Page 77 of Devil
“They ran some tests shortly after you got here. Short of you coughing in anyone’s face for ten minutes straight, or into an open wound, you’re not that contagious. It wasn’t an aerosol infection that got you, it was the cut in your hand.”
She lifted her hand. An IV line ran into one of her veins, and a small bandage was taped over the cut she’d received in the airplane. As she looked, everything came rushing back. The small room, the ventilation system, discovering it was really Crawford and not Highborn responsible for everything. She remembered the moment it had clicked. Not once had Tina mentioned a man; it had always been a woman. They’d assumed she’d meant Jennifer Pritchard, but then Devil had remembered that the calls from that number had come from DC. Sabina had also never mentioned any calls between Pritchard’s and Tina’s phones.
It had been a woman Tina had talked to, but it hadn’t ever been Pritchard.
“Why did Crawford do it?”
Highborn sat down in a heavy sort of motion. Wiping a hand across his face, he paused, then answered. “The oldest reason in the book.”
She frowned. “Love or money?”
He gave a dark smile. “Both, I suppose, but mostly the former, or some twisted version of it.” He took a deep breath. “She was furious that I’d broken up with her last year. She had it in her head that I did it because I thought she wasn’t good enough for me. Or that my family thought she wasn’t good enough. She went to all this trouble because she wanted me to fail at my first team lead assignment. She wanted to embarrass me and show the world I wasn’t as great as I thought I was. Or that she thought I thought I was.”
Devil watched the man seated beside her. After a moment, he spoke again.
“I broke up with her because there wasn’t any chemistry between us. Friendship, yes. Or so I thought, but not chemistry. But as for my family, the ironic thing is, nothing is ever good enough for them. Back at Yale, that was what Jen and I bonded over when we met our first year. We both had fathers with expectations we were never able to meet. My family’s feelings about Sandra Crawford were never personal.”
Oddly, Devil felt a kinship with this man. He’d dismissed her claims when she’d first spoken to him, and she hadn’t been impressed at all. But here, now, he was human. He’d come through as an agent as well, but that wasn’t what she was identifying with. Like her, his family expectations had informed him, but hadn’t led him. He’d chosen his own path.
“How did she do it?”
He lifted his gaze and met hers. “We’re still sorting it all out, but near as we can tell, she met Tina when I brought her to a work event over the holidays. It was right after Sandra and I had broken up. Sandra seemed fine with it, but…” He paused, took a breath, then continued. “Crawford knew Jen, too. They didn’t know each other well, but they’d met at several events over the years and were friendly enough.
“We think Crawford played on Jen’s desire to prove herself to her father. We’re almost certain that Sandra had her convinced that one way to prove herself to her father was if shesavedthe world from a virus.”
“A virus she created,” Devil said, and he nodded.
“We’re piecing everything together as we interview everyone,” he said. “Sandra isn’t talking much, but the other four are.”
“Tina didn’t seem to know that Sandra had intended to release a virus more like smallpox,” Devil said.
“Sonia Trimble and Nadia Mitchel didn’t either. They were told it was a flu virus and would only make people mildly sick. None of them had any intention of causing the kind of mayhem Sandra had planned. Of course, that doesn’t mitigate their involvement in the entire plot, but for what it’s worth, it’s good to know they all aren’t bloodthirsty.”
Something niggled in her mind, then she frowned. “Was that you who attacked Darius at Jennifer Pritchard’s house?”
He nodded. “Sorry about that. Like I said on the plane, Sandra had been acting strangely and I kept picking up unusual signals from her. I couldn’t put a finger on it, but I’d started investigating her four months ago, all unofficially, of course. I followed her up to Jennifer’s place that day. When I got there, I realized Jen had locked herself in the bathroom and was already really sick. In those moments, I lost sight of Crawford. I was about to leave and call 911 when you both arrived. I didn’t know who you were, nor did I want to get caught with Jennifer’s body. I knew she was dying.” His voice faltered at her name, but he continued. “I knew she was dying, but she told me to go. She didn’t want me around. Like I said, I didn’t know who you were. So when Washington chased me, I wanted to be sure he couldn’t follow me or identify the car I drove. I already apologized to him,” he added with a chagrined look.
“Why didn’t you say anything when we met you outside the embassy on Tuesday?”
“Istilldidn’t know who you were. You were just someone my supervisor told me to meet. And I was still unsure about Sandra. I didn’t want her to think I agreed with you and put her on alert before I knew what she was up to.”
Devil wasn’t so sure about his logic. He could have reached out at any time after the meeting when Crawford wasn’t around. But hindsight and all that…
“Did Crawford kill Dr. Pritchard?” she asked.
Highborn shook his head. “Jen really was destroying the virus that morning and had an accident.”
What a terrible, though ironically just, way for her to die. Not that Devil wished her dead, but…
“If Jen backed out at the last minute, why send anything at all? She could have easily put water in a vial.”
Highborn looked away, then gave a small shake of his head. “I don’t know. Maybe she was afraid Sandra would test it and if nothing happened, she’d come after her? Hopefully, if we can get Sandra to talk, the picture will become clearer.”
“What about the funding?”
Alex shot her a dark look. “That much we figured out. Sandra met an exec from a pharma company on one of her trips to Switzerland. He funded her. No doubt in the hopes of making it all back when his company produced the vaccine Jen was supposed to develop. There’s a warrant out for his arrest, but he’s on the run.”
Rolling her head to look up at the ceiling, the information floated through her mind. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been silent, but suddenly she realized that her room didn’t look quite like a regular hospital. “Where am I?” she asked.
