With the M.D....at the Altar? Page 9

  It took her a moment to realize that something had changed.

  Henry Wylde’s heart rate was up, and he had brain wave activity indicative of waking.

  Rox’s pulse bumped and she felt a little flutter of excitement. Thinking of Henry’s wife, Mary, and their two young children, she crossed her fingers that he was coming around. He’d been one of the first nonviolent patients to get sick.

  Now, maybe he’d be the first to wake up.

  Trying not to picture the joy of being able to tell Mary that her husband was on the mend, Rox crossed to him and touched his wrist. “Henry? Can you hear me?”

  She got no outward response, but the EEG spiked slightly, indicating that his brain had perceived the sound, at the very least.

  “You got something?” Thom asked from the doorway.

  Rox nodded, cautious excitement bubbling. “The EEG says his brain’s coming back online.”

  “I’ll get Luke.”

  Moments later, Luke strode in, crossed to the bed and ran through Henry’s vitals. Then he leaned close. “Henry? You ready to open your eyes for us?”

  Henry’s eyelids quivered, and slowly, he opened his eyes. But he didn’t fix on Luke’s face, just stared blankly.

  Luke clicked on a penlight, checked the pupillary response and shook his head when he didn’t get the expected contraction. “I need you to follow the light for me.”

  Nothing. The EEG suggested Henry was awake and registering Luke’s commands. But he wasn’t responding to them.

  Rox’s elation drained and she sucked in a breath, and when Luke glanced up and met her eyes, she saw the same worry in him.

  Henry wasn’t on the mend at all. He was in the next stage of the disease: a waking coma.

  Worse, as they watched, his EEG grew erratic for a moment, then smoothed out. Stuttered. Smoothed. His brain was firing randomly in burst patterns that meant nothing.

  “That is not good,” Bug said from behind Rox, and she nodded numbly, tears filling her eyes, because burst firing didn’t mean the patient was waking up.

  It meant his brain was shutting down.

  AFTER THEY’D CHECKED the rest of the patients—finding no change in any of the others—Luke assembled his team in the kitchen.

  Or rather, his team plus Rox, he reminded himself.

  There was no sense in getting used to having her around, because she wasn’t “around.” He just happened to be in her space for the moment. When he moved on, she’d stay put in the place she’d decided to call home.

  He wanted to ask her why she’d choose a gloomy, slightly shabby fishing village when she could’ve kept traveling, or picked anywhere in the world to settle down. When she’d left Africa, she’d had offers from some of the most prestigious hospitals and private practices in the country—he knew, because he’d phoned in the recommendations himself, trying to give her what he could when he couldn’t give her what she’d wanted from him.

  Yet with all those opportunities, she’d moved to Raven’s Cliff, which he just didn’t get.

  Not your business, he reminded himself yet again. Her choice. Her life.

  “We need to work faster,” she said now, not waiting for him to get the meeting started in his role as team leader. “Henry doesn’t have much time left, and if the disease runs true to pattern, the others won’t be far behind him.”

  Her hazel eyes were dark with grief and underscored with the faint bruises of fatigue that said she was pushing herself too hard, taking the work too personally. At least that was what he’d told her time and again when they’d been on assignment together. He couldn’t very well tell her not to take it personally this time, though, because for her it was personal. For that matter, it had become personal for him and his team, too.

  May might be days behind the other patients in her disease progression, but so far she’d gone through all the same phases. If they died, she would die—unless he figured out the nature of the toxin, and came up with an antidote before then.

  “I’m not sure what else we can do,” he said after a moment of tired, dispirited silence. “We’ve sent out the samples, and are running all the field tests possible. We’ve tried feeding the enzyme to normal fish and got nothing, so that’s a by-product, not the actual trigger. What else do you suggest?”

  “I don’t know.” Rox’s shoulders sagged under the weight of the people she cared for, most of whom didn’t seem to give a flip about her.

