Reckless Creed (24 page)

FLORIDA PANHANDLE

J
ason had just finished the kennel chores. It was the first time he'd done all of them alone without Creed. From the sounds of it, he'd need to get used to it. His shoulder ached. He had gotten into the habit of gripping bags of dog food and pinning them under his arm. He carried them against his body with his amputated arm, so he could leave his hand free to open gates and doors. He had actually gotten pretty good at it, but his body was still trying to adjust.

He was heading to the house for coffee with Hannah and Dr. Avelyn when he saw a shiny black SUV winding its way through the trees. It reminded him of Tabor, and immediately he felt a knot in his stomach.

Jason came in the back door just as the SUV took the last curve in the long driveway.

“We've got company,” he told the two women.

Hannah didn't look surprised. Instead she went to the cupboard and took out another coffee mug.

“I baked a batch of pecan rolls,” she said, pointing to the kitchen
table, where a plate of pastries sat in the middle of the paperwork she and Dr. Avelyn had been working on.

The scent of fresh bread, sugar, and cinnamon made Jason's mouth water, and already he had forgotten the knot in his stomach. He was slathering a roll with butter when Hannah opened the back door and called to their visitor.

The last time Jason had seen Charlie Wurth he had been shoving and yelling at passengers to get out of the way. Now the man greeted them with a wide smile. He wore dark trousers, a light blue shirt, and a striped tie to match. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his sunglasses were pushed up on top of his head. Jason started to stand up, but Wurth waved at him to sit back down.

“Sure does smell good in here,” he told Hannah. “You are definitely not the typical contractor I'm used to working with.”

Jason glanced at Hannah. He'd never seen that look on her face. She was actually flustered by Wurth's praise.

“How's Rye doing?” she asked him as she gestured for him to sit. She poured coffee for the two men and offered to top off Dr. Avelyn's.

“They're still running tests.” Wurth dropped a manila envelope on the table but stayed standing until Hannah came around to her seat.

“When I talked to him he sounded like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. He won't admit it, but I think he's a bit claustrophobic after being buried under that mudslide.”

“Do they know if the blood Shaw threw at them was contaminated?” Dr. Avelyn asked.

“Colonel Platt didn't believe it was, but they're being extra cautious.”

Wurth picked up the envelope and tapped it against his open palm. Jason thought the man looked impatient and ready to talk about why he was really here.

“I wanted to thank all of you again. As you know, Mr. Creed drove a hard bargain to make this all happen, and it was certainly worth every cent. I look forward to working with all of you in the future. But there was one piece of the agreement that I still need to deliver.”

Wurth surprised Jason by handing him the envelope.

Jason looked from Wurth to Hannah and Dr. Avelyn, then back to Wurth before he set his coffee mug down. He hesitated as he took the envelope.

“What's this?” he asked.

“Something your boss insisted we include in the agreement.”

Jason looked at Hannah again, and she said, “Go ahead and open it.”

He pulled out a folder and opened it, but he still didn't understand what he was looking at. On one side was official paperwork from Johns Hopkins University with instructions including dates and times. Tucked in the other side of the folder were several brochures. One of them had
DARPA
printed at the top. He pulled it out. The graphic on the front was a robotic hand. A quick scan and he picked out phrases: “Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program,” “touch sensations,” “mind-controlled,” “dexterous hand capabilities.”

“I don't understand,” Jason finally said.

“It's state-of-the-art technology,” Wurth told him. “I'm told it just passed a thirty-five-volunteer test study with flying colors.” Wurth reached across the table and tapped a business card that
was stapled to the document on the other side. “You're all scheduled, but if you need to change dates, you call me. It'll be about a week for the fitting and adjusting, as well as some time for you to get used to using it. That paperwork includes hotel reservations for you and your dog.”

“My dog?”

“I was told you have a dog you'd probably want to bring with you.”

Jason looked at Hannah. He couldn't believe this. He thought of Tony and his upcoming funeral, of all they had been through together. He had followed in Tony's footsteps almost all his life, and over the last several days he struggled to imagine how to go on without his friend. Maybe this was a good start.

“I don't know what to say,” he told Hannah.

She took his hand and squeezed it, fighting back her own emotion as she smiled.

AN ISOLATION UNIT
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL
ATLANTA, GEORGIA

C
reed was already tired of wearing the hospital gown. No one would tell him how much longer he'd be stuck in here. He was worried about Grace. They would only tell him that the dog was fine, but they wouldn't let him see her.

They had allowed him to talk to Hannah on the phone last night. He knew she'd be worried, especially if she'd heard about the two of them being splattered with blood. He had been told that the blood wasn't infected with the virus. Supposedly they were taking extra precautions because of the bird droppings and being in the aviary, breathing in the air contaminated by what they believed were birds infected with the bird flu.

