What Lies Behind

“Christ, what is that?”

Sam pulled the waist of her T-shirt up to cover her nose. She flashed the light into the small space. Saw a silver handle. Using her gloved hand, she pulled it open.

And immediately began backing away again.

Son of a bitch.

“Fletcher, alert HAZMAT. Now.”

His head jerked toward her. “What is it? What’s in there?”

“It’s a wine refrigerator, but the power’s been cut.”

“Let me see.”

“Don’t—”

He stepped around her. “What is this stuff? Some sort of science experiment?”

Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him backward, toward the front door. “Without examining it closely, I can’t say for sure. There’s a bottle labeled Vibrio cholerae.”

At his blank look, she explained. “Cholera, Fletch. And there’s more than one vial in there. Cattafi has an unsecured refrigerator full of transmissible, possibly deadly bacteria and viruses. Ones that shouldn’t be anywhere but in a secure lab.”

“What do you mean, deadly bacteria and viruses? What the hell?”

She glanced back at the refrigerator. “It looks like Thomas Cattafi was being a bad, bad boy.”

Chapter 11

McLean, Virginia

RILEY CALLED ROBIN just past ten. She was still at the house. She’d called in sick, which raised a few eyebrows, but to hell with them. She hadn’t had a sick day since she’d woken up in Ramstein, Germany, three years earlier, pumped full of shrapnel from the remnants of a roadside IED. A blindingly red day, it was all she could remember, a fog of puce, sucking at her, draining her dry. Later, when she was healed, she remembered the screams, and was happy the fog had taken away the memories.

She rubbed her left side, where the scars were the worst. She couldn’t be upset about them. She was the only one who’d survived intact. Another five feet and that wouldn’t have been the case. She’d be missing legs and arms, like the rest of the team, not just her spleen and a kidney. Aside from the lingering headaches and occasional blackouts and swirls of colors when people talked or were emotional, she was just fine. Mostly fine.

She answered the phone with trepidation, wondered where her nerve had gone.

“What’s happening?”

“A lot. The police just called HAZMAT to Cattafi’s apartment.”

“HAZMAT? What in the hell?”

“I don’t know. Was Amanda still on that vaccine scam?”

“I think so. She was working it hard a few months ago, I know. But, Riley, seriously, we hadn’t talked in a few weeks. I don’t know if it has anything to do with her. Might be the boyfriend’s troubles.”

“Speaking of, Alicia traced the call made to your cell phone this morning. It pinged off the tower closest to Amanda’s town house on Capitol Hill.”

Robin pulled a cup down from the cabinet, the delicate china from her parents’ wedding set, went about making a cup of tea. “As far as I know, she has that place rented out to a couple of congressional aides. She wouldn’t go there if she came to town. She’d just grab a hotel room, or stay with me.” Or go stay with a boyfriend Robin knew nothing about. “Someone should do a welfare check, just in case.”

“I’ll send Lola.”

Lola Jergens was Riley’s particular pet. Petite, wheat blonde, small enough to fit in his pocket, attractive in a bland, generic, easy-to-forget-her-face way, he’d been grooming her to handle the more discreet needs of their workload around town. He took her on assignment sometimes, too. Robin had to admit, Lola was a good choice. They could count on her to be subtle. Then she thought about it, and changed her mind.

“No. I’ll go. I have a key. It will save us some time. Where is the phone now?”

“After the call, it drops off the grid.”

“Destroyed?”

“Most likely. Listen, Robbie, you have to operate under the assumption that whoever has, or had, that phone knows where you are. Knows who you are.”

She patted the Glock under her arm, though he couldn’t see the action. “Worry not. I’m ready for anything. Just so you know, I put a call in to Atlantic. We’ll see if he knows anything about this.”

“Good, that’s good. Do I want to know what HAZMAT is going to find?”

“I haven’t the foggiest. But I’m going to go take a look in her files, see what I can dig up.”

“Has Metro been in touch yet?”

“I would assume they’re having a hard time finding me. I’ll go to them once we know what’s really happening.”

A surge of red filled the air. Mop up your mess, little sister. Followed by a swirl of canary yellow. How dare you die on me!