  “What about giving a shout out to the Cod Project?” Bug said, seeming hesitant. “I know it’s a long shot, but they might be able to help.”

  Luke frowned. “The what?”

  But Rox was ahead of him. “Someone’s sequencing the codfish genome?”

  The geneticist nodded. “They want to use it to help select fish that’ll do well for aquaculture—you know, fish farming. Brood stock development, that sort of thing.”

  “Do you think they’d be willing to sequence the DNA of one of our overgrown fish?” Luke asked, starting to get interested. “See if there’s a mutation that’s causing the enzyme overproduction?”

  But Bug shook his head. “That’d take way too long. Besides, we have no reason to believe the DLD is a mutation—we’re only seeing the enlarged growth and lateral stripe in adult fish in the prime of life, not juveniles or seniors, suggesting it’s not being passed on genetically. And even if it were based on a genetic change and we compared the DNA of our fish to those of the reference genome at the Cod Project, it’d be impossible to tell which DNA differences are important to the disease and which are just natural variations.”

  Rox blew out a breath. “So we just talked ourselves out of using the cod genome.”

  “Not necessarily.” Bug leaned in, his eyes lighting with what Luke recognized as his “I think I’ve got a decent idea” look. “We can use subtractive RNA hybridization.” At the baffled looks of the others, he explained, “If you think of DNA as the blueprint of a cell, then RNA is the guy who explains the blueprints to the construction crews. When a cell wants to make a protein—or do pretty much anything—it translates the relevant DNA into a strand of RNA, and the RNA guides production.”

  “Which helps us how?” Luke asked.

  “If we isolate all of the RNA from the cells of normal and DLD fish, label the strands with different fluorescent tags and then mix them under conditions that tell the RNA to stick to other copies of itself,” Bug said, “then whatever’s left over is the stuff that doesn’t match. If we clone and sequence those strands, the folks at the Cod Project should be able to tell us what the RNA encodes.”

  Rox frowned. “Sounds involved. How long will it take to get an answer?”

  “If we get lucky? A day or two.” Bug lifted a shoulder. “If not? Weeks, maybe months. The luck factors into how many different genes are differentially regulated by whatever’s causing the DLD, and whether we sequence the right one immediately. Growth is a complicated process. We might have to wade through a whole lot of genes before we get to the culprit.”

  Luke cursed under his breath, thinking that there had to be an easier way to figure out what the hell was causing the strange symptoms. But he also knew it was better to get the time-consuming experiments started sooner than wish he had later.

  “We’ll do it,” he said finally. “Bug and Thom, you put together a supply list and we’ll get right on it.” He looked around the table, skipping over May’s empty spot and trying not to think of her lying in the narrow cot, with the IV drip-drip-dripping into her vein. “Anything else?”

  “Just more negatives,” Bug said. “I’ve tested everything I can think of from the kitchen, and haven’t gotten a hit on the enzyme yet. I’ve got one more set of samples to go.” He glanced at his watch. “Speaking of which…”

  He rose and crossed to the lab side of the kitchen just as the peptide sequencer beeped to indicate the end of a run.

  Drawn by the lure of data, Luke rose and joined him, as did Thom and Rox moments later. All three of them l
eaned over Bug’s shoulder as he tapped a few keys on the computer screen, bringing up the results.

  Bug’s eyes went wide. “Hello.”

  Luke leaned in. “Damn.”

  Their nondairy coffee creamer was positive for the enzyme being produced by the overlarge fish.

  May’s disease was no accident or naturally transmitted infection. It was attempted murder.

  THIS TIME WHEN his “investor” called, Wells was ready for him. He picked up the handset. “I have good news.”

  There was a pause, then the carefully modulated voice said, “Oh?”

  “I snuck a couple of listening devices into the monastery when the doctors were setting up the other day, and I’ve been doing some eavesdropping. They’re not looking anywhere near the FDA licenses. They’re convinced it’s the fish—something about dark lines and DNA. I didn’t get all of it.”

