Читать книгу Her Last Defense - Vickie Taylor - Страница 8

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 kind of fun to find out if the old sayings about hot Cajun blood were true or just another stereotype.

Then again, there were other, more interesting ways to find out how hot the dark-haired, curvy little doctor’s blood ran.

Much more interesting ways.

With a discontented sigh and a glare at Clint, the corporal plunked the plastic bags containing his Glock and the silver star and circle that formed the Ranger badge in her outstretched hand.

“Boots?” Clint grunted, mentally chastising himself for letting his mind wander into off-limits territory again—and the doctor’s blood, hot or otherwise, was definitely off-limits. He had enough problems at the moment without adding a woman to the mix.

“That’s really not a good idea,” the woman in question said, the sympathy in her voice as thick as her accent. “Leather holds moisture down in the grain and pores. The virus—”

“I get the picture. Cell phone?”

There was a heavy pause, and then the doctor said, “Walk with me,” over her shoulder as she turned, leaving him little choice but to follow, his feet slipping and sliding in the navy-blue rubber galoshes he’d been issued to replace the four-hundred-dollar custom Luccheses that were about to be incinerated. “And put that mask on.”

Clint followed, the mask swinging at his side.

“How long have you been in law enforcement, Ranger Hayes?”

She was taking long strides for a woman with short legs. Like she had a train to catch. The movement had her hips swaying, giving him a picture of the shape inside the bulky orange suit. And quite a shape it was.

He jammed his fingers into the pockets of his jumpsuit. “All total? Sixteen years, I guess.”

He wouldn’t make seventeen. Either the virus would get him, or he’d have to face his captain, his team, and tell them he wouldn’t be coming back from medical leave. At this point, he wasn’t sure which outcome he preferred.

“…someone with your experience must understand the need to control the information the public gets about this situation.”

He’d missed the first part of what she’d said, but he got her point. “In other words, you’re not giving anyone’s cell phone back. And it has nothing to do with the virus. Just out of curiosity, what are you telling the public?”

“The truth. That a plane carrying hazardous materials crashed in the Sabine National Forest, and that local emergency workers who arrived on scene first are now helping state and federal agencies with the cleanup.”

“Helping?” He glanced at the men—mostly farmers and store clerks, mechanics and game wardens. The biggest disaster most of them ever faced was a wreck on the county highway. They weren’t prepared for an epidemic. They were sitting around folding metal tables, heads bowed and silent as they listened to a lecture on safety procedures—how to take off latex gloves without cross-contaminating them, leaving their rubber boots outside and stepping into paper booties before they entered their tents, etc. Skip Hollister reached between his feet and plucked a stem of grass, lifted it, then caught himself before he put it in his mouth, tossed it away and ground it under his heel.

“I only need twelve hours before I run the blood tests,” the doctor said, following his gaze. Had her eyes teared up? It was hard to tell behind her face shield. “Twenty-four before I can release them back to their families.”

“You hope.”

She kept walking, marching really, across the compound, but her hands, swinging at her sides, began to clench and unclench rhythmically with each stride. “I have some field-sterilization kits in my tent. They use gas pellets. It’ll take a few hours. I’ll need you to take your gun apart for me first, and then you’ll probably need to clean it to get the residue off before you put it back together, but you’d know better about that than me.”

“Not a problem.” Not as much of one as being without his gun, anyway. It wouldn’t be his much longer, but he didn’t want to give it up a second earlier than he had to.

“I’m in the first tent. Come by later and we’ll set it up.”

She stopped in front of a tent on the far-south end of camp, the opposite direction where she’d said she was quartered. Clint frowned at the two guards posted out front. These two were definitely armed. With automatic weapons and full environmental suits like the doctor’s. “How much later?”

The doctor turned to him. Her dark complexion had blanched white except for two red spots on her cheeks that gave her a feverish look. A scary proposition in a camp on the verge of an epidemic.

“Give me an hour or two,” she said. Her voice shook, adding to Clint’s misgiving. “I have something else to take care of first.”

He studied the grim-faced guards behind her. Older, these two. More experienced. They’d seen some things, he was sure. Things they didn’t talk about. He could see it in their eyes.

“What else?” he asked.

“It’s…not your concern.”

“If you’re messing with that bug again, out here where there’s still innocent people who could be exposed—”

“It’s not the virus.”

“Then what is this place?”

A wave of torment washed over her expression. “It’s the morgue. I have to identify the bodies.”

Macy stood frozen inside the flap to the tent housing the temporary morgue. She felt as if her respirator had suddenly quit working. She couldn’t draw a breath. Her chest burned, but it wasn’t enough to melt the icy shock that encapsulated her, held her immobile as a statue.

There were only three bodies.

She heard a swish of the tent flap behind her, a quiet step, and knew the Ranger had followed her inside. His hand on her shoulder was like an electric shock. It restarted her heart, jolted her lungs. She gulped in a noisy breath.

“What are you doing here?”