“Be careful, Robbie. Stay in touch.”

“Always.”

* * *

Robin logged in to her secure home system and immediately went to her email account. Checked to see if there was anything from Amanda officially, saw nothing. She logged out, crossed platforms, went to Gmail and tried Amanda’s account. Prayed she hadn’t changed the password—not that it would matter; Robin could get in, it would simply take more time—but she was lucky. The password was the same, and moments later, her sister’s private correspondence was open.

She ignored the inbox, went directly to the drafts folder. It was a common trick—give two people access to a single account, and communicate through the drafts without ever sending the email, thus ensuring absolute privacy.

There was a single draft email in the file, dated three hours earlier. Addressed to Amanda, no subject. Five innocuous words.

Did you get it in?

There was nothing else in the folder.

Robin quickly scanned the remaining emails, saw nothing outside the norm.

Did she get what in? And to where?

She itched to get her hands on Amanda’s laptop and her phone. There wasn’t much Robin could do accessing remotely on her own computer, but with Mandy’s, if she’d not erased the history each night as she should, Robin might be able to re-create the drafts folder, see what other messages might be in there. Better yet, her phone might have a cached version of the drafts inbox, which would hold the earlier messages.

What could she have been trying to bring in? The vaccines, yes, Robin knew about that project. Was there something in them? Something deadly, or earth-shattering?

Something worth dying for?

Drumming her fingers on the table, little puffs of slate rising from the taps, she decided.

She’d go to Mandy’s house, look around a bit, then it was time to see what Metro had discovered.

Chapter 12

Teterboro Airport New Jersey

BELOW XANDER, AS the tarmac exploded into action—a cacophony of shouts and screams and the background roar of a plane’s engines reversing as it landed—Xander slid down to the roof, rolled to his back and stared at the sky. He hadn’t thought this through, had only reacted. From the moment the SIG was in his hand, his forefinger caressing the trigger, the end was clear. He’d gone into a trance of perfect focus and eliminated the threat. What he was trained to do.

Clouds scudded past, lacing the blue sky with billows of white. Calming, comforting. Skies were all different. Some forbidding, some beautiful. He’d lain on roofs and grounds across the world, waiting, planning, watching—frightened and cold and overwhelmed at times—and the sky had always been with him.

He thought back to the moment Chalk approached him about starting the firm, realized that he’d never fully conceptualized what might happen. He’d known intellectually he might be forced to kill again, but he was supposed to be in protection now, damn it all. Saving lives, not taking them.

For a life he’d just taken, no question about it. He rolled over onto his stomach again, looked over the edge to the target. The man he’d shot was slumped over the parapet, arms dangling. A rusty smear was giving in to gravity, spreading slowly down the concrete.

He came back to himself, realized Chalk was going mad in his ear.

“Mutant, talk to me. What’s wrong? I can’t hear you, repeat, I can’t hear you!”

“Chalk,” he said quietly, and his friend calmed immediately.

“You okay, buddy? That was one hell of a shot. You want to come on down?”

Come down, face the world, the scrutiny. He didn’t know what upset him more, that he’d so calmly negated the threat, or that he’d never questioned the only course of action was to take the threat down. Could he have done something different? He’d reacted, unthinking, and the fallout was going to be insane.

Face it, Whitfield. You’re a stone-cold killer. Always have been, always will.

Killing is my business, and business has been good.

“Coming.”

He shoved down the dark thoughts, forced himself to his feet. Climbed down the ladder to the scene below.

* * *

Their principal was out of sight, but the Teterboro Airport security was not. Chalk had clearly been trying to explain what was happening, but the Teterboro cops were more inclined to arrest the two men with concealed weapons, especially the one who’d done the shooting, and ask questions later.

Xander handed over his SIG, suffered being slammed against a yellow cinder-block wall, legs and arms spread-eagled and roughly frisked. He let them put cuffs on him without a fight.

Chalk wasn’t being nearly as calm. He’d managed to get James Denon isolated before they started the Gestapo act with Xander, and was dancing around the cops trying to explain their role in the situation. Denon was finally tapped to confirm who they were, and with his testimony, the cops relaxed a bit. They took off Chalk’s cuffs, but kept Xander chained, seated at a chipped table that looked like it had been recycled from a prison.