  “Did you record everything?”

  “Yeah.” Wells paused, knowing he had a commodity. “It’ll cost you, though.”

  “E-mail the recording to the usual address. I’ll have the money wired to you tomorrow.”

  “No,” the mayor said quickly. “Not money. A promise. Your unconditional support during the next election.”

  “I don’t shill for local politicians.” There was a curl of contempt in the voice.

  “Not local. The senate.”

  “Really.” There was a long pause before the voice said, “Agreed. That could be beneficial to both of us.”

  The caller hung up without saying goodbye, but Wells didn’t give a crap about that as excitement burgeoned through him. He was dying to get out of this gloomy little town. It was a stepping stone, nothing more.

  Today he was a mayor. Tomorrow a senator.

  Next stop, the White House.

  Chapter Seven

  Henry Wylde died the next day, followed twenty hours later by Tony Prentiss. The other nonviolents were traveling the same path, meaning that all of them—even May—would be dead within the next few days if Rox and the others didn’t find a cure, an antidote, something.

  The Violents, on the other hand, remained comatose. There were some slight changes in EEG activity suggesting a waking state, but they were unresponsive to painful stimuli and other tests of consciousness, indicating that they truly were comatose, not faking it.

  Rox mourned the dead, and felt the weight of the town’s condemnation. Or maybe that was her own self-directed anger she was feeling—she should’ve been able to save them, should’ve been able to find the source of the disease in time, should’ve been able to figure out a cure.

  Logically, she knew that wasn’t fair. Luke was the best of the best, and Bug and Thom were solid. Scientists across the country were working on samples from Raven’s Cliff and coming up with small pieces of information but no cures. She was only one person, so how could she expect herself to do alone what they hadn’t yet managed as a team?

  Still, guilt sliced deep and left her bleeding as she did her work mechanically, taking on the majority of patient care while Luke and the others worked on the subtractive RNA hybridization, and Captain Swanson, homicide detective Andrei Lagios and two of the four Chapman brothers, all of whom were members of the RCPD, tried to figure out who had sabotaged the field lab and laced the coffee creamer with the telltale enzyme.

  So far they’d all come up empty.

  Worse, early on the second morning the peptide sequencer fell from its secure stand and wound up irreparably broken, and the portable refrigerator died, taking a number of important samples with it. It might’ve just been bad luck. Or it might’ve been another, more subtle attempt at sabotage. Unable to tell which, and unwilling to risk another piece of equipment—or a teammate—Luke brought in motion detectors and set them up in the kitchen, entryway and halls. That meant the doctors had to deactivate the things when they walked into an area, and reactivate them when they left, even if they were just passing through.

  It was an added layer of protection, granted, but the aggravation wore on Rox and the members of the CDC team until, by the second night, the air had grown stiff with tension, and all of their tempers were frayed.

  Luke, Rox, Bug and Thom met for dinner. It was a silent affair broken only by desultory conversation about the patients’ status—unchanged—and the progress of the investigations—not much.

  “What we’re doing isn’t working,” Rox finally said. “We need a new angle on this thing.”

  “Like what?” Luke snapped. “Faith healing? Face it, we’re doing everything we can. Science takes the time it takes, and nobody promised we’d be able to solve this thing in a week.”

  “Well, that’s all the time we have,” she countered, feeling anger spike alongside frustration. “You may not care about the people in my ‘creepy little town’—that’s what you’ve been calling it, right?—but I’d like to think you care about your own teammate. If we don’t figure out what those fish were dosed with in the next day or so, May is going to die.”

  Luke slapped his palms on the table and lunged to his feet, bending to glare at her over the table that separated them. “You think I don’t get that? You think I don’t care about what’s happening to May?”

  She met his glare with one of her own. “It’s hard to think otherwise when you barely even look at her room—never mind going in there—unless you absolutely, positively have to. Seems to me the moment she got sick, you wrote her off.”

