Page 72 of Always Been Mine

With grim resolve, Gabe unzipped her top and gently eased her arms out from it. Even if he expected it, he inhaled sharply at the ugly letters carved into her forearms.Oko za oko.

The admiral cursed behind him.

“How, Ben?” Gabe asked tonelessly. “Ryker is dead.”

No answer.

Gabe rose from his crouch, turned on Porter, and without a second thought, he punched the admiral right across the jaw. Not giving the older man a chance to recover, Gabe slammed him against the wall.

Bringing his face close, he said, “That’s for calling your daughtera bodyto check for fever. Jesus, Ben, you think I’d care to go look for a bio-suit and let Beatrice freeze to death outside? You can quarantine us both because no way in hell am I getting separated from her.”

“You done?” The admiral’s eyes were unflinching.

“You’re unbelievable.” Gabe released him and went back to the unconscious Beatrice. “I need to take her to the hospital, have her checked out.”

“No hospital. She could be infected. We cannot risk it.”

“So you’d risk your daughter instead?”

“You think this is easy for me, Commander?” Porter took out his phone.

“No. I think for once in your life, you should think like a father and not like a damned robot,” Gabe snapped in disgust as he crouched down again. He stroked Beatrice’s cheek gently, willing his anger at Porter to subside because losing his shit right now was not going to help his woman. He considered the admiral’s reluctance to take Beatrice to the hospital and mulled his options. Gabe wouldn’t be satisfied until she was thoroughly looked over by a physician. His gaze driftedover her body, grimacing at the cuts, yet wondering if something far worse had happened. Did they . . . he couldn’t form the words.

“I’ve contacted Dr. Ryan. She’ll be bringing in a special medical van equipped with a biological containment chamber. I don’t think any of us are infected. The virus doesn’t appear to be airborne but more the type to be transferred via bodily fluids.” Porter looked at him. “Did you get blood on you?”

Yes. He did.

“You better fill me in on what’s going on with this fucking virus,” Gabe muttered.

“Believe me, I will.”

Beatrice was takento a facility in the same building that housed the NEST. All equipment was mobile, brought in by a small commercial truck. The admiral and Gabe were told to wait in a separate room while Dr. Fern Ryan examined Beatrice. For precautionary measures, both of them were sequestered and subjected to a high-pressured hose down and given scrubs to wear afterward. Rhino was taken in by one of Dr. Ryan’s assistants while Gabe’s house was being decontaminated. It seemed overkill to Gabe at first, until he found out what type of virus they were dealing with.

From what Porter had told him so far, the ST-Vyl virus originated from an indigenous bat in Colombia. It was a largely dormant virus, but a geneticist who worked for the CIA, the same scientist who created the Berserker serum, was able to alter the virus’s DNA to make it as lethal as the widely feared Ebola virus. Porter had spent weeks in the Colombian jungles tracking down the lab that was manufacturing the pathogen.

“So you haven’t located the lab?” Gabe asked.

“Not the current one,” Porter said. “But we’ve found two previous locations.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“We found mass graves. They burned the bodies, but we were still able to type the virus.”

“Jesus Christ! They tested on humans?”

Porter nodded. “Colombia was the perfect location. It had the virus host, jungles where they could hide the labs, and test subjects that could be used and passed off as victims of the armed conflict or drug trafficking vendettas.”

“Shouldn’t Senator Mendoza be made aware of this?”

The admiral exhaled deeply. “This op is classified. I’m already breaking protocol by telling you.”

“Do we know how Red Bridge is going to get it to the Russians?”

“I don’t think a deal has been made yet,” Porter said. “But the virus has reached the U.S.”

“How?”

Before Porter could answer, Dr. Ryan stepped into the room.

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