"They have over two hundred people invited," Emma announced like it was a competition.
Tully thought Caroline hadn't changed much. It sounded as if she was using even her wedding as a way to impress her friends and colleagues. He had wondered more than once or twice during their marriage if she regretted her choice of husband, especially when Tully settled into the FBI field office in Cleveland. After all, he wasn't the D.C. hotshot making the evening news and busting up cases like the Unabomber or the Beltway Snipers or finding Eric Rudolph in the woods.
Even now with all of Caroline's own successes—she still seemed to be looking for something or someone else to make her bigger and better. That wasn't fair, Tully realized. Maybe she really loved this boy V P. And he realized that despite the feeling of nostalgia there was no longer that sense of loss that he had felt in the early days after the divorce. He couldn't remember when it disappeared. Didn't know that it had disappeared so completely until this very moment. It was gone and that was the important thing.
Emma had finally taken a breath long enough to let Gwen talk. When Tully tuned back into the conversation he couldn't believe his ears. The two of them had gone from pink wedding dresses and sling-back shoes to Gwen telling Emma about a New York university that specialized in fashion design. And Emma was actually listening.
God, he loved this woman. Then his stomach did a pleasant flip. Evidently it was an evening for revelations,because he hadn't realized before how much he did care about…perhaps even loved, Gwen Patterson.
Tully sat back, watching the two of them. Neither one appeared to remember he was in the same room, let alone at the same table. Harvey came over and laid his chin on Tully's knee. He patted the big dog's head, the two of them bonding after being ousted by their women. Except that Harvey really just wanted Tully's pizza crust.
Emma's cell phone interrupted and she grabbed for it, but stopped. "It's Andrea. We've got that project for lit."
Tully immediately knew it was really Emma's safety net. She and Andrea had probably planned for the interruption or rather what Emma might consider an escape. But she was waiting for Tully to say it was okay. And she looked…apologetic, maybe even a bit regretful. His daughter had surprised herself and was enjoying Gwen Patterson.
"Go ahead." He waved her away from the table.
"This won't take long," Emma told Gwen.
Tully waited until his daughter disappeared into her bedroom.
"She likes you." He knew he sounded like he was about twelve.
"Does it matter?"
That wasn't at all what he expected her to say. Of course, it mattered but he stopped himself. That obviously wasn't what she wanted to hear.
"Is it wrong for me to want the two most important women in my life to like each other?"
"And if we didn't?"
It was a good question. A legitimate question. One he hadn't bothered to ask himself.
"I'm sorry," she said before he had a chance to respond. She set her elbows on the table and placed her chin in her hands, looking suddenly exhausted. "They're saying Maggie and Cunningham were exposed to a virus."
"So it's not anthrax or ricin?" He thought that should be a relief. Gwen looked anything but relieved.
"It's Ebola."
"Jesus! How is that possible? Where would he have gotten his hands on it? Ebola doesn't just happen here in the States."
Gwen shrugged. "There was an incident right here in Reston. Back in the eighties. The government kept it quiet. A private lab had gotten a shipment of monkeys. The monkeys started getting sick. Then they started dying. But that was 1989. Almost twenty years ago."
Tully raised an eyebrow, wondering how she knew all this.
"I checked it out after I left Maggie," Gwen said. "The virus was Ebola, but it didn't jump to humans. Ebola Reston. That's what they called it. They name the different strains by the region where it was first found."
"Maggie and Cunningham. Is it Ebola Reston?"
"Ebola Zaire."
"That's a bad one?"
"It's called the ‘slate wiper.'"
Tully winced. Gwen noticed and looked away. It was too late. He saw the fear in her eyes. He shoved around some pizza crumbs on his paper plate.
"That might help narrow down who this guy is. Unless he's traveled to Africa in the last six months he'd have to get the virus from a research lab, maybe a government facility or a university. He couldn't just special order it."
Tully drummed the tabletop. This was worse than he thought. The guy was much more dangerous. He didn't just have opportunity and motive. He had access.
"The anthrax killings in 2001," Tully said and waited for Gwen's eyes, for her attention. "Do you remember them?"
"Not in detail. I remember the letters looked quite ordinary and they were sent through the mail. One ended up in To m Brokaw's office. A couple of others were sent to congressmen. Right? It happened after 9/11. I remember being too numb to pay much attention."
"Twenty-two incidents. Five dead. No one was charged or convicted." This time Gwen raised her eyebrow."George Sloane," Tully explained. "The documents guy. He brought it up this morning. So I did some research." He stopped drumming, scratched at his jaw and realized it was clenched.
"One of the few suspects was a scientist," he continued. "A scientist who previously worked for USAMRIID. They accused him of sneaking out samples of anthrax from the lab at Fort Detrick." Tully didn't like what he was thinking."I imagine USAMRIID has samples of Ebola, too."
CHAPTER
53
Chicago
Dr. Claire Antonelli hated that she had let Vera Schroder down. The woman's face had become a mirror image of her husband's, an expressionless zombie, void of emotion. But for Vera it was shock, not pain, that caused the conversion.
She escorted Vera from the surgery waiting room to a suite on the same floor that was reserved for families. She wanted Vera to rest until they could tell her more, though Claire didn't have a clue as to what she could tell her. They had stabilized Markus for now, but after what Claire had just seen, she didn't expect him to make it through the night. And the worst of it was that they were no closer to finding out what was wrong with him.
Claire stopped herself long enough to call her son. She asked what he had planned for his Saturday night. He could have said anything at that moment and it wouldn't have mattered. She simply wanted to hear his voice, know that he was okay, remind herself how very lucky she was.
He asked if he could go over to a friend's and watch college football. They were ordering footlongs from Chicago Dog.No beer,he promised. An empty promise, but she knew she didn't have to worry about him. They agreed on a time he'd be home. He wanted to know when she'd be home. How did her day go? Did she want him to get an extra footlong for her?
Yes, very lucky, indeed.
Then Claire joined Dr. Miles back in his small office down the hall from the surgery suites. He was sitting quietly behind his desk, his hands folded together. He didn't say anything when Claire first entered. There was just a nod. She took the chair on the other side of the desk and they sat for what seemed a long time to Claire.
He leaned back and his chair groaned. He scratched at his five o'clock shadow then folded his arms over his chest. Still, he didn't say anything.
Claire glanced at her wristwatch and Miles noticed. Everything she thought of to say seemed too obvious or unnecessary. It had been several hours since they'd closed up Markus Schroder's abdomen and sent a piece of his tissue downstairs to the lab. All that was left now was to wait.