Page 88 of Edge of Danger

Ian stretched out beside her on the narrow double bed, their shoulders and elbows rubbing. He asked absently, “What does the onset of Ebola look like?”

“Flu-like symptoms. Fever. Body aches. Maybe some vomiting and diarrhea. The heavy bleeding doesn’t happen until the end, and it doesn’t happen in every case. But then, we’re not dealing with plain-jane Ebola. No telling what other effects Yusef’s strain will have.

“The girls in the body bags had red eyeballs.”

“That’s from capillary hemorrhaging. All the small capillaries in their bodies ruptured. They probably had full body bruising,too. Bloody stool, bloating, and skin lesions wouldn’t be surprising once the real hemorrhaging kicks in.”

“So we’re going to die horrible, painful deaths?” he murmured.

“I try not to think about it,” she murmured back. “And we don’t know for sure that we were exposed. Maybe we dodged the bullet.”

“Is anybody sick in Las Vegas, yet?” he asked.

“No idea. I bet that CDC guy is thinking about us, right about now. Bet he’s not calling us crazy anymore.”

Ian snorted. “He’s still in denial. He’ll have to be knee-deep in dead bodies before he believes there’s a crisis.”

“He may get to experience that,” she mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.

Ian stared at the ceiling as Piper napped beside him. This was seriously not how he’d planned to leave this world. He felt so damned helpless just sitting around waiting for an invisible little virus to lay him low. Restless, he got out of bed and rooted around in the go bags he and Piper had been hauling around with them since D.C.

The survival equipment inside was adequate for a trained soldier to live off the land for many weeks if necessary. He and Piper should just take the gear and go. Run for the hills and get away from any other human beings. Just the two of them. No exposure to killer fevers, no outsiders judging them. No jobs. No missions.

That would be nice.

Except she wouldn’t do it any more than he would, at the end of the day. They were both soldiers in their hearts of hearts. They lived to serve a higher purpose.

She’d been calmer about losing her job than he’d expected. And she was still out here risking her neck in spite of having been canned. That said a lot about her core character.

She was more like him than she cared to admit. Or maybe thanhe’dcared to admit up till now. Lord knew, she’d flown to his defense last night when that blonde was crawling all over him. It had been pretty cute, actually.

Unable to sleep, he left the motel and found a convenience store. He loaded up on water and non-perishable food, surprised word wasn’t out yet in this area and that there hadn’t already been a run on this little store. Grateful for small blessings, he took his purchases and headed back to the motel.

Piper was pacing the room restlessly when he unlocked the door. “Thank God!” she cried out. “They’ve cut off all the phones, and the television is out.”

“Is the TV itself not working, or is the cable service down?” he asked with interest.

“Whole cable company is shut down according to the desk clerk. And the phone land lines are out, too.”

“Uncle Sam’s not going to be able to sit on this for too much longer,” Ian commented.

“Which makes me think the PHP will have to make its move soon. As infrastructure is taken off line, doing whatever they’re going to do will get harder,” she replied.

“Stop pacing. You’ll wear a hole in the linoleum,” he muttered. She spun to face him, wringing her hands. Noting the unconscious gesture, he asked, “What’s wrong, Piper?”

“What if this was my family’s plan all along?” she wailed. “To get all these modern services turned off while Las Vegas is quarantined?”

He answered slowly, “I think you father will reach for something larger than merely getting the TV and phones shut down for a while.” He grabbed her hands and forcibly stilledthem. “Breathe, baby. Calm down. I need you thinking on all cylinders. In your estimation, would a telephone and television service interruption be enough for your father to feel like he’d made his point?”

She exhaled hard a few times. Then looked up at him in distress. One more hard breath out, and then, “No. It’s not enough. He’ll do more.”

Ian spoke soothingly. “It’s heading toward noon now. Why don’t we go over to the airport and get the lay of the land before it gets too hot?”

“Action. That would be good. I need to do something.Weneed to do something.”

She had as bad a case of pre-mission jitters as he’d ever seen. “Easy, darlin’,” he murmured. “All in good time. The world’s not going to end in the next few minutes.”

Although, truth be told, it might. He had no idea what was going on in the city behind them, and he didn’t want to think about it. More than most people, he knew how fast the veneer of civilization fell away when people thought they and their loved ones were going to die.

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