Deadline

“Sort of, yeah.” I held out my hand. “Got one?”

“I always thought the stories my staff told about you being impossible to work with were exaggerated, you know.” Mahir dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out a thumb drive, which he slapped down on my palm. “This isn’t the time to be acting the bastard, Shaun.”

“I know.” I plucked a sheet of paper from the printer and held it out to him. “Here’s the latest from the lab of Dr. Abbey, crazy-ass scientist who knows more about the structure of Kellis-Amberlee than anybody else I’ve ever met. Just in case you needed a few more things to keep you awake at night.”

Mahir took the paper wordlessly and started to read. I took advantage of the lull and uncapped the thumb drive, plugging it into an open USB port. It checked out clean, so I started downloading Dr. Abbey’s embedded file for transfer. We’d need a way to get the information to the GPS when the time came.

That takes care of one GPS, said George. Are you leaving the bike?

“I’ll follow the van,” I replied, disengaging the thumb drive. It was another cold equation, and one that I liked just as little as I’d liked the first one. The more times we copied the information, the higher the odds were that someone could get hold of it. The van would be better armed and better-equipped to get away if something went wrong. The only person on the bike would be me, and I…

I wasn’t quite at the end of my usefulness, but with the way I’d been slipping, I wasn’t sure how much longer that was going to be true. If only one vehicle could reach Dr. Abbey’s safely, it wasn’t going to be mine. I was oddly okay with that.

That made one of us. Shaun, you’d better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking.

“Or what? You’ll haunt me?” I chuckled. “You’re gonna have to do better than that.”

George’s rebuttal was cut shkeds Mahir raised his head and stared at me. The circles under his eyes were standing out like bruises against his suddenly pale skin. I’d thought he looked tired when he first came off the plane, but compared to this, he’d been in top fighting condition. We’d been running for too long. I wasn’t the only one running out of go.

“Good lord, Shaun,” he said. His voice was shaking. Not for the first time, I wished that I’d died and George had lived—at least she could have given him a hug and told him things might not be all right but they’d take a few of the bastards out with them. I didn’t even know where to start. “Is this woman serious?”

“I don’t think she’s ever not serious. I also don’t think she’s ever wrong where Kellis-Amberlee is concerned. She’s the one who collected most of the data I gave you. She’s crazy. She’s dangerous. But I think she’s right.”

“But I…” He stopped, licking his lips nervously before he said, “If she’s right, we can’t stay here.”

“That’s true.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“Well, we can’t stay here, and we can’t go home.” I stood, slipping the thumb drive into my pocket. “I suggest it’s time we head off to see the Wizard. The wonderful Wizard of Jesus We Are All So Fucked.”

I don’t think you can make that scan, said George.

“I don’t think so either,” I replied. Mahir gave me an odd look. I ignored it. We were past the point of me feeling self-conscious about talking to someone nobody else could hear. “Dr. Abbey’s right about the Avon Skin-So-Soft—it’s sold as a cosmetic, but it’s the best bug repellent on the domestic market. I have a couple of bottles in my kit. So should Becks.”

Mahir blinked. “Kellis-Amberlee has never had an insect vector. I’m not sure I’m willing to believe that it has one now. Why are you already carrying this stuff?”

I smiled thinly. “Because it’s the best bug repellent known to man. When you’re an Irwin, poking into places men were not meant to poke, being chased by the living dead, the last thing you want to do is stop to deal with mosquito bites all over your ass.”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“I’m going to go get the others up to speed. We need to start packing, and we need to give Maggie time to tell the house security systems to stand down.” If I doused myself in bug repellent and wore my full-field armor, I’d be able to take the bike. Any mosquito that could bite through Kevlar deserved to get a piece of me. “We’re taking the work van. If it doesn’t fit in there, it isn’t coming.”

“What are you talking about? We need to wait—”

“The sun rises in five hours. The instructions will wipe themselves in five hours. If we want to get to Dr. Abbey alive, we need to leave now.”

Mahir hesitated, eyes searching my face. Finally, carefully, he said, “Shaun, are ou sure? I mean, are you really sure we should be going to this woman, rather than staying here, where it’s safe?”

“Is it safe here? Maggie’s folks know where we are. The security staff knows. It’s only a matter of time before one of us slips and our readership knows. We’re on the verge of full-blown martial law, which means that eventually some ass**le at the CDC is going to put two and two together and realize that we’re sitting ducks. It’s going to be Oakland all over again. They just have to make sure their fall guy knows enough to be believable as the one who pressed the button and blew the only heir to Garcia Pharmaceuticals to hell. If we want to stay alive through this, we need to get the f**k out of here.”