Xander heard sirens coming closer. They’d called the New Jersey state police, probably the FBI, too. An ambulance, though it wouldn’t be necessary. A meat wagon was more appropriate. News trucks would follow. Xander knew they needed to get Denon out of there immediately.

After a few more minutes of chaos, their bona fides were established, and Xander was uncuffed for the time being. He stood, rubbing his chafed wrists. The last time he’d been in cuffs was during counterinsurgency training. They made him feel caged, something he fought against. Once, the comforts of the military, its regimented days, worked for him. Now, he simply wanted to be free.

Threats were still lingering in the air, the Teterboro cops glaring and bristling. When the state police arrived, they would make the call. Xander had a feeling he knew how this was going to go down—the cuffs would go back on, he’d be transported, arraigned, bail set. He would have to call Sam to come get him; Chalk didn’t have the means to spring him, not yet.

Not how he wanted things to go today.

Finally, Xander and Chalk were escorted to Denon’s isolated room; the door closed quickly behind them. Denon shot a hard glance at the handle as the lock thunked home, but shrugged and took a deep breath. He was a handsome man, foppish blond hair, fit and trim, very British schoolboy grows up and does well for himself. He was charming and smart and, despite the attempt on his life, was pale but composed. Xander thought he was handling the attempted assassination with a great deal of calm.

Denon pointed to the ceiling, then deliberately turned his back to the camera. They joined him in the middle of the room, a scrum against the digital intrusion. “Who was the shooter?” he asked quietly.

Xander shook his head. “We don’t know yet. There will be an investigation, obviously, which is out of our hands now. We’ll try to keep it quiet, but there’s no telling how the airport police will work with the New Jersey cops. This could be all over the news in twenty minutes.”

“It’s already leaking out.” Denon showed them a tweet from a local account, someone who’d been at Teterboro and took pictures of the dead man dangling off the roof. “It’s only a matter of time before they connect this with me.”

Xander straightened, put his arms behind his back, parade rest. “I apologize, sir. I know you wanted to keep your visit and our involvement quiet. This isn’t what we had in mind. I am fully prepared to take responsibility for the situation and keep your name out of it, if at all possible.”

Denon gave him an incredulous look. “You just saved my life, and you’re apologizing and offering to take the fall? Bloody hell, man, you’re my hero. If you hadn’t acted so quickly, I’d be on that tarmac with a bullet in me.” He clapped Xander on the shoulder. “Thank you. Both of you. You acted in my best interest, and I refuse to let them prosecute you, in my name, or in yours. We’ll get this situation straightened, you have my word.”

Xander nodded. “Thank you, sir. Mr. Worthington will get you back on track here shortly. I’m sure the police will need a statement from you, so I’m assuming it will be at least an hour before you’ll be able to leave.”

Denon’s schoolboy face split into a winning grin, and Xander felt a measure of relief when he said, “To be honest, Mr. Whitfield, I think I’d rather stick by your side for the time being. I don’t want to see you get railroaded for doing your job. And I want to know who the hell just tried to kill me.”

Chapter 13

Georgetown O Street Thomas Cattafi’s apartment

IT DIDN’T TAKE long for the big guns to arrive, wearing their space-age polymer suits, hooked into oxygen. Sam and Fletcher were taken through a portable decontamination unit, had blood samples drawn and were told to stay put. Phones, her purse, shoes, everything, was taken away.

Sam had an awful sense of déjà vu; she’d been through something similar a few months back, when a crazed man had used a homegrown biological weapon to gas the Foggy Bottom Metro station and she’d been sitting at ground zero at the George Washington University Hospital waiting to be cleared to go home.

She pushed the thought away. No sense revisiting the past until she knew what she was dealing with. Or whom.

Thomas Cattafi. She didn’t know the name—no reason she should, really, if he was a fourth-year M.D./Ph.D. student. Two years of med school, four years of specialized research, then back to the med school side to finish the clinical rotations. A hellish tract, one few students wanted, and fewer survived. Sam was only working with the first-year forensic pathology students, the dewy-eyed youngsters who thought everything about med school was cool. Soon enough, they’d become hardened and cynical, like everyone else.