  At that, Thom and Bug started looking uneasy, like they wished they were somewhere else. But when Bug started to rise, Luke waved him back into place. “No, stay. We’re in this together, so we might as well clear the air.” He bared his teeth, eyes glinting as he leaned even closer to Rox. “This isn’t about me and May at all, is it? It’s about you and me. You think I’ve checked out on May the same way I checked out on you.”

  She forced herself to hold her ground, hating to do this in front of his coworkers, but not sure doing it in private would’ve been an improvement. “I think you’ve checked out on this entire case. You’re going through the motions, finishing up the hybridization but not starting anything new. We’re not brainstorming, we’re not trying new treatments that ‘just might work.’ You’ve got us hunkering down until the last of the nonviolent patients dies.”

  He straightened away from the table with a curse. “That’s ridiculous.”

  But she heard it in his voice, saw it in the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes, and her insides chilled. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re wrapping things up. You’re leaving.”

  Bug and Thom glanced at Luke, startled. “No way, boss,” Thom said. “Right?”

  Luke grimaced. “The outbreak isn’t really an outbreak—it’s more of a police matter at this point. And it’s not like we’re making progress here. We can do more with the samples back at the CDC lab than we can here. We can liaise with the feds easier, coordinate the reverse engineering of whatever toxin or contaminant triggered the fish response, and figure out how it turns into DLD in humans. All of that will be easier from D.C.”

  That was true, Rox supposed, but it all boiled down to one thing. “You’re running again,” she said softly. “The answers aren’t easy, the heroism isn’t quick, so you’re running.”

  She expected anger from him. Instead, he said, “It’s not safe for you here, and it won’t be until Swanson and the others figure out who contaminated the fish, and why.” A pause. “Come back to D.C. with us. You can work the case from my lab.”

  It was a startling offer, and to some degree a tempting one. She’d have access to state-of-the-art equipment and lightning-fast results, along with a collection of medical minds second to none. And there was a piece of her that wanted to think the invitation had something to do with the sharp awareness between them, the heat that flared with the casual brush of a hand in the hallway, the lock of eyes across the room.

  But even if that was the case, what was the point? She’d be coming back on his terms, not her own.

 
Been there, done that, didn’t work.

  So she shook her head. “I’m staying.”

  “You’re clinging,” he corrected. “Again.” He got in her face and the heat that rose between them wasn’t sexual chemistry this time. It was anger. Frustration. “You think I’m running? Well you’re no better—you’re clinging to a group of people who don’t want your help and couldn’t care less if you disappeared tomorrow, just like you clung to our relationship long after it should’ve been pronounced dead.”

  A fiery wash of embarrassment poured through Rox, flushing her face and making her want to jump up and hurry away, lock herself in her room. But that would be running, which was his style, not hers.

  So instead, she rose to her feet so she could match him glare for glare. “I’d rather cling to a lost cause than run away from something unfinished.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she lifted her chin and turned away. “Sorry you got dragged into that one,” she said to Bug and Thom, and stalked from the room

  That was a strategic retreat. Not running.

  She deactivated the motion detectors in the entryway and west wing, and reset them once she was at the door to her room. Then, feeling marginally safe and so tired and heart-sore it almost didn’t matter, she hit the lights and climbed into her cot.

  And was asleep in minutes, faint tear tracks drying on her cheeks.

  LUKE ALMOST WENT after Rox when she barged out of the kitchen. He didn’t, though, because what was the point? Maybe some of what she’d said was right, but he’d been right, too.

  They might be at a dead end with the investigation, but the way to mix things up wasn’t to keep brainstorming things they could do from Raven’s Cliff, it was to go back to the main lab and be scientists.

  She didn’t seem to get that fieldwork was only a part of what he did these days. He spent a good chunk of his time at a damn desk. Hell, he’d even bought a condo.