Reckless Creed (10 page)

OMAHA, NEBRASKA

I
nstead of Pensacola, O'Dell booked a flight to Omaha. Before she left she spent the morning tracking down the biologist she had seen on the newscast the night before. She called Platt about her plans only when she was getting ready to board, leaving him little time to talk her out of it or try to convince her this was a wild-goose chase. Besides, he had his hands full, and she asked him to fill her in on the CDC's progress.

Roger Bix's staff had spent the last thirty-six hours with Chicago hospital personnel and checking with urgent care facilities. Platt told her that Bix was reporting a total of seventy-three people in the Chicago area who might have come in contact with Tony Briggs and were now sick. They were in the process of testing them for the virus. But Platt admitted it was early and most people might not seek medical help until the more severe symptoms hit. They were expecting that number to rise in the next several days, especially after they tracked down the passengers who were on
both flights Briggs had taken, one from Pensacola and the other from Atlanta.

O'Dell's flight from Chicago to Omaha was short but bumpy. She was relieved that the biologist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was able to meet her and even offered to pick her up from the airport.

Amee Rief wore blue jeans, a bright yellow ski jacket, and stylish hiking boots. O'Dell was surprised. On television Rief had been dressed in a pea-green jacket with a patch on the sleeve that identified her department.

Rief seemed to notice and smiled as she said, “Off camera I like to go rogue.”

O'Dell had decided she liked the woman before she met her, recognizing even on the phone that she was sincere and genuine in wanting to do the right thing. Though she was the department's spokesperson and investigator on this case—and O'Dell knew she was doing her best to keep the media and locals from panicking—Rief had not tried to hide any of the details from her. Coming from a federal employee, O'Dell found it refreshing.

It took almost two hours to drive from the airport to the lake. By the time they arrived they had only a few hours before dusk. During the drive Rief pointed out a huge flock of snow geese in the distance. O'Dell couldn't help thinking the sky looked like a snowstorm of birds. Their white wings glittered in the sunlight.

“So not all of them have been affected.”

“So far I've only found dead geese on this one lake. I've taken water samples to check for any chemical leaks or pesticides. But the other flocks appear to be okay. Millions of snow geese stop here to
feed before they head up to their breeding grounds,” Rief explained. “They're not the only migratory bird to choose the Platte River Valley. Lots of them come through here along the Platte and the Missouri. In a few more weeks we'll start to see sandhill cranes.”

“They're gorgeous,” O'Dell said, mesmerized by the sight of them, a thick wave rising and lowering, their movement as smooth as water in the sky.

“Pairs mate for life,” Rief continued. “They'll have two to six chicks. Families stay together through the young one's first winter. About a hundred years ago they were almost extinct, but populations are thriving again. So much so, they're back on the hunting list. Sometimes overpopulation of a particular waterfowl can be a problem. But we haven't seen much disease. Until now.”

“Is that what you're thinking, or do you already know?”

“We don't have any results back yet, but I've never seen anything like this. Migratory waterfowl have always been suspected carriers of bird flu, but they don't usually get sick themselves.”

O'Dell had told the biologist that they suspected a new strain. She needed Rief's expertise. She hoped she hadn't misjudged the woman by confiding in her. Besides, how could she in good conscience not share what she knew when Rief and her colleagues would be processing and disposing of thousands of dead snow geese in the weeks to come? They needed to know that they might be at risk.

“You know, we've all anticipated for some time now that the bird flu would hit the United States,” Rief said. “It was just a matter of time. I don't know if you're aware of this, but when it did show up—that first case in Washington State in the fall of 2013—
it didn't resemble the Asian strain or the one that they were seeing in Europe.”

“I've been told it mutates easily.”

“Oh, it wasn't just that it might have mutated,” Rief told her. “We wondered if it didn't resemble the others because it was leaked from one of our own research labs.”

FLORIDA PANHANDLE

T
he rain had finally stopped by the time Creed found the dirt path. His tires skidded on the red clay. He slowed down and let the four-wheel drive do its job.

A glance in the rearview mirror assured him that Grace was unfazed by the continued rumble of thunder. It seemed to grow louder as they advanced up the hill. The seats in the back of his Jeep were laid flat to accommodate her kennel and their gear. She stood in the middle so she could see in between the front seats, as though she were helping him navigate.

The Jack Russell knew they had brought her working gear, so she was ready to work. But Creed hoped they'd find Sheriff Wylie fishing in between cloudbursts. Maybe he would have some answers about Izzy Donner.