What in the hell was a student doing with a refrigerator full of pathogens? Even if he was an M.D./Ph.D. candidate, there was no reason to have the items at his home. They belonged in a lab. Cattafi was involved in something bad, that was for sure. Something this woman, Amanda Souleyret, had brought to his door?

And what about the scene felt so familiar?

Since she had a few moments of leisure, she thought back to the Hometown Killer files, the autopsy photos, ran everything through her head. Two of the women in the series had been stabbed—Terri Snow from Topeka and Jan Tovey from San Francisco. Blood everywhere, the women’s bodies found in the bedroom. The Snow crime scene was the one that struck her as familiar.

You’re reaching, Samantha.

She wanted to call Baldwin, demand a briefing, but he was on a plane. There was nothing he could do for her right now. She’d shot him an email before they took her phone, told him to get back to her the moment he landed. She had a problem, and he needed to be secure before he reached out. The last thing she needed was someone capturing the message and leaking this to the press. Hopefully they’d be cleared before he started burning up the wires.

She watched the HAZMAT team move about, smelled the intense scent of rain coming. Worried, but just a little, about whether she’d been exposed to something horrible. The refrigerator had been empty of wine and unplugged, so the pathogens weren’t at the right temperature, nor were they specially packaged. It was almost as if Cattafi had been working on something, been interrupted and hurriedly shut the pathogens away in the refrigerator. Forgotten to plug it in.

Or someone had purposely unplugged it.

When and for how long it had been turned off was anyone’s guess—it had its own power source, so they’d have to track all that down, too.

She hadn’t touched anything, and all the discs and vials she’d seen looked like they’d been properly handled and were sealed, except for the one that was cracked, leaking and smelling awful. But one never knew. A list of hemorrhagic diseases ran through her mind, countdowns, worried doctors, isolation chambers, right into visions of blood gushing from various orifices, leaking from fissures cracking open in her porcelain skin, until she shook her head to physically stop the thoughts.

There was nothing to be done right now. Everyone who’d come in contact with Cattafi for the past few weeks would have to be examined, all the crime scene investigators tested. This was a mess of epic proportion.

The autopsy of Amanda Souleyret was postponed, her body in isolation, until they knew more about what was happening. There was no sense infecting the morgue if it could be avoided.

She soothed herself with a single thought—if Cattafi had been symptomatic, they’d have already heard from the hospital. Went back to worrying about a more immediate problem.

The pack of vials and discs had seemed undisturbed, but she’d noticed there was a single spot in the tray of vials that was empty. She hoped like hell there wasn’t something missing, something the killer had taken.

And with that thought, the scene began to make more sense.

She was wrong. There was nothing familiar here. Cattafi had been targeted because someone knew about his little lab.

She watched the HAZMAT team work, moving slowly, like they were underwater. Felt a bit like she was underwater herself, isolated and alone, though Fletcher was with her.

“You okay?” she asked him.

“Mmm-hmm. Annoyed more than anything.”

“This is turning into something more than it first seemed.”

He gave her a sharp glance. “With you, it always does.” But there was humor in his voice. “Entertain me. I’m bored.”

“You’re joking, right? What do you want me to do, tell you a bedtime story?”

“While that has its own compelling set of responses, I was thinking more along the lines of what sort of work Amanda Souleyret might be doing that’s drawn the attention of the FBI.”

“Oh, it’s speculation you want. I’m good at that.” She settled herself more comfortably on the table they’d been given to sit on. “All right. You’ll find out soon enough. Souleyret is undercover FBI.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She was working for a company called Helix.”

“Explain.”

“Helix is a huge European firm with offices in several countries that run all kinds of private investigations, from industrial espionage to pharmaceutical investigations. They also work on pharmaceutical espionage. Trademark infringements, ripping off formularies, passing off generics as the real thing. There’s a more...physical component to what they do, as well. An entire division of close protection, K and R—kidnap and ransom—the whole gamut. It’s like what Xander and his buddy are doing, only on a much bigger scale.”

“Like the Pinkertons?”

