Page 45 of Jacob

There was a pretty decent selection of breakfast food. Croissants, Danish pastries, toast, butter and several jams. A ham quiche. Burrito. Mushroom omelette. Potato and chorizo hash. Smoked salmon, scrambled eggs. A cheese platter and a fresh fruit platter.

“We could go to war with this breakfast,” Alex said lightly as she sat down. He didn’t answer and she looked up at him, his face suddenly gone grim.

“Yeah.” His jaw flexed. “Truth is, we might actually be going to war. So eat up.”

That sobered her, but didn’t put her off the food. A surge of energy ran through her. They might be going into battle, but for the best possible cause. She’d dedicated her professional life to keeping people safe from disease and this mission was what she did, on steroids. They might possibly save millions of lives. A just war, if ever there was one.

She ate more than she’d ever eaten for breakfast, had two cups of coffee, and finally pushed the plates away. Jacob put everything on a big tray and carried it into the galley.

He came back and sat across from her, elbows on the table. “So. Your Dr. Field has been gone for four days now. Can you give me an idea of what kind of timing we’re talking about? How much damage can he do in four days? How long does it take to—what’s the word? Bioengineer?”

“Yeah.” She leaned forward. “The answer is—it depends. That’s not a copout. It’s highly dependent on the circumstances. On the virus he has available to work with, for example. Editing viral genomes is tricky business, highly delicate work. He’d have to design the modifications, test them. He’d—I guess he’d first have to make sure that frontline drugs won’t be effective against anything he has engineered.”

Jacob frowned. “There are drugs to treat smallpox? I didn’t know we had that.”

“Not perfect drugs, no. But good enough, maybe. Brincidofovir, for example. It was recently developed and approved by the FDA. But of course its effectiveness hasn’t been tested in sizeable populations. It was tested in vitro, using similar orthopoxviruses and not just variola. So, testing to make sure the new virus can resist Brincidofovir would be item number one on the agenda. That would take at least a couple of days. There’s also Tecovirimat, but it is of limited use against variola. And, just to be complete, there’s Cidofovir, but it’s only been tested on animals suffering from a virus similar to smallpox. I don’t think he’d waste his time on that.”

“So we’re talking a timeline of what? Weeks? Months?”

Alex shook her head. “Sorry to keep answering the same way but—it depends. The… people he’s working with might have already made some headway and might need him for the final steps in weaponizing smallpox. Or they might be starting from scratch, in which case it’ll take months.”

“That would be better. Not too happy knowing the apocalypse might be just around the corner. Are we sure it’s smallpox we’re talking about? Not something else?”

“I just don’t know.” Alex considered. “I understand what you’re saying. But here’s the thing. Virologists all have the same base training but then we branch off into specializations. And at that level, knowledge is pretty much stovepiped. We become superspecialized. There aren’t many generalist virologists and they tend to rise through the admin ranks and become administrators. Not on the frontlines of research. So really, he could be anywhere on the timeline in the process of designing a synthetic virus. Also, I have no idea how sophisticated his equipment would be.”

“There’s a lot of money sloshing around in the world, honey. And a lot of it is in the hands of bad guys. If he’s been recruited to design a killer virus, count on him having unlimited amounts of money behind him.”

She sighed. “And our budgets keep getting cut.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. As if fighting pandemics weren’t important to keep a country safe. You’d think we’d have learned that in the last couple of years. As if studying illness weren’t vital to keeping a country healthy. I don’t understand it. We had two long-term experiments cut short for lack of funds the same day the government announced the design and production of a new stamp honoring a dead rapper. The amount for both was the same.”

He leveled a sharp look at her. “You happy where you are?”

Alex tilted her head back for a second, thinking. “Happy. Define happy.”

He reached across and took her hand. “Happy doesn’t need defining. It is absolutely unmistakable and you’ve basically answered my question. What’s wrong? The CDC is the gold standard in your field, isn’t it? You’re at the top of the heap, at the age of thirty-five.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Top of the heap.”

Jacob placed her hand between both of his. His hands were warm, hard, strong. The warmth spread up her arm.

“Talk to me. Tell me.” He brought her hand to his mouth. His breath was hot against the back of her hand. Lips soft, short beard crinkly.

She was overwhelmed by the sensory memory of that mouth and beard kissing all down her body. Scratching her breast as he sucked on her nipples. Against the very sensitive flesh of her inner thighs as he kissed her sex exactly as he kissed her mouth.

A flash of molten heat shot through her. He was watching her carefully out of those dark, dark eyes, looking right into the heart of her. Lying to him right now felt not only wrong, but impossible.

“I’m unhappy at the CDC.” There. Words she thought she’d never say came just plopping out of her mouth. She nearly looked around her to see who’d said that because it couldn’t possibly be her. Could it?

There was complete silence, even the rumble of the airplane engines was muffled.

“I’m listening,” he said, that deep voice gentle.

Well, yeah. She was saying something crazy and he had to pacify the lunatic. She was in an elite job anyone with her training would kill to have. He must think she was ungrateful or impossible to please.

Alex’s hand curled around his, clinging to him.

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