Hannah told him about Tillie tracking the first virus carrier. And he told her about Grace sniffing out Dr. Shaw. She also told him how well Jason had done with Winnie. All in all, they'd managed to help apprehend three virus carriers. They had no way of knowing if those three were the only ones.

Creed kept the television on. It was the only thing that kept him from climbing the white walls of the isolation unit. Charlie Wurth
and Benjamin Platt were able to keep secret the reason for the commotion and arrests at the Atlanta airport. But there were rumors and suspicion about a new flu sickening hundreds in the Chicago and New York areas. The CDC reported nine deaths despite their claim that the strain was not as strong as they had initially suspected.

There was, however, no mention of the bird flu, and no journalists seemed to make the connection even after several reports of birds falling from the sky. On one of the channels Amee Rief, the biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was being interviewed about the strange occurrence. Creed listened for a while until he realized that Charlie Wurth had managed to control this story line, too.

Of course, most of the 24/7 news cycle was concentrated on Washington, D.C., where Colonel Abraham Hess, the legendary director of DARPA, was stepping down. The official word was that the man was finally retiring, but there was speculation that his resignation had been forced. This news came after a DARPA field agent named Lawrence Tabor had been arrested for the murder of Sheriff Wylie. Tabor was also being investigated in the suspicious death of a scientist named Dr. Howard Getz, whose vehicle had been found in a ravine not far from his research facility.

Creed shook his head at the politics of it all. None of it surprised him, and he thought about how Hess's attempt at cover-up wasn't really much different than what Charlie Wurth, Benjamin Platt, and the CDC were doing. They were all so good at it.

The fact that the colonel was resigning and not being led away in handcuffs spoke more about his skills of survival than the
cover-up. He claimed Tabor had gone rogue, and he insisted the agent had not been acting on any orders given or implied. Of course, all that might change once Dr. Clare Shaw recovered from her gunshot wounds and began telling tales of Hess's involvement. It probably depended on how much the federal government wanted to admit about what DARPA and its research facilities were actually working on.

There was a knock at the window. Creed wanted to wave the person away. Certainly they had already taken enough of his blood and saliva for the day. But when he looked up he saw Maggie standing in the neutral zone at the thick window that separated his room. She was wearing a matching hospital gown and under her arm was Grace. Behind her Creed recognized Benjamin Platt, though he was dressed in one of the blue space suits.

Platt gestured for Creed to stand back away from the door. He could feel the air exchange as the seal disengaged and the door opened. Maggie came in with a wiggling Grace. She put the dog down on the floor and in seconds Grace was jumping into Creed's arms.

“You have two hours,” Platt said, his voice muffled through his glass shield. And he closed the door.

“I talked him into it,” Maggie told him. “He knows how much I hate being in an isolation unit.”

Creed just stared at her.

“You don't mind, do you?” she asked, suddenly concerned that she might have stepped over some line.

“You are cramping my style as a loner.”

“I also talked him into bringing us a pizza.”

He smiled at that and said, “He's a good man.”

“Yes, he is,” she said, but there was something sad and mournful in her voice.

He watched Maggie go to sit down on the sofa in the corner with Grace prancing alongside. A gentleman would tell her that her gown needed to be tied up better in the back. Maybe he'd mention it when she was leaving.

M
ost of you know I love doing research for my novels. At times it's difficult to stop and make myself sit down and write the book. But, as fascinating as the research was for this book, I must confess it was unsettling in a way that I've never experienced before and in a way I certainly didn't expect.

I've had the idea of using virus-sniffing dogs in one of my Creed novels ever since I discovered the In Situ Foundation. This organization has been dedicated to scientifically training dogs to detect early-stage cancer in humans for more than twelve years. (See more at dogsdetectcancer.org.) Their published findings have been impressive. In many cases, dogs are able to detect certain types of cancer—lung, breast, and prostate, to name a few—sooner and with more accuracy than some of the leading medical equipment and lab tests currently available.

Dogs are already being used to detect epileptic seizures before they occur and insulin imbalances in diabetics. They have been able to detect
C. diff
in patients before there are symptoms. The
applications seem limited only to the trainers and their abilities to communicate what they want the dogs to detect. It's very exciting.

TSA is gearing up to add hundreds more dogs at airports to help get us through those long security lines quicker, but it may be just a matter of time before they use dogs to also detect Ebola, tuberculosis, and other dangerous pathogens coming into the country. In fact, there are speculations that our next terrorist attack could be a biological weapon in the form of virus carriers. And if that doesn't scare you enough, the CDC has all but admitted that they may not be ready. It's been said that Hurricane Katrina was a hard lesson on how to evacuate an entire city. But the CDC has suggested that it might take an actual outbreak of a deadly virus to teach us how to quarantine an entire city.

