Page 50 of Devil
Darius started to ask something but stopped when her phone rang. Seeing it was Six, Devil hit the Bluetooth button and brought the call up on her car’s system. “Did the CDC make it out there?” she asked.
“What the fuck, Devil? Are you and Darius okay?”
Devil couldn’t help the smile that teased her lips. “Hopefully,” she said. Darius chuckled. Gallows humor was a real thing.
“Not fucking funny,” Cyn chimed in.
“I guess this warrants a conference call. Is Nora there, too?” she asked.
“Of course,” Nora responded, not sounding at all happy with the situation.
“Darius and I touched nothing.” That wasn’t exactly true. Darius had touched the map. And the notebook he’d taken was in a plastic bag in her trunk. But she’d tell her friends about that later, when they weren’t quite as high-strung. “We wore masks and gloves and when we left, we ran through a decontamination process. It was makeshift, since I didn’t have everything I needed. But so far, it’s been a few hours and we’re not showing symptoms. What news are you getting? I assume the CDC made it out to Jennifer Pritchard’s farm?”
“They did, and they have a full containment unit over both the building hosting the lab and her house. Jennifer Pritchard’s body has been secured and will be flown down to Atlanta for testing in an isolated facility,” Six answered.
“There is some good news, though,” Cyn said.
“We could use some good news,” Darius said.
“It looks like Jennifer’s infection might have been a true accident rather than something else,” Cyn answered.
“What does that mean?” Darius asked.
“From the chatter we’re hearing from the CDC unit manager, it looks like she dropped a vial of the virus and it got into her system through a cut in her hand,” Cyn answered.
Devil glanced at Darius. “The blood and broken glass I saw in the lab,” she said. He nodded, recalling her find. “What about the ventilation system?” she asked. “It looked industrial grade. But did it have all the right filters to prevent the virus from escaping or circulating back through the system?” That’s what she’d been most concerned with. Usually, transmission of smallpox came through prolonged face-to-face contact, but given the strength of what Jennifer had created, transmission through a subpar ventilation system wasn’t far-fetched.
“It did. Based on what we’re hearing, it was actually quite advanced for a home system,” Nora responded, confirming Devil’s initial observations and relieving her of a little worry.
“Okay, so given that we didn’t touch anything and wore masks, we’re probably okay. But Stella’s people will test us once we get to DC,” she said. “Any news on Sonia and Nadia? Stella updated me on the Lam sisters.”
“I know this sounds judgy,” Six said, making everyone laugh because Six was not one to ever hold back her opinions, “but Sonia and Nadia are pretty boring. I mean, other than being involved in what they are involved in, they don’t seem todoanything.”
“They’ve been a little more active on social media these days,” Cyn jumped in. “And interestingly, their posts have become more…I don’t know that I’d sayreligious, but definitely spiritual with some dogma attached to it.”
“Islamic postings?” Darius asked.
“Yes, but mostly inspirational posts. Not the kind of snippets that zealots grab from their religious texts to justify all sorts of horrible things. In fact, some of the quotes are quite lovely,” Cyn answered.
“What about the dogma part?” Devil asked Cyn.
“They usually accompany the quote with a personal post, and the post is more orthodox than the quote itself,” she answered.
“Anything about the Uyghur community?” Darius asked.
“In a few, yes. A couple of posts call attention to the situation and frame it in such a way as to highlight the persecution of Muslims.”
“Given what’s going on in the country, they aren’t far off,” Devil said. “Although the persecution is as much cultural as it is religious.”
“Do their kids post anything about their mothers?” Darius asked.
“Hmm, interesting question, Commander,” Cyn said. “I actually looked this morning. Except for one post by Sonia’s son from eighteen months ago talking about how religious his mother had become since he’d left for college, neither of their children post about their mothers.”
“That’s it?” Devil asked.
“How many kids in their early twenties do you know that post publicly about their parents?” Six asked.
Devil laughed. “Okay, fair enough. Cyn, can you find out if the Lam sisters are invited to the embassy dinner Wednesday night?”
