Draden’s lips twitched. He tried hard to suppress his grin. She looked cute. Earnest. On-camera her freckles showed up as pure gold. He had an unexpected urge to wrap his arm around her neck, lean back and kiss the hell out of her. Pure temptation.
Trap ignored her. “Do you feel nauseated?”
Draden tried not to wince. He’d worked with Trap on social cues, but they didn’t seem to take if he wasn’t there to remind him. Trap lived in his own world, one few understood. He was a brilliant man who could be generous, but most of the time he didn’t give a damn what others thought of him. Nothing softened his hard edges but Cayenne, his wife. Even then, the GhostWalkers thought of her as a miracle, that she could live with his eccentricities. Trap had Asperger’s, but with his IQ he should have been able to learn to read others, he simply didn’t care enough to do so.
“Only when Shylah cooks for us.”
She burst out laughing, just as he knew she would.
“Don’t tell me she’s feeding you the rations Whitney’s nutritionist concocted for us,” Bellisia asked.
“Is that what it is?” Draden countered.
Both girls laughed. Joe managed to smile. Trap didn’t so much as change expression. He was all business, his mind already immersed with finding a way to keep the two of them alive.
“I need to know what the point of entry was, specifically, Draden.”
“Left thigh quadriceps, more to the side, but injected right into the muscle.”
“Was there a burning sensation? Do you have any infection at the entry site?”
“There was a burning sensation, but no infection,” Draden responded, resisting the urge to rub the spot.
“What about swelling?”
“Some, about the size of a golf ball.” He didn’t want to discuss it with the possibility of Shylah overhearing. It was very red. “I’ll photograph it for you and send. Will measure as well. It isn’t particularly large, Trap.”
“Itching? Rash on either of you?”
“No. No rash yet, but we’ll both conduct a thorough examination each morning to make certain.” He rubbed his temples wishing the headache would recede. When he sat, the pain seemed to get worse, but he knew it was because being inactive made him concentrate on it more.
“Any swelling in lymph nodes?”
Draden was careful not to look at Shylah. “Yes, this morning.”
“Shylah?”
“I haven’t checked her yet but will.”
The idea turned his stomach. He kept his expression blank and his tone matter-of-fact, but he found it much more difficult to think of Shylah infected than him. He knew he was infected, but he just couldn’t help wanting a very different outcome for her. The longer he was with her, the more he felt that way. Having Trap ask any question about her, especially in that clinical voice, left him shaken. He knew it was necessary, but that still didn’t make it any easier.
“Have either of you experienced problems with movement?”
He felt Shylah’s fingers dig deeper into his shoulder. The questions were bothering her as well. They’d been out a good portion of the night in order to cover the distance to the village the MSS had taken over. They were both tired and hungry. The morning light seemed dazzling as it streaked through the trees, growing brighter and brighter until he felt it behind his eyes as a sharp, piercing spear. Birds sounded off, calling to one another, more and more species, until the symphony turned to cacophony, jangling on the nerves.
He looked over his shoulder, one eyebrow lifted in inquiry at Shylah. He wanted to get the inquisition over with, so he could lie down. He still had to make certain everything was ready for pickup.
She shook her head. “I didn’t have any trouble and I was running along tree branches in the dark.”
“She also dispensed with a few of the MSS tonight,” Draden added, trying to sound as clinical as Trap. It was nearly impossible when he was referencing Shylah. “I didn’t have problems with motor skills either.”
“Physical exhaustion? Fatigue? Where are you with that?” Trap asked. “Give me a scale.”
Draden was so tired he just wanted to sleep for hours. Maybe days. That was alarming to him. He was used to running for hours without becoming tired. He glanced up at Shylah again. “I’m very tired, Trap. Extremely tired. I’d say an eight. I’m running a low-grade fever as well.”
“He took a very hard blow to the head,” Shylah pointed out immediately. “He’s been going ever since. He’s been back and forth to the village, which is miles from here, and he hunted and killed I don’t know how many of the MSS, but the numbers are staggering. Of course he’s tired. Anyone would be. Even someone enhanced. I’m tired and I haven’t done near the work that he has.”
Draden slid his arm around her waist, uncaring who was watching or if they got it on camera.
“I’ll have everything ready for pickup,” Draden assured Joe. “We’re signing off. Both of us are exhausted.”
Joe nodded. “We’ll be in the air in twenty. ETA, forty-five.”
“Trap, I’m counting on you to get her out of this,” Draden said.
Her fingers tightened on his shoulder. She leaned in. “Both of us, Trap.”
Trap nodded and was gone. Draden turned off the computer and leaned back in his chair. “I’m damned tired, Shylah.”
“Me too. I think I’ve been running on adrenaline.” She stepped back to allow him to stand up.
“You might want to be careful chewing Joe out,” Draden said. “Just in case.”
She shrugged, not looking in the least repentant. “He’s not my boss. You and I both know the chances of us making it out of here are slim to none. In any case, even if I do make it out, he shouldn’t talk to you like that.”
“He was right. If the tiger had killed me and someone found that ampule containing the virus before our people, it could have been a catastrophe.”
“I’m well aware of that, so thank you for the extraordinary and, in this case, costly gift. I loved it. But that doesn’t mean he should talk to you like that when you’re giving your life for them to try to see the progression. You explained you were going to record everything. Leave them blood samples every day. We both know this is going to get very ugly. He knows that as well.”
Draden put all the carefully labeled blood samples in a carrier and left them in the freezer along with the ampule containing the virus and then held out his hand to her. There was little point in locking the lab. Anyone could break into it. They had military aid now, the Indonesian government providing them with soldiers to keep everyone away. Draden knew that ring of security around them was to contain them as well, but he didn’t poin
t that out to Shylah. She was intelligent enough to figure it out for herself.
He closed the door and they walked together back into the forest, taking the shortcut to the ranger’s cabin.
“Shylah, the three virologists, the ones creating the viruses for Whitney—where were they getting their funding? Once Whitney cut them off, they had to get money from somewhere. You’ve been on their trail for a while. Who is he? Their moneyman. You have to know.”
She sent him a small, under-the-lashes glance, but then she nodded. There wasn’t a reason to hold back information anymore. They needed truth between them and in any case, someone else had to take up the search for the three men and whomever they planned to sell the virus to.
“I knew from the phone messages we’d intercepted that they were discussing selling the virus to a man by the name of Ethan Montgomery. He was born in Mississippi and went to school with Tyler and Cameron Williams. Montgomery is extremely wealthy and has skated on that his entire life. Every time he got in trouble, and that was usually with the Williams brothers, his daddy bailed them out by paying everyone off.”
“Shylah, you should have told Joe. You can’t keep valuable information like that to yourself.”
“I didn’t. I sent it to Whitney.”
He wanted to shake her. He actually counted his steps to cool his rising temper. He took a deep breath and let it out, not breaking stride as they moved through the thick vegetation. “You’re infected with a virus Whitney had his three madmen create specifically to target you. To kill you. That was his intention, and he’s actually accomplished it. You do realize that, don’t you? This is Whitney’s fault.”
“It wasn’t his intention to create a virus of this type.”
He stopped dead at her defense of the man, forcing her to halt as well. “Don’t do that. Whitney deserves a bullet in his head, not your defense.”
“I’m well aware of that, Draden,” she said. “I’m not defending him. I’m stating a fact. He repeatedly ordered them to stop working on this virus when they told him a hemorrhagic one was the only type that might actually have a chance of infecting me. I knew they were working to find a virus, and that they’d ‘accidentally’ created what could be used as a biological weapon, but I lost track of the fact that this started with me.”