I’m sure you can understand—”
“I understand that we ain’t got no suits.”
A wave of murmured “Yeahs” rippled through the crowd. Their growing restlessness had the hairs prick-ling on the back of Clint’s neck. Trouble was brewing. The lady was in over her head. She didn’t know these people. Didn’t understand that they weren’t city folk, conditioned to expect the unexpected. They lived a quiet, routine life. The possibility of being at the epicenter of an epidemic was going to scare the hell out of them. And fear could make people do crazy things.
“I seen those people on TV,” Deputy Sheriff Slick Burgress spoke up, finger-combing his long mustache anxiously. “The sick ones in Malaysia. They drowned in their own blood.”
“Those were extreme cases—”
“Then you admit it could happen!” someone shouted.
“People, please. Even if the virus did escape, it can only live in the air for three, maybe four minutes. Once it settles from the air it can only survive if it lands in some sort of moisture, oil- or water-based. You’d have to touch it—”
“Lady we’ve been climbing over this wreck since before dawn putting out fires. There’s hydraulic oil and fuel and water all over the place, and we done touched every bit of it,” Cal Jenkins, an EMT from Hempaxe, the closest town, admitted. His voice rose, shook. “I got a wife. Kids.”
“The best thing you can do for them is allow my team to examine you.”
“Screw that. I’m gettin’ out of here.” He threw his shovel down.
“Me, too.”
“I’m with you. She can’t stop us.”
“That’s the worst thing you can do,” the woman cried.
Out of the corner of his eye, Clint saw some of the workers edge away. The fear in the air was palpable, and ready to combust.
Damn.
He didn’t like the way she’d sauntered in here, safe behind her protective face shield and airtight suit, and told two-dozen men they might have contracted a fatal illness. He didn’t like that she asked them to line up to be poked and prodded before they’d had time to absorb the information and he especially didn’t like the way his heart dropped between his legs just from looking at her.
Stiffly, careful to keep his gaze on the crowd and not her, he clenched his free hand into a fist in an uncharacteristic display of frustration and turned to stand shoulder to shoulder with her, dragging the deputy along with him. He didn’t like taking her side against his own folk, but until he actually turned in his gun and badge, he was still a Texas Ranger. He had an obligation.
“She’s right.” Clint met each worker’s gaze, one by one. He stopped the deserters in their tracks with a hard look.
“You standin’ against us, Hayes?” a gray-haired firefighter in threadbare turnout gear asked.
“I’m not standing against anybody,” he answered carefully, setting his face in the mask of composure that had served him well in situations even more volatile than this one.
Skip Hollister, the pot-bellied mechanic and captain of the volunteer fire department, spat and wiped his face with his arm, leaving a black smear across his pudgy cheek. “If you’re not standing with us, then you’re against us.”
“I’m just saying maybe you ought to think a minute before you go rushing off.” And just to make it clear that wasn’t a request, he moved his hand to his hip, purposely drawing attention to the bulge of his gun under the untucked tail of his shirt. Habit had made him clip the holster to his belt when he’d rushed out of the cabin before dawn, even though the weapon was useless to him now.
“What are you going to do, shoot me?” Hollister inched away from the crowd. His fingers tightened around the shovel he carried until his knuckles went white.
“I hope I don’t have to.” Especially since he doubted he could hit the broad side of a barn at more than ten paces.
“I was friends with your grandpop for fifty years, known you all your life. I remember the first time he brought you out fishin’ with us. You were just knee-high to a tadpole.”
Clint set his mouth in a grim line. “I’ve grown some since then.”
Skip’s jaw gaped. “Charlie would roll over in his grave if he saw this. You standing with her agint’ your own people.”
“Lemme go. I’m gettin’ out of here.” The deputy still in Clint’s grasp squirmed.
Clint turned his attention to him. “Where you going to go, Slick? Home to that wife and kid you’re so worried about so you can get them sick, too?”
Slick’s gaze fell to his feet.
“What about you, Vern? You got family?” he asked a heavyset paramedic who looked like a rabbit looking for a bolt-hole.
“Mom,” the man mumbled. “And a sister.”
“You plannin’ to carry this disease home to them?”
Vern raised his chin. Resolve mingled with the fear in his eyes. “No, sir!”
“What about the rest of you? You going to march into town, shake hands with your neighbors, pinch their babies’ cheeks? You going to be the one to wipe out Hempaxe and a hundred more small towns just like it?”
Clint picked on the deputy because he knew he’d get the answer he wanted. He fisted his hand in the front of the young man’s shirt, forcing him to raise his gaze to Clint’s. “You going to be the one to start the epidemic, Slick?”
“No, sir!” The deputy’s lip curled on the emphatic sir.
Clint released his hold on the man’s shirt and looked to the man next to him. “What about you, Skip?”
Skip kicked up a clod of dirt with his toe. “Hell, no.”
He swept his gaze over the others. “Right now, if this thing is out, at least it’s contained. There’s two thousand acres of forest between civilization and the virus. Are we gonna make sure it stays that way?”
The rumble of yeses and yessirs started slow and quiet, but gained momentum quickly. One by one the workers’ chins came up. Their sooty faces were somber, their eyes still scared, but tempered with resignation.
“All right, then. Why don’t we all listen to what the lady has to say?” He turned to Dr. Attois. His stomach flipped as their gazes sparked like jumper cables when they touched briefly. The little furrow between her perfectly arched eyebrows drew far too much of his attention. Never mind her tongue flicking out to moisten her lips before she spoke.
Damn. He tightened the screws down on his libido, his expression unmoving. Whatever he saw in her, it wouldn’t reach his face. He hoped.
She cleared her throat and looked away. “Symptoms of the virus usually begin to appear within twenty-four hours of exposure, but we can confirm or deny the presence of the virus in
