Deadly Strain (Biological Response Team) (23 page)

Sharp tugged at her and they scrambled down the slope and away as fast as they could go. After a couple of hundred yards, Grace ran out of air, strength and everything else.

“I’ve got nothing left,” she said, folding in on herself and sitting on her butt on the ground.

“Okay,” Sharp said, reaching into his pack and pulling out a bottle of water. He took a swig and handed it to her. “We’ll wait here for the cavalry.”

She nodded, breathing hard. “Make sure they’re wearing bio-suits.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He sat down next to her, then pulled her into his lap, his arms around her, his head resting on top of hers.

She relaxed into his embrace. This might be the last time she had to be close to him, to feel his chest rising and falling with each breath, to hear his heart beating under her ear.

She cried a little more and soaked in the nonsensical words he murmured into her ear. She calmed after a while and he asked, sounding no more curious than if he asked her for the temperature, “How long until we know if we’re going to die?”

She sniffed and tightened her arms around him. “A few hours. Not long.”

“Don’t cry, darlin’. Wherever you go, I go.”

Chapter Thirty

The bag of saline hanging above Grace’s head was almost empty. She frowned at it. When had she gotten an IV? There were three smaller bags next to it, Cipro, doxycycline and penicillin.

Voices, their volume rising with every word, drew her attention to a knot of uniformed men standing about ten feet away. Though they could have been farther, the room looked a little fuzzy.

“She’s been scrubbed head to toe and she’s getting massive doses of antibiotics. What more do you want?”

Huh. If that wasn’t Sharp, she’d eat her boots.

“She could be infectious and she should be isolated,” someone else argued.

“She doesn’t even have a cough,” Sharp shot back. “
Standard
isolation procedures work just fine.”

“You’re a sniper, not a doctor.”

“I’ve been working with an infectious disease specialist for months who was happy to share her knowledge. If you’d like more information, why don’t you ask her? She’s right over there.” He pointed at her.

Grace looked at herself. Someone had removed her clothes and dressed her in a hospital-style gown. Her skin looked as if it had been scrubbed hard, the dirt and sand embedded under her fingernails, gone.

No sores visible.

She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. No coughing either.

“He’s right,” she said.

The whole group stopped their arguing to look at her.

“I’m asymptomatic. I pose only minimal risk.” She smiled at them. “If I start hacking up blood and form bleeding sores on my skin, feel free to stick me in a plastic bubble.”

Sharp folded his arms over his chest and gave the officer a
fuck you
grin. “Colonel Maximillian will be here in an hour. You can check with him if you want, but we’re following his infection control protocol to the letter.”

The officer finally left, the others following him.

Sharp waited until they were gone before walking over to sit on the floor next to her gurney.

They weren’t in the infirmary on the base, there was no noise from other medical staff or patients. Someone had set up portable hospital curtains on all four sides of her gurney, making it look like she was inside a box.

“Where, exactly, are we?”

He smiled at her. A much too happy smile. “We’re in what used to be the supply room for the infirmary.”

“Oh.” She studied the grin on his face. Was he high? “How long have I been here?”

“Six hours.”

That had her blinking.

He laughed. “After we detonated the grenade, you kind of crashed.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It didn’t bother me. You ran out of gas. No shame in that.”

His grin was starting to get creepy. “Did you sleep?”

“A couple hours here and there.”

“So, what, that fills your gas tank? Find a bed and get some real sleep.”

“I will, as soon as Max gets here.”

“Why are you waiting for Max?”

Sharp looked at her and raised one eyebrow.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Paranoid much? No one is going to do anything to me for fear of getting sick.”

“Still waiting.”

“How’s Smoke?”

“He’s good. Sleeping.”

“Let me guess. As soon as Max gets here, you’re going to wake him up while you sleep so I can have a big, scary, silent Special Forces soldier stand guard over me.”

“Yep.”

She sighed. “How is...Colonel Marshall?”

Sharp’s grin drained away. “He didn’t make it. Died a couple of hours ago.”

“Oh.” Sorrow swamped her like a high tide. She hadn’t liked him, but she understood his grief for his son. Understood how it could eat at you and change the way you see the world.

“Stop that,” Sharp ordered.

“Stop what?”

“Beating yourself up over his death.
You
didn’t kill him.”

“Doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“I thought doctors learned to compartmentalize, disengage their emotions so they can treat sick people with objectivity and a clear head?”