“Earlier, you said the people on the plane were your friends.” His voice was low, rumbling and hoarse through the gas mask he’d finally donned. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

Compassion from the Ranger? It didn’t seem to fit. But then, maybe there was more to the man than a stony countenance and flat eyes. But she wouldn’t bet on it.

“I shouldn’t have to do this at all,” she said, drawing her mind back to the black bags laid in a neat row. “They shouldn’t be here. This shouldn’t have happened.”

“If man were meant to fly we’d all be born with boarding passes stamped on our foreheads.”

Ah, there was the hard-assed Ranger she knew.

“Guard?” she called. When he poked his head inside, she asked, “Where are the others?”

“Other what, ma’am?”

“The other…remains.” She couldn’t quite think of them as bodies. Bodies belonged to people. What was in those bags belonged to God.

The burly guard frowned. “That’s all they found.”

Ranger Hayes stepped up beside her. “How many are there supposed to be?”

“Six.” Her heart fluttered like a flock of startled sparrows. “You don’t think—”

“We searched all around that wreck. There were no survivors,” Hayes said, guessing what she was thinking. “Are you sure all six people got on the flight?”

The possibility that it had been a mistake, that David hadn’t been on board flared in a ball of bright hope for a moment, then sputtered out.

“I verified it with authorities in Malaysia right after I was notified of the crash.” Her eyes grew warm, full. “They’re still out there. Somewhere.”

“Lot of scavengers out in woods like these. Wouldn’t take them long to tear apart a fresh kill, carry off the pieces,” the burly guard said.

While images of wolves ripping raw meat off a carcass played in Macy’s mind, the Ranger rolled a heavy gaze to the guard. “Thank you, that was very helpful,” he said dryly. “That will be all.”

The guard ducked out, and Macy walked toward the three black bags. “I need to know who—I need to know.”

But her hands stalled on the zipper. The Ranger’s hands brushed them away. His eyes were the color of a full moon, his expression just as distant. How did he do it? How did he stand in front of the dead and not so much as blink? A chill ran down her spine as the image of Robocop popped into her head. The half-man, half-machine enforcer had nothing on Clint Hayes.

“I’ll open them up,” he said. “You just call out the names. I’ll take care of the rest.”

She wheeled, hating having her weakness on display for a man like the Ranger. This was her responsibility. She wouldn’t shirk it. “No!”

He was already pulling at the zipper tab. She pushed him away. “It’s my responsibility.”

He turned toward her, his brows drawn.

She drew herself up to her full height, diminutive as it was next to his towering frame. “Like I said, they were my friends. I owe it to them.”

After a moment’s pause, he stepped back, watching her speculatively. Macy reached for the bag again. Her hands shook as she pulled on the zipper tab.

The smell hit her first, even filtered through her respirator, the pungent odor of death that seemed to pull the bile up from her gut like a vacuum pump. She clamped her mouth shut and held her breath, her eyes watering and her chest aching as she edged the bag open another inch. She saw the tattered sleeve of a blue polo shirt caked with coagulated blood and dirt. A dark-skinned hand, abraded and charred, slipped out.

Her breath whooshed out and the zipper whooshed shut at the same time. “It’s Cory Holcomb, one of our lab technicians.” And the only African-American on-board. At least she hadn’t had to look at his face, into his dead eyes, to identify him.

Facing away, gasping for cleaner air she gulped in a few breaths before turning back to the next bag.

“You sure you want to go on with this?” the Ranger asked.

“I have to.”

Her heart pounded. Sweat pooled on her palms beneath her rubber gloves. The second zipper eased down though she had no conscious thought of opening it. A shock of blond hair greeted her. A freckled face and a mouth that had once always seemed to be laughing. Now he seemed to be screaming. She could only imagine the terror of his last moments…

Tremors wracking her whole body, Macy reached out and gently pulled his eyelids down over his blue eyes…

“It’s Bob Turner, our copilot.”

She moved on to the next. “Timlen Zufria, a Malaysian doctor who was working with us.”

She zipped the last bag closed and turned, pressing her palm into her stomach to try to calm the churning. The burning. She needed to leave. To run. But the Ranger stood in her way.

“Who else was on board?”

“The pilot, Michael Cain.” A tear brushed her cheek. She’d flown with this crew many times. “He has two kids. A girl and a boy.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and hugged, mentally shaking herself. The Ranger didn’t want to hear her sentimental rambling.

“Ty Jeffries, the man who managed the cargo,” she added. “And David Brinker.” Her stomach twisted brutally. Unable to stop the rising tide of bile, she pushed Hayes out of her way and ran out of the tent to the edge of the encampment, where she hunkered down behind a scrub mesquite, yanked off her helmet and lost what little food she’d been able to swallow this morning.

Unable to touch her face for fear of contamination, she had no choice but to let the tears flow unabated down her cheeks. As the sobs diminished to hiccups, she heard footsteps crunch through the dry grass behind her. A long shadow fell over her, chilling her clammy skin.

Ranger Hayes squatted down beside her. His gray eyes swirled, unreadable as ever. “Who is David?”

“My fiancé.” Misery permeated her every cell. “At least he used to be.”