So how likely is it that the bird flu could be one of those deadly viruses? The strains we've seen here in the United States are different than the Asian and Eurasian strains, which seems to further prove that the virus mutates often and rapidly. Scientists say it's only a matter of time before the bird flu becomes airborne. In fact, scientists have already created in laboratories a strain that can spread easily to humans and be transmitted airborne. They've done this in the hopes of creating a vaccine, but if the virus changes so quickly, how can we stockpile vaccine?

The bird flu actually hadn't been seen since the 1950s. It's believed that the H1N1 flu strain that caused a pandemic in 1977 and continued to mutate and circulate, now for over twenty years, was accidently released from a lab in Russia or China. Who's to say that couldn't happen again? In the past few years, U.S. research labs have made the news by mistakenly sending out live anthrax spores and live samples of the plague. In 2014 a Belgian vaccine plant
accidentally released live infectious polio virus into waterways. Those are only a few examples, but there are many more and even some that might not have been reported.

So you see this idea that I had brewing in the back of my mind about Ryder Creed training and using virus-sniffing dogs took a twisted turn from scary make-believe fiction into scarier real-life fact. I didn't realize how close my fabricated story could be to the truth—that we actually could be only a few steps away from a pandemic of the bird flu, whether through a planned bioterror attack or a simple laboratory accident.

Now, here's the kicker—about a third of the way through writing the book, something else hit me. Dogs can sniff and detect cancer and diabetes and
C. diff
without getting cancer or diabetes or
C. diff
. But can they sniff and detect the bird flu without becoming infected by the bird flu?

Suddenly, Creed's panic became my own. And that one question literally sent me scrambling back to my research and digging for the answer. I'm still not sure I found it.

As with each of my novels, I have a whole lot of people to thank and acknowledge.

Thanks go to:

First and foremost, Deb Carlin and the rest of the pack: Duncan, Boomer, Maggie, and Huck. You guys are my inspiration, my heart, and my soul.

My friends and family, who put up with my long absences and still manage to love me and keep me grounded: Marlene Haney, Sandy Rockwood, Patti and Martin Bremmer, Patricia Sierra, Sharon Kator, Maricela and Jose Barajas, Patti El-Kachouti, Diane Prohaska, Dr. Elvira Rios, Linda and Doug Buck, Leigh Ann Retelsdorf and Pat Heng, Annie Belatti, Cari Conine, Lisa Munk, Luann Causey, Christy Cotton, and Patti Carlin.

Amee Rief, my friend and biologist extraordinaire, for allowing me to use her name and expertise for my fictional biologist. When I asked Amee if I could use her name, the character played a small role in the story, but before I knew it, she ended up entangled in a
major way. So if I got any facts wrong, please remember it's on me and not Amee.

My fellow authors and friends, who make this business a bit less crazy: Sharon Car, Erica Spindler, and J.T. Ellison.

R.J. Russell for her amazing talent and insight in creating and bringing us a cinematic vision of Ryder, Grace, and Maggie's world.

Ray Kunze, once again, for lending his name to Maggie O'Dell's boss.

Penelope Wilson and Penny Clemence for combining their names to become Creed's dog rescuer, Penelope Clemence.

My pack depends on some amazing veterinarians, and now they've become friends as well as invaluable resources for writing this series. Special thanks to: Dr. Enita Larson and her crew at Tender Care Animal Hospital and Dr. Tonya McIlnay and the team at Veterinary Eye Specialists of Nebraska.

Again, an extra thank-you to Dr. Larson, not only for patiently answering some of my crazy questions about dogs but also for allowing me to name my fictional veterinarian after her children: Avelyn Faye and Ayden Parker. Dr. Avelyn Parker has quickly become an integral part of the Creed novels. And she definitely saves the day . . . and the dogs, this time.

Speaking of dogs—there are some special tributes this time: Tillie is named for my friends and neighbors Dan and Paula Nielsen's seventeen-year-old black-and-white cocker spaniel who passed away earlier this year. Tillie used to love to run the fence line with my pack. We all miss her dearly. And Winifred (Winnie) is named in memory of reader Patricia Lauer's beloved yellow Lab. Of course, Jason's black Lab puppy, Scout, is named for my Westie, Scout, whom I lost in 2014.

Thanks also to my publishing teams: my agent, Scott Miller, and his colleague Claire Roberts at Trident Media Group. At Putnam: Ivan Held, Sara Minnich, Christine Ball, Alexis Welby, Lauren Lopinto, and Elena Hershey. And at Little, Brown/Sphere: David Shelley, Catherine Burke, Jade Chandler, and Katherine Armstrong.

As always, thank you to all the booksellers, librarians, book clubs, and book bloggers for mentioning and recommending my novels.

A big thank-you to all of my VIR Club members, Facebook friends, and faithful readers. With so many wonderful novels available, I'm honored that you continue to choose mine. Without you, I wouldn't have the opportunity to share my twisted tales.

Last but certainly not least—a humble and special thanks to all those past and present who have served in our military, including all the four-legged heroes.