“I seem to have lost all my objectivity when I met you.”

“Ah, I’m heartbroken.”

She was too tired to deal with his shit. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“Nighty-night, Grace.”

He was smiling again. She could tell from his tone he was damn near gloating.

Asshole. She knew him now. “Just you wait until we play chess. You’re going to lose.”

His voice followed her into sleep. “Sweetheart, if I lose to you, I win.”

* * *

“Grace.”

She opened her eyes at her name. “Max.” She smiled. “When did you get here?”

“About an hour ago. I had to bribe your watchdog into going to sleep.”

“Smoke?”

“No, the other one, the sniper.” He snorted. “The silent one didn’t require much convincing.”

“I think Sharp was overtired.”

“His alertness was in no way responsible for his overprotective attitude,” Max told her in a tolerant tone. “He follows you around like a puppy.”

“He’s
not
a puppy.”

“The question is, what do you want to do about it?”

The thought of not having Sharp around to talk to, bounce ideas off of, with his strength and calm competence, induced an anxiety she didn’t want to entertain at all. “Do I have to do anything?”

Max stared at her, his wise eyes seeing far too much. “What happened?”

She thought back over the last few days. Where did she start? “A lot of things. Awful things. Amazing things.” Damn it, she was crying again. She wiped away the tears. “Did you find the man responsible for the anthrax? Was he one of the men with the grenade launcher?”

“No. CIA has confirmed Akbar is responsible, but he’s nowhere to be found.”

“Is he going to try again?”

“That’s what everyone thinks. General Stone has ordered our team to take on some new members. You’ve been working with your sniper’s team to train Afghan forces for almost a year. Would you feel comfortable working with Green Berets as official members of our Biological Response Team? We need men with their training and ability to spot problems from a distance to pair up with our doctors.”

“Yes. Absolutely. I trust my guys one hundred percent.” More tears. “I just wish I hadn’t lost so many of them.”

“Sharp? Do you...trust him?”

“With
everything
.”

“Everything?” Max approached and asked softly, “Does he know you’re in love with him?”

She smiled, but knew it was a weak effort. “It sort of slipped out when I thought I was going to die, but don’t worry. We both know where we stand.”

“Are you sure?” Max’s gaze filled with brotherly concern.

“Yes. He’s a good man. The best, we’re...good.”

“What about this Smoke?”

“Oh, he’s a brother. He’s harmless.”

Max shook his head. “If you believe that, you need a lot more sleep.” He got up and took a few steps away.

“Wait,” Grace said. “What did you discover about the anthrax? I thought it wasn’t susceptible to Cipro.”

“It is, just not alone. As you suggested, I tried a cocktail of ciprofloxacin, doxycycline and penicillin boosted with a beta-lactamase inhibitor. The sensitivity test worked, so as soon as you got to the base, I had the doctors here start infusing you with all three. It seems to have worked to prevent the anthrax from getting a foothold in your lungs.”

“Did you find spores on my skin? Clothing?”

“Yes.”

“Sharp?”

“Far less on him, so he’s taking oral Cipro rather than in an IV.”

“What about the grenades that Sharp stopped from being lobbed in here?”

“Also tested positive for spores. We found a dozen of them.”

“Oh my God. He’s insane.”

“Yes, and also smart and determined. We haven’t seen the last of him.” Max fixed her with his best commanding officer glare. “Enough questions. Sleep.”

“Yes, sir.” Though she didn’t really think she was going to, thanks to all the not-so-nice mental images going through her head.

* * *

Four days later, she wished she were back on that gurney asleep.

As soon as Max had declared her fit, which wasn’t until her IV antibiotics were done, she was on a helicopter to Kabul, then a plane to the base in Bahrain. Max and a few handpicked doctors were doing their best to predict where Akbar might go next with his anthrax bombs. Max had also requested the assignment of several Green Berets to the Biological Response Team for nine to twelve months, depending on how things went. General Stone green-lighted his request and Grace found herself with a shadow named Smoke.

Sharp was nowhere to be seen. Or heard from.

She’d seen him last at Bostick. He’d waved at her, but hadn’t gotten any closer than that. She’d waved back and waited for him to come back, to talk to her, but he never did.

At first, she was irritated, then angry and finally pissed off that he didn’t even say goodbye before he left on whatever secret mission he was on. Goddamn SF soldiers and their war games.

