Page 76 of Devil
She was tempted to ignore him but couldn’t bring herself to do it. “I agree, but we don’t have more, and we need to find the virus.”
“We have time. The president isn’t supposed to even arrive for how long?” Darius asked.
“Three hours at least,” Li Wei answered.
She hesitated. Darius was right. They had time, and it wouldn’t take long to get proper gear. She turned to agree, but the words never came. The back of the plane jolted, dropping the tail a good three feet, then jerked up again just as quickly.
Her hands shot out, using the walls to brace herself, and she spun her head to look at Li Wei. He and Darius were also regaining their feet. “The attachment to drain the water,” Li Wei said. “They must have just locked it in place and started the drain. It’s jarring.”
“Understatement,” Darius muttered.
Lily almost laughed, but a cool feeling of something dripping down her hand caught her attention. Yanking her hand back from the panel it had come to rest on when she’d reached out to steady herself, she looked down. Several drops of a clear liquid were easing their way across her skin and preparing to drip onto the ground by her feet.
Fear locked her body as she realized that the fluid was seeping from under the edge of the panel above the one she’d braced against.
Her eyes jerked back down to her hand in time to see the substance turn pink against her skin. She’d cut herself on the paneling, and a tiny drop of her blood combined with the clear liquid as it passed over the small incision.
“Lily,” Darius said.
In dawning horror, she looked up. First to her cousin, and then into the eyes of the man who’d come to mean more to her than she thought a man ever would. His eyes dropped to her hand, then went to the panel behind her. Finally, they sought hers again, and he reached out.
And without an ounce of hesitation, she kicked the door shut, locking it in place. And locking him out.
Darius banged on the door, but she ignored him and focused on the cabinets in front of her. With everything she had in her, she started pulling at wires, panels, filters, and anything she could get her hands on to shut the system down. She even vaguely recalled yelling to Li Wei to order the pilots to shut it down from their controls in case she wasn’t successful.
She didn’t know how much time passed, but slowly, silence seeped into her consciousness. There was very little left intact in the cabinets in front of her and no sounds of air moving through the system.
But there was Darius, still banging on the door. She knew her cousin well enough to know he wouldn’t open it. Not until he was certain they could do so safely. He had an obligation to his people, to his president, and she didn’t begrudge him that.
Not wanting to think about what might await her, she pulled out her phone and sent a text to the club. She didn’t want to sound like she’d given up, but she wanted to tell them one more time she loved them. When that was done, she phoned Darius.
And it was his voice she was listening to when the fever racked her body and she slipped into unconsciousness.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE
Heavy.She was weighted to something. A bed? Was she tied down? No, not that, not tied down, but why couldn’t she move? Maybe Darius was keeping her still again? That thought brought a flicker of a smile, or at least in her mind it did.
Devil moved her fingers. Soft cotton greeted her fingertips. Sheets. But why was it so hard to wake up, and what was making her nose twitch? Rather than focus on the delicious warmth surrounding her and the boneless fatigue pulling her back into sleep, she concentrated on the annoying thing brushing up against her nostrils. She needed to drag herself to wakefulness if she wanted any answers to her questions.
Slowly, she tested her eyes behind the lids. They moved on command. That was good, right? Now to convince her eyelids to open. Bracing herself mentally, she first tried to squeeze them closed. There, that worked. If she could squeeze them tighter, then surely she could open them, too.
And then she did. Not with slow fluttering movements, but with a start. They were closed one moment and the next they were open. Then closed again. It was so bright, too bright.
“Dr. Devillier,” a voice said. A male voice. But not Darius’s.
Giving herself time to adjust to the light, she opened her eyes more slowly this time. Blinking several times until the light no longer bothered her, she then slid her gaze to where the voice had come from. And frowned. There was a man there. And he definitely wasn’t the one she’d expected, or hoped, to see.
“Highb—” her voice croaked. Instantly Alex Highborn was on his feet.
“Water?” he asked. She nodded and watched as he filled a plastic cup, dropped a straw in, and brought it to her lips. She took one sip, then several more. When she drank what she needed—but not quite what she wanted—she rested her head back on the pillow.
“Not that I’m complaining, but I wasn’t supposed to wake up,” she managed to say.
Alex Highborn remained beside her bed, concern etched on his face. “She couldn’t do it. In the end, Jen—Dr. Pritchard—couldn’t do it. The virus she sent down wasn’t the same one that killed her. It was a flu strain. A virulent one, but not smallpox.”
But flus could be bad, too. Deadly.
“Are you supposed to be in here?” she asked, looking around the room. The flu might not be as bad as smallpox, but if it had knocked her out, shouldn’t they be concerned about contagion?