Creed remembered how desperate the old sheriff had been to find the young woman, despite sticking to the story that she had simply wandered off. It wasn't like Wylie to leave without even checking with Dr. Emmet to see what had happened to Donner.
Creed remembered during the search for the young woman how Wylie and Tabor seemed to know more than they were telling. And now Creed suspected that Wylie might know exactly what the hell was going on.

It could even be the reason the sheriff had taken off. If not to hide, then to get away for a while.

The small cabin was nestled deep in a forest of longleaf pines. The thick trunks with patches of green shot well above the roof, and the wood of the cabin blended in. On this dark, dreary day, it'd be easy to miss the cabin entirely and continue up the dirt path that fishermen used as a road.

It had been years since Creed had been up here. Not much had changed. Wylie usually invited a handful of colleagues for an annual fishing excursion that ended with a fish fry and all the beer you could drink. Creed had missed a few. Grace had never been here, but he noticed her nose already working the air.

He pulled up alongside Wylie's pickup. Several different tire tracks crisscrossed in the mud. Creed realized the sheriff might not be alone.

“Would help if you returned phone calls,” Creed muttered.

Grace cocked her head at him.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said to the dog.

There were no lights on inside the cabin. But even on a dark and dreary day the place probably had enough natural light for a miser like Wylie.

As Creed got out of the Jeep, he looked for the river between the trees. There was a footpath behind the cabin. From here he could see the water and the old wood dock. But no fisherman. No
surprise. The clouds looked like they could burst open again at any minute. What did concern Creed was that Wylie's boat wasn't at the dock.

Creed raised the Jeep's tailgate and Grace met him. He expected her to be squirming and excited. Instead she stood stock-still, her head back and nose twitching. Her ears were pitched forward. That was when Creed realized how quiet it was. There was only the rumble in the clouds. No birds. Nothing flapping in the breeze. No humming of a generator.

It was too quiet.

Creed clipped a leash to Grace's collar and lifted her out and onto the ground. He hadn't given her any instructions or commands, but she was straining at the lead, pulling him toward the back of the cabin.

“We're not staying for dinner,” he told her when he got a whiff of a recent wood fire.

Grace's nose would be able to smell not only the ashes, but what had been cooked on that fire, even if it had been the previous night.

There were several pairs of footprints in the mud. Different soles. Different sizes. Wylie had probably invited some of his fishing buddies. And now Creed was starting to regret crashing a party he hadn't been invited to.

Still, something didn't feel right.

He followed Grace's lead. He was a bit surprised when she passed the fire pit without giving it an extra sniff. She was headed for the water. By the time they got to the boat dock she was breathing fast. Her tail was straight up. She didn't change her pace even as she jumped up onto the rickety boards and marched to the edge, where she came to a dead stop.

Then she looked back at Creed, staring straight into his eyes.

He wasted a few seconds checking the riverbank. Another precious minute or two went by as he dropped to his knees and looked down around and under the dock.

In the meantime, Grace was getting impatient with him. Her paws danced and her head bobbed almost as if she were trying to point her nose in the right direction.

His eyes started darting across the surface of the water. There was a gentle swish. He listened to the breeze skimming through the tops of the pine trees. Again, the clouds above rumbled.

This part of the river was only about a hundred feet from bank to bank, but around the bend Creed knew it opened up wider. Tree branches leaned down in places. Some had toppled into the water, making a natural habitat for beavers, insects, and water moccasins. But Creed saw nothing.

He looked back at Grace.

She stared at him again, then poked at the air with her nose.

“I'm trying,” he told her.

This time he focused on the bend where the river curved, about three hundred feet away. Close to the opposite bank he saw something, an object in the water. A red object that caught his eye. It bobbed on the surface but didn't appear to be moving with the current. He couldn't think of anything that grew or bloomed red in these parts at this time of year.

Creed pointed in its direction and looked down at Grace.

She pranced on the edge of the dock, and Creed's pulse quickened. Grace was never wrong.

C
reed peeled off his hiking boots, then his vest and shirt, shedding everything that might bog him down.

“You have to stay, Grace.”

She twirled.

“I'm serious.”

She twirled a second time.

“Stay, Grace.”

The water was cold. Creed was glad he had left on his jeans. In places the river ran waist-high, but through the middle Creed knew it was as deep as twenty feet. It ran shallow on the other side of the bend, where it spilled into a much wider area. It wasn't a problem. Creed was an excellent swimmer. His facility housed an Olympic-sized pool for him and his dogs to train in. But almost as soon as he started swimming, the sky darkened. What had been a soft rumble overhead now crackled with electricity. The Florida Panhandle witnessed more lightning strikes than anywhere else in the country, and spring was the most unpredictable season.

