placed a pitcher of water, a Thermos, a glass and a cup on the desk. A platter with grapes and peeled orange sections. A pile of sandwiches on whole wheat bread.
He placed a heavy sweater on her shoulders. Kay bent her nose toward her shoulder and smelled clean wool and fabric softener.
Nick smiled at her and dropped a knee to the ground.
She blinked at him. What on earth… Oh.
He slid her slippers off her feet and put on soft, thick socks, then put the slippers back on. She’d been so engrossed in separating out Bill’s files, she’d forgotten she was cold.
“Better?” he smiled up at her, still kneeling.
It should have been a ridiculous position, on one knee at her feet, but he made it super macho and super sexy. There was absolutely nothing submissive about him. With Nick kneeling at her feet, she could see how incredibly broad his shoulders were, how thickly muscled his thighs. He could have been a knight awaiting orders, but a knight who could slay dragons.
His mouth was tipped in a half smile, dark eyes gleaming behind half-closed eyelids.
A flash of heat that had nothing whatsoever to do with the sweater and socks shot through her and damn, he could tell. Like Felicity’s, her skin was like a sensor for her emotions. She might as well have had a sign flashing on her forehead. Hormonal female in heat.
“Down boy,” she said.
“Ah, but darling, I am down,” Nick answered, and grinned. “Down for the count. Completely at your mercy and at your feet.”
Yeah, right.
Kay spread her hand over his jaw, feeling the scruff of his five o’clock shadow even though in these antiseptic surroundings, she had no idea if it was five o’clock or not. None of the monitors showed the time, either. They would show time if she press
ed the right button. They would show the time of any time zone on earth, since ASI operated around the globe.
His skin felt warm beneath her palm. Their eyes locked. He still had her foot on his knee, big hand loosely holding her ankle. His hand tightened, his eyes tightened. If she dropped her gaze, she would undoubtedly see something else tighten and grow.
She didn’t even dare give a sigh because they were both on hair triggers. Nick’s hand around her ankle loosened a little and he began sliding it up.
She closed her eyes, savoring the feeling. His calloused skin against the tender flesh of her calf felt so exciting. He’d done the exact same thing in the hotel room, only his hand had continued the journey up her shaking thigh until he’d reached the apex. She’d been warm and wet and aching.
Like now.
Only they weren’t in a hotel room. They were on the run.
“Nick…” She barely had the breath to get the word out.
His hand froze. His dark, glittering eyes never wavered from her face.
“Not now?” His voice was low, rough.
She couldn’t talk, could barely breathe. Her heart drummed in her chest. She shook her head.
Slowly, as if it hurt, Nick lifted his hand from her leg. Shockingly, her skin felt chilled at the loss of his touch.
“Okay, okay.” Nick winced as he rose to his feet. It was easy to see why he was wincing. Under the jeans his erection was visible.
“Ouch?” She sketched a smile.
“Ouch,” he confirmed. He leaned forward, kissed her on the forehead. “I’m going to hobble away now and nurse my dashed hopes. You drink that tea and eat those sandwiches. You’re not going to starve on my watch.”
She smiled. “No, sir, I guess I’m not.”
Nick put a slick rectangle of dark Gorilla Glass on the desk. “If you need anything, yell. If I don’t come right away…” He swiped at the dark glass, which lit up at his touch. The screen had a big red button on it. “Press this.”