picked through the wreckage. She stared at a perfectly pressed pair of trousers hanging in a tree as if left there by a butler. She stepped over a half-completed crossword puzzle as if it were some alien life form. Each bit of debris made her wonder who it had belonged to. What it had meant to them.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the Ranger. He walked through the wreckage in a precise criss-cross pattern, his head sweeping left, then right. How did he do it? How did he walk through the remnants of the last moments of five peoples’ lives and look so unaffected?
His foot thudded against something metallic. He stopped, rooted in place like a man mired in quicksand. “Doctor?” His head turned, one eyebrow lifted. Then he reached down.
“For God’s sake, don’t touch it!” She hurried to his side.
“That’s it?” he asked when she crouched down next to him.
She nodded, running her gloved hand around the sealed edge. “Looks like it’s intact.”
“Hallelujah,” he said, but without the emotion that should have been attached.
She looked up at him and grinned, feeling like an eight-year-old who’d just caught her first crawfish. “It is intact!”
He didn’t return her grin. His mouth stayed set in the same firm line. She felt a blush creep up her neck. Of course he wasn’t grinning. The unit could still have leaked. The seal would have to be checked microscopically.
He nodded. “Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Fine by me. We’ll send a team in to remove it.” She marked the sight with orange flagging tape and pushed herself up. He reached out to steady her elbow. The touch sent an electric shock up her arm, even through the cumbersome suit. She took a step back, out of his grasp before she embarrassed herself, and froze.
There, behind the Ranger, a Plexiglas habitat lay cock-eyed in the scrub brush, one of the rubber handling gloves sealed into the hole in its side torn, the other missing altogether. The bolts on one end of the container had been sheared off, and the base ripped away.
The habitat was empty.
“Oh, God,” she said, feeling her flush fade as blood drained to her toes.
The Ranger’s grip on her arm tightened. “What?”
“The monkey…” She had assumed the animal had been killed in the crash with everyone else aboard.
His gaze swept over the broken habitat. “Animals?”
“One. A rhesus macaque. A research animal.”
“Does it pose a danger?”
“It was infected with ARFIS before we left Malaysia.” She lifted her gaze to his, then had to turn away from the flat intensity of his stare. From the power swirling in the metallic gray. Dread settled in her chest with the finality of a casket being lowered into a grave. “It’s highly contagious.”
And now it was loose in Texas. The Sabine National Forest was officially a hot zone.
Chapter 3
Clint’s skin was already red from scrubbing off three layers of epidermis in the decontamination shower. As he faced down the smug CDC security guard all dressed up to play soldier in camouflage fatigues, combat boots and a gas mask, even more blood flooded the capillaries just beneath the surface. The fact that Clint was wearing a navy-blue jumpsuit that was two sizes too small and had been told his own clothes were about to be burned, along with everything else he’d had on him this morning, didn’t help his disposition any. Neither did the gas mask he held in his left hand, a reminder of the seriousness of the situation here.
“I don’t think you understand, son. A Ranger never surrenders his gun and badge. Not while he’s still breathing.”
“Then you better hope somebody around here knows CPR, ’cause I’ve already got yours.”
“Correction. You’ve been holding mine while I showered. Now you’re going to give them back.”
“Correction,” Cammo Boy mocked. “Now I’m going to put your badge in the incinerator with the other personal effects. Your weapon—” He turned the plastic bag holding Clint’s Glock over in his gloved hands, studying it with a look of admiration. Clint noticed Cammo Boy didn’t carry a sidearm, which was a good thing. He didn’t look old enough to drive, much less shoot anyone.
Or maybe Clint was just feeling old these days. Old and broken.
“We’ll just have to find some other way to dispose of your gun,” Guard Boy finished.
Yeah. Like stowing it in his own duffle, Clint imagined. He lifted his hand, fisted it in green camouflage. Before the young guard could so much as blink, the steel toes of the young man’s boots were dangling an inch off the ground.
Yancy, the kid’s nametag read. He looked like a Yancy. Fancy Yancy. His boots were too clean ever to have seen field duty, and his fatigues actually bore creases. Clint was about to launch young Fancy Yancy into orbit when a voice that sounded as if it came right off an Old South plantation stopped him cold.
“Is there a problem here?” Dr. Attois studied Clint and the security guard, who both spoke at once.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Put the corporal down, Ranger Hayes.” Behind the plastic face shield, one of the lady doctor’s fine eyebrows lifted. “Please.”
Grudgingly, Clint set the man on his feet. But he didn’t let go of the shirt.
“Uh. Ma’am,” Cammo Boy said. “Ranger Hayes is reluctant to proceed to the detainees’ waiting area.”
“They’re not being detained, corporal. They’re being quarantined.”
“Yes, ma’am. I get that, ma’am. But I’m not sure quarantinees is a word, ma’am.”
Clint resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Your rent-a-cop has my weapon, my badge, my boots and my cell phone. I want them back. In that order.”
Two bright-red spots colored the man’s baby cheeks. “I was ordered to collect all personal effects, ma’am.”
“That gun and badge are not personal effects. They belong to the state of Texas. You have no authority—”
“I’m here by order of the federal government. I have more authority than—”
“Gentlemen, please!” The doctor humphed. “We really don’t have time for this. Give me his things, Corporal.”
“But, ma’am—”
She held out one rubber-gloved hand, planted the other on her neon-orange hip. “Don’t make me lose my temper.”
If Clint had been much of a smiler—and if he hadn’t been so damned aggravated—he might have smiled then. He almost hoped the guard refused to hand over his belongings. It might be
