"You okay?" he asked. "No more nosebleeds? Headaches?"
"No." She shook her head. "It's funny how stress works."
"You've been through a lot. But your blood continues to test negative. And," Platt said as he reached out to touch her cheek, lightly brushing a finger over the scar that had almost healed, "you're a very lucky woman that that monkey wasn't infected."
She reached down to pet Harvey, pulling away from Platt's touch when she really wanted to return his gesture. To o soon. What was wrong with her? To o soon could quickly become too late.
"Chicago's Saint Francis is open again," Platt told her."This morning I talked to Dr. Claire Antonelli. She was Markus Schroder's doctor. It's amazing that she never contracted the virus."
"But they ended up with three cases of Ebola."
He nodded."The chief of surgery who operated on Schroder. A hole in his glove. Two nurses who took care of Schroder. All of them are responding well to the vaccine. It could have been much worse. There could have been hundreds."
She glanced at him and smiled.
"What?" he asked.
"So says the new commander of USAMRIID."
"It's not official."
She didn't push it. He had already told her he might not accept. He loved his work. And although he seemed pleased with Commander Janklow's resignation, he had told her he had no desire to replace him.
"I'm a doctor and a soldier, not a politician."
She certainly understood. She loved her work, too. Exposure to Ebola and being locked in a room with monkeys hadn't changed her mind about being an FBI agent. Risk was part of the job. That's what she'd tried to tell R. J. Tully. He had been at risk every second in that dark hallway. He had acted in self-defense and that's what the review board would corroborate. Cases like this, personal cases, left scars. Unfortunately, Tully was learning that.
Risk was a part of the job, Maggie told herself and knew deep down that's exactly what Cunningham would say. God, she couldn't believe he was gone. And all because of one man's petty revenge.
George Sloane had used all his experience and expertise to get back at three men he thought he had lost the love of his life to: R. J. Tully, Conrad Kovak and Victor Ragazzi. While he was at it, he'd take out the woman herself along with his sister, who twenty-five years ago had survived his first attempt to get rid of his entire family.
And because of what Sloane had learned in his profession—that the victim of a crime can often point a finger at who the killer is—he sometimes chose victims indirectly connected to his targets. All of his planning had left Mary Louise Kellerman without a mother and Rick Ragazzi and Patsy Kowak still fighting for their lives, their friends and families quarantined.
What a waste of brilliance George Sloane was.
"Do you have to get back to USAMRIID?" Maggie asked, not wanting to sound like it mattered, then thinking, why not let him know it mattered? She wanted him to stay. She enjoyed his company. Lately she looked forward to it, even catching herself putting aside things in her mind that she wanted to tell him, that she wanted to share.
"I think I put in enough hours recently to warrant taking a day off. What did you have in mind?"
"Are you as good at preparing dinner as you are with breakfast?"
"I think I can scrape up something."
"How about a beer before you get to work?"
"Sounds good."
Maggie left him with Harvey and padded barefoot back into the house. She had two Sam Adams bottlenecks grasped in one hand when the doorbell rang. She had invited Tully, Emma and Gwen to stop by so she didn't even bother to check the peephole.
She pulled open the door to find a young man holding out a pizza box for her.
"Must be the house next door," Maggie told him. "I didn't order a pizza."
He shifted the box and glanced at the name and address on the receipt that was taped to the top of the box.
"Maggie O'Dell?"
"Yes, that's right."
She stared at the box, suddenly suspicious of another food delivery until he added, "Italian sausage and Romano cheese? It's already paid for, lady."
He handed her the pizza and left.
Maggie closed the door. She held the box in one hand and stared at the receipt. Next to "ordered by" was N. Morrelli.
Italian sausage and Romano cheese. She smiled. Perhaps Nick Morrelli did know her. And he certainly didn't give up easily.
CHAPTER
83
Benjamin Tasker Middle School Bowie, Maryland
Ursella Bowman didn't mind returning from vacation in the middle of the week. It meant she had only two days to clean up the mess her substitute had left for her before she could recuperate on the weekend.
She walked into the mailroom and immediately thought she'd need that weekend much sooner. There were postal-storage bins stacked and the electronic meter had been left on the floor. Why in the world didn't that woman have any respect?
Ursella started picking up empty boxes and sorting undeliverable mail that needed to be returned. She shoved a collection cart to the side and noticed a six-by-nine padded manila envelope that had gotten stuck between the cart and the wall.
It was addressed to Benjamin Tasker Middle School and it looked like a child's block printing.
Ursella shook her head as she slipped the envelope into the principal's mail slot. She hoped it wasn't something important.
* * * * *
TRUTH OR FICTION? Notes from Alex Kava
While I was writing Exposed an outbreak of Ebola occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The World Health Organization had more than four hundred suspected cases in the region, but as of this writing it hadn't been twenty-one days—the time Ebola takes to incubate—so the total confirmed cases and deaths were not yet known.
Could an outbreak like this occur in North America or Europe? Some experts believe it's only a matter of time. All it would take would be one infected person to get on an airplane.That speculation brought us closer to reality on May 24, 2007, when a man infected with tuberculosis got on an airplane in Atlanta and flew to Paris.He boarded yet another flight to Prague, then flew to Montreal and drove himself back to the United States to turn himself in to the CDC. Imagine if he'd had Ebola.
As an author I'm constantly asking questions like this. My research includes digging up the answers and nagging a lot of people who know such things. Sometimes it's difficult to recognize where the facts stop and the fiction begins. If the reader can't tell, then I've done my job.
I use real-life details in all my novels, but this time I wanted to let readers know what some of the facts are.
The Tylenol murders in Chicago during September 29 through October 1, 1982, remain unsolved to this day. There were seven known victims. One of them was a twelve-year-old girl named Mary Keller-man from Elk Grove Village, Illinois. However, to my knowledge there were no victims in Terre Haute, Indiana.
A scientist and bioweapons expert named Dr. Steven Hatifill, who worked at USAMRIID for a period, was considered by the U.S. Department of Justice to be a "person of interest" in the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Charges were never brought forward.
A vaccine for Ebola does exist. As mentioned in the novel, it was developed by research teams from Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg and Fort Detrick's USAMRIID. The report of the findings first appeared in the Journal Public Library of Science Pathogens, January 2007. It has not been approved by the FDA as of this writing.
The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland, really does have frozen samples of all the Level 4 biological agents I mention in the book. My apologies for taking any liberties in using the facility for my setting. Suggestions and assertions I've made are entirely mine and not any of the staff's or anyone associated with USAMRIID. I have only the utmost respect for the facility as well as for the scientists and doctors who do amazing work there.