She smiled, imagining Xander and Chalk in suits and fedoras. “Something like that. Perhaps a little less gunplay, a little more computer-driven research. But yes. They’re essentially detectives, and protectors of the realm.”

“And whichever realm pays the best gets their undying loyalty?”

“For the term of the contract.”

“So what’s an FBI asset doing there?”

“It’s a great place for her, really. They have unlimited funds and unlimited access all across Europe. Until we know exactly what project she was working on, we won’t know how they benefited her, but until she got herself dead, she had it good. Xander and Chalk, they’re just starting out. Competing with a behemoth company like Helix is hard.”

“And yet they’re going to try.”

“Some people want more discreet protection. That’s going to be their niche.”

“You’re good with that? Him being all heroic and stuff?”

She hesitated before answering, and he nodded, touched her knee. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to tell me. I can see you’re worried about it, though.”

“Close protection is dangerous, especially if they start working overseas. I don’t necessarily want to see him go back into Iraq or Afghanistan. Everything that happened with Eddie Donovan, the fratricide, it messed him up. That’s all.”

“Then we should make sure to find him work here. I’ll put the word out, if you like.”

She gave him that heartbreaking smile of hers. “Thank you, Fletcher. I appreciate that.”

Jesus, no matter how much in love, in lust or whatever he was with another woman, the sight of Samantha Owens at full wattage still made his gonads clench. He decided he liked the reaction. To hell with it not being proper for friends to get those feelings.

He cleared his throat. “All right. Another question. Did Souleyret bring the pathogens into the country with her? And if so, how the hell would she transport them? If she worked in France, she had to go through customs somewhere when she got over here. How in the world could they miss this?”

“Maybe a private flight to a private airport? The last time I traveled overseas, security sent the bags through the scanner as usual, with no special scrutiny on my personal stuff, even though I had a bottle of vitamins in there. It wouldn’t be hard to package these as some sort of medicine and slip them through. You can take anything on a flight if you have a prescription for it, or it looks like it belongs. We’re sort of on an honor system.”

“Her bags would still have to be checked at the private airports, but you have a point. The question is, where did she come in, and when?”

She grinned at him again, teeth flashing white. “I guess that’s what you’re going to have to figure out, aren’t you? Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“And you’re not going to help at all, are you?”

“Hey, I’m not Nancy Drew. I’m the mind of reason here. I do the science. The mystery is yours to sort out.”

“And sort it I will. Look who’s here at last.” He waved to Lonnie Hart, who pulled his black Caprice to the curb and waved back. Fletcher was glad to see him. Hart had been his partner for years. They’d been detectives together for almost eight, partners for six. Hart had a keen mind, a laconic attitude and an ongoing love affair with his weight bench. When Fletcher moved up the ladder, he’d brought Hart along with him. Hart’s promotion was Fletcher’s only stipulation to accepting the lieutenant position.

Hart gave them an ironic salute and went to find the head of the HAZMAT team, a buxom woman named Sophie Lewis. They talked together for a moment, then he gave Fletcher a thumbs-up.

Sam knocked into his shoulder. “That looks like good news.”

And it was.

Chapter 14

DISASTER AVERTED, PROBABLY, at least for the time being. Field tests were negative for live, dangerous pathogens, but they were asked to stay in isolation for the time being. People would stop by every once in a while to update them. Feeding time at the zoo. Fletcher was going mad just sitting here, watching. He wanted to help. Even with a tentative all clear, he needed to do something to take his mind off the idea of tiny invisible razorlike creatures multiplying in his bloodstream, inching him toward a slow and certain death.

The list of pathogens grew as the morning wore on, bacteria and viruses and diseases that were deadly and transmissible, all mixed together unsecured in the Georgetown apartment. There were names Fletcher was familiar with, or at least could puzzle out: Clostridium botulinum, Salmonella enteritidis, diarrheagenic Escherichia coli, SARS coronavirus, HIV. And a few he couldn’t, specifically something Sam said was a generic hemorrhagic flavivirus—as if there was anything generic about hemorrhagic viruses—plus a mosquito-borne alphavirus called chikungunya, and something in a nasty pink solution with a handwritten label: Gransef. No one had heard of that one before.