Page 47 of Devil
“Do you have anyone who can run a test for smallpox on the down-low?”
Silence. “Smallpox?”
Devil almost cringed at the tone of Stella’s voice, part stunned, part disbelieving, and part terrified. There was no question Stella now grasped the potential magnitude of what she’d only been peripherally involved in up to now.
Devil sped up and passed a semi-truck. The drive would take them over five hours. If her assumptions about Jennifer’s virus were anywhere close to accurate, a test might not be necessary. She or Darius would already be experiencing symptoms before they even reached Alexandria if they’d been infected. But if they weren’t sick in the next several hours, a test would go a long way to easing her mind.
“A variation of the virus, actually,” Devil answered. “I didn’t have a chance to research it as much as I would have liked. But basically, it’s a stitched-together version of smallpox, so nothing you would have seen before. Which also means it might be hard to test for if you don’t have the right equipment.”
“Is that what the Lam sisters went to New York for?” Stella asked.
“We believe so, yes. But they have a target in mind, and they won’t use it for anything else.”
“You know who or what that is? Something to do with Dragonwatch? The site they were on?”
“I suspect it’s the Chinese president, who arrives tomorrow for a visit. It’s unlikely the Lam sisters will get anywhere near the White House dinner or the trade talks. But with Tina’s ties to the Chinese Council, I think it’s possible that the dinner hosted at the Chinese embassy might be where it happens.” Which meant that they had forty-eight hours to figure out, then thwart, the plan. Half of which, she and Darius might need to be in isolation for.
“This is getting curiouser and curiouser,” Stella said. “To answer your original question, yes, we have someone who can run that test. We have a lab on-site and while it’s not big, it is equipped with the latest and greatest. Since you need to isolate, we’ll get the house stocked with provisions before you arrive. We’ll also leave a blood collection kit in the kitchen. If you can do the draw, then leave the samples in the mailbox—which has a lock—I’ll send our people by to pick it up. I assume it’s going to be late?”
“I’m sorry, but yes. We’re on the New York Thruway already and if we don’t hit too much traffic, we should be there by ten. With traffic…”
“Who the hell knows,” Stella finished. “No worries, we’ll get it taken care of. I’ll text you the address of the house and the information about how to access it. Let me know once you have the samples ready, and we’ll pick them up right away.”
“You’re the best. Thank you.”
Stella chuckled again. “I am pretty badass, aren’t I? Drive safe, and we’ll talk later.”
They ended the call, and although Devil was grateful that the house and testing situations were under control, she wasn’t feeling good about the situation in general. The break-ins had been concerning, and Dr. Gerard Pritchard’s illness alarming. But it wasn’t until she’d seen Pritchard’s notes in her lab, then listened to her ragged, struggling breaths as the virus consumed her body, that the controlled panic had set in. Whatever Jennifer had created was not only deadly, but it was fast. And chances were, if the Lam sisters went after the president, more than one innocent person would get caught in the crosshairs.
CHAPTERTWENTY
“What about the dosing chart?”Darius asked, interrupting Devil’s musings. She glanced over. He was sitting with his elbow on the door and his head resting in his palm. He looked tired, and she’d bet her house he had a minor concussion. But she still wasn’t feeling particularly gracious toward him.
Without responding, she opened an app using the dashboard screen, then refocused her attention on the road. She couldn’t ignore him forever, and she’d answer his question shortly, but she wanted to ground herself before she spoke to him.
“What’s that?” he asked, gesturing to the dashboard screen. An easier question.
“Radar detector,” she said as she switched lanes and accelerated. Her car purred, as if it had been waiting all along for this moment. Devil wasn’t much of a car person, but she did love her Porsche.
“The dosing chart?” he asked again when they were cruising closer to ninety-five than the sixty-five-mile-per-hour limit.
“I think it’s safe to say we know what it applies to now. I’m not sure why Jennifer felt the need to deliver the dosage chart separately from the virus itself, though.” She felt as though she was pushing the words out of her mouth, forcing herself to engage when what she really wanted to do was live inside her head for the rest of the drive. They needed to talk this through, but still…
“Maybe they needed to prepare for how they plan to give it to him, and the virus wasn’t quite ready yet?” he suggested.
Devil shrugged. “Possibly, although that would be alarming since the dosage should be based on the final product. If she created the chart before she finalized the virus, the chart could be off.”
“Any chance it could be off enough in our favor?” The tone of his voice told her she didn’t need to answer that, but she did anyway.
“I think we both know that if the intent is to kill the president, then the dosage chart was probably drafted with a big margin of error. Erring on the side of ‘more of the virus is better.’”
“So the time it takes to become symptomatic will probably be less than what is noted for that dosage?”
Devil inclined her head. “That would be my guess.”
“Any ideas on how to estimate that?”
She shook her head.