Smoke hadn’t said more than six words to her since he’d arrived, just stared at her like she was supposed to be doing something other than preparing for another bioterrorism attack.

His silence was driving her crazy.

“What’s gotten you so annoyed, Smoke?” she asked on the second day he’d been following her around. “And don’t give me any more of your stoic stares. Out with it.”

“Sharp,” was all he said.

“Sharp?” All her frustration and anger boiled out of her. “You mean the guy who disappeared without a
see you later
or
goodbye
? That Sharp?”

“You know what happened,” Smoke said.

“What happened? Of course I know what happened. I tried to save that moron’s life by running away with a grenade full of the worst poison known to man and he followed me. He refused to let me—” she choked on a sob “—save him. I thought I killed him, Smoke. I really did. So, you know what I did? I told him I loved him. And after that, he just up and disappeared. He left.” She glared.

Smoke frowned back at her. “That’s not what happened.”

Fabulous. Not even Smoke believed her. “Fuck you and the tank you rode in on.” She’d had enough. She’d request a soldier she didn’t know, someone who wouldn’t make her sad just knowing he was in the room.

She strode away, determined to find Max.

Smoke grabbed her arm. “Wait.”

She tugged at her arm and after a moment he let go.

“You didn’t know Sharp was arrested?”

“Arrested? For what? When was this?” She advanced on Smoke, poked him in the chest and all but yelled, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He broke a lot of regulations.”

“So what?”

“He made your relationship with him known to...everyone.”

“Our relationship?” They hadn’t really sat down and figured that out. She loved him, but she didn’t know if it was going to go somewhere or not.

“You’re engaged.”

What?
“How can we be engaged when I never gave him an answer!”

Smoke shrugged. “He wasn’t going to let some stranger have final say regarding your treatment while you were unconscious.”

“Okay.” She held up a hand. “Let me think for a minute.” She paced back and forth a couple of times. “Sharp was arrested and taken away to face charges for the regulations he broke helping me?”

Smoke nodded once.

“Why the hell wasn’t I arrested?”

“He took full responsibility. Said you were acting as a doctor, which took precedence over military regulations.”

He’d saved her.
Again.
“That sneaky bastard.”

“Stupid, if you ask me.”

She snorted. “Just you wait, Smoke. You’re going to meet a woman who makes you sing like a canary someday.”

He looked at her with puppy-dog eyes. “That’s mean.”

Max was arguing with General Stone when she caught up to him. Perfect, two birds she was happy to stone.

“Excuse me, sirs,” she said, marching up to them wearing her best
I’m a good girl—no
,
really
smile. “I have an urgent request for a piece of equipment.”

“Equipment?” Max asked.

“Yes, sir.” She turned to the general. “It’ll require your approval.”

“Oh?”

She turned up the wattage on her smile.

“Well, if it’s urgent and you can’t live without it...” General Stone shrugged.

“What is it?” Max asked.

“Sergeant Jacob Foster.” She dropped the smile and fixed both men in place with a glare that would have done Sharp proud. “I absolutely refuse to work without him.”

“Well, Major, he’s not—”

“Yes, he is,” she interrupted. “No insult intended, General Stone, but he’s the one man I trust without question. Smoke’s like a brother to me, but he asks too many questions.”

“
Smoke
asks too many questions?” General Stone sounded like he couldn’t believe his ears.

“Yes, sir. He does. Chatters on like a chickadee. Drives me crazy.”

Both men stared at her with their mouths hanging open. Finally Stone pulled himself together and said, “The thing is, Major Samuels, Jacob Foster isn’t under my—”

“General,” Max interrupted. “I think I can deal with the major’s request. Thank you, sir.”

Stone gave Max a short bark of a laugh and started walking. “I’m happy to turn it over to you.”

As soon as he was out of earshot, Grace said, “I don’t care what jail or brig you have to spring him from, I want Sharp here.”

Max’s exasperated expression would have made her laugh if she wasn’t so damn angry. “Sometimes, Grace, you need to stop and think.”

“What does that mean?”

“Or let people finish their sentences.”

“Okay. Sorry. When can Sharp be here?”

“You know what the general and I were arguing about just now?”

“No.”

“You and your Sharp.”

“Oh.”

“Jacob Foster is no longer an active member of the military.”