Creed needed to be quick about this. He raised his head. Still couldn't make out what the red object was.

A flash of lightning.

He kept his head down and increased his pace. At one point he glanced back at Grace. She was waiting at the end of the dock, right where he had left her. Right where he had told her to stay. And he knew she'd stay even when the downpour started, even when the crackles became crashes. Loyal to a fault. That was his Grace.

He hated leaving her out in the open for some wild-goose chase. Then he reminded himself that Grace had alerted at the water's edge. He hadn't asked her to search out anything, and yet she had alerted to something.

Closer to the bank now, Creed dug his feet into the sand and raised himself up. The water lapped against his thighs. The current had gotten stronger. The breeze had kicked up a notch.

The red object had disappeared from sight. Or the current had taken it.

His eyes darted over the water's surface. Then he searched the overhanging branches that dipped into the river. It looked like a pile of debris-tangled brush, broken branches all twisted together. He was about to give up and head back when the flash of red bobbed up just three feet in front of him.

It was a red baseball cap with the letter
A
, what Creed recognized as the University of Alabama's logo. Wylie was a huge Bama fan.

His heart started pounding. Was the sheriff somewhere in the water? Had he knocked himself out and off his boat?

The water was shallow enough here for Creed to swipe his hands underneath the surface. He hadn't gone far when he saw the boat on the other side of the debris pile. And now he knew Wylie had to be here somewhere.

He dived his head beneath the water's surface, but it was too dark to see anything other than roots and branches.

“Wylie!” he called out.

If the man was injured maybe he could hear him.

He looked back at Grace. She pranced around, agitated.

Creed shoved his way around the debris pile, his eyes focused on the small boat. It was wedged between the pile and the bank. Maybe Wylie had gotten caught underneath.

He made his way to the boat and was about to dive underwater again when something above caught his eye. Something in the trees up on the riverbank. Something swaying with the breeze, hanging from one of the branches.

It was Wylie.

NEW YORK CITY

C
hristina set out to the streets just as her watchers expected her to do. Her first stop was a little shop on the corner. They had made sure that she had plenty of cash. She usually left most of it in her hotel room, dividing it in three wads and stuffing the wads inside socks, then stuffing the socks into the toes of her shoes. Today she'd stuffed some of it inside her clothing.

She tried to take as much of it with her as she could fit. Some of it was flat against her shins inside her knee-high socks. A couple layers filled her bra, making her so buxom she wore a baggy sweatshirt she had bought from a street vendor on her first day. Last, she ripped a seam in the lining of a baseball cap and tucked in as many bills as she could. Then she put her hair in a ponytail and weaved it through the open back of the cap to make it more secure on her head.

She did all this in case she decided not to come back to her hotel room. She'd need money for another hotel room, food, and maybe a ticket to get back home.

It wasn't until the man in the crowd—the man who had slipped
the flash drive into her pocket—had talked about her death as though it were a foregone conclusion that Christina realized that perhaps the watchers were not necessarily her allies. And now she realized she wouldn't be able to go back home.

She wasn't stupid. She knew that all the information and all the help the watchers had given her so far was simply for her to be able to go out and spread whatever version of the cold or flu they had infected her with. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that no one had talked about them helping her get better after this experiment.

Sometime during the night, while she tossed and turned in her sweat-drenched sheets, it occurred to Christina that maybe she was really stupid. What if this time instead of providing her with an antidote, they meant for her to simply die?

Was that possible? Or was the fever starting to make her paranoid?

Safe inside the small shop, tucked in the back aisles, she reached through the neckline of her sweatshirt and the T-shirt underneath. She fingered the bump on her upper left arm. The tiny microchip was barely visible. It was put there months ago. Another experiment. For something different.

But what if it wasn't? What if it was being used to track her?

She bought a carton of orange juice, a small bottle of Tylenol, and three protein bars. While she walked down the street she forced down two of the bars. She stopped long enough to pop three Tylenol and washed them down with the orange juice.

Yesterday she had accidentally gotten off on the wrong floor of the hotel. She remembered seeing computers and printers in a room—a business center. But there had been several men and
women inside. And the watchers were always slipping notes under her room's door. They were obviously here at the hotel. There was no way she'd be able to use one of the computers.

But other hotels must have similar business centers. She'd go out and pretend to walk the streets just as she did yesterday. Somehow she'd find a computer.

She slipped her hand deep down into the pocket of her jeans and made sure the flash drive was still there. She wanted to see what was so important.