The Ninth Day Page 28

  Roland nodded. “I’m pretty sure I can. Especially if the leprosy story pans out.” Emma opened her mouth to protest and Roland put up a hand to stay her. “Which I know it will. The biggest problem I’m facing is you.” Roland indicated Vanderlock. “By rights I need to arrest him for the illegal importation of drugs.”

  “As do I,” Sumner said.

  Vanderlock rolled his eyes. “I was coerced. Does no one care?”

  Banner pointed at Sumner’s plane sitting on the tarmac. “You want to fly me to St. Martin in the Caribbean? You do that and then technically you’re working for me. Gives you some credibility and gets you out of the country, fast.”

  “I’ll fly you wherever you want to go, but I’d rather do it in my own plane,” Vanderlock said. “You still have it?” he said to Sumner.

  “It’s at an impound center in Nevada, so this one will have to do. Nice paint job on the Fokker, though.”

  Vanderlock took another drag off his cigarette. “Blame the chemist.”

  Banner tossed Sumner the keys to the Marquis. “You and Agent Roland deal with the rest of the Bureau when it gets here? Tell them the truth?”

  Roland nodded. “I’ll back them down. But what about the leprosy? Or whatever it is?”

  “We’ll all need to be tested. But I have these,” Emma pulled the investigational antibiotic out of her pocket. “I need to find Oz. See if they worked.”

  “They work. Oz sent me a text saying they did. He’s still keeping low, but promised to keep his phone on in case we needed him,” Banner said.

  Banner pointed to Emma but spoke to Vanderlock. “Let Emma take the motorcycle.” And to her he said, “Why don’t you head home? I’ll have the Darkview attorney contact you to straighten out any loose ends.”

  Emma nodded. She shook a few pills out of the bottle, placed them in her pocket and handed Vanderlock the container. “Keep taking these, then.” She gave the rest to Banner. “For you and Sumner.” She looked at Agent Roland. “Can you arrange to get me some more?”

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  “Come on, Vanderlock. Let’s go,” Banner said.

  Vanderlock lowered the cycle’s kickstand and stood up. “Key’s in the ignition. You still have that cell phone?”

  Emma withdrew it from her pocket and gave it to him. He stepped next to her, took the phone, and used one hand to manipulate the buttons while the other kept the cigarette in play. Emma peered at the screen, and saw that he was inputting his name and a phone number at the Contacts page. When he was finished he hit “save” and handed it back to her. “You need anything, ever, you call me.”

  Emma nodded.

  He stepped up to her and bent his head down. When his face was inches from hers he paused. “Why don’t you come with me to St. Martin? You’ll like it, I promise you,” he said.

  Emma understood exactly what he was saying. She shook her head. “Maybe next time.”

  He smiled. “I’d show you a preview, but God knows what I’d give you right now and Sumner is still holding that gun.”

  “Discretion is always a wise move. Especially when Sumner has a gun in his hand.”

  Vanderlock stepped back and smiled a large, happy smile. He sketched a wave at Sumner, who was leaning against the Marquis, his arms folded across his chest. Sumner nodded back. Banner glanced between the two men and at Emma, raising his eyebrows just a touch in a question. She lifted her shoulders. Banner gave her a devilish grin, which surprised her, coming from him. He followed Vanderlock to the airplane.

  She turned her attention to Sumner. “You shouldn’t have kissed me. Now you have it.”

  “I’ll see you in a few days. We should talk,” he said.

  Emma put up a hand. “I don’t want to talk.”

  He gave her a slight smile. “You can’t run forever.”

  She walked to him, stopping only when her body hit his folded arms. She looked into his eyes, which held humor, as if he was enjoying the moment.

  “I can run for a very, very long time,” she said.

  Chapter 46

  Emma saw a man trudging along the road in the early-morning light, just where the GPS phone tracking system said he would be. He wore battered jeans and a black tee shirt. She pulled alongside.

  “You need a lift?” Oz took in the motorcycle and her driving it. His face broke into a huge, beautiful smile.

  “Nice ride,” he said.

  “You like it? It belongs to a friend of mine. I’m bringing it back to him.”

  “I’ve been hitchhiking, but no one will pick me up. Guess I look a little scary.”

  Emma cocked her head to one side. He must not have looked in a mirror recently, but the sores on his face had diminished from an angry red to pale pink, and portions of his neck were clear.

  “You look much better than you think. How do you feel?”

  He tipped his hand from side to side. “Less numb, but that’s both good and bad. As the nerves come back I’m feeling all sorts of pain. I do okay as long as I take the ibuprofen. And the prednisone seems to really help.”

  “Climb on,” Emma said.

  Oz hesitated. “You look normal. What if I infect you?”

  Emma shrugged. “I’m taking the pills, too.” Oz swung a leg over and settled in behind her. “Where you going?” she said.

  “East. I want MIT to take me back.”

  “Now that’s a plan.”

  She opened the throttle and brought the motorcycle up to speed, feeling the wind in her hair and the sun on her face.

  Author’s Note

  Once again, I seem to have stumbled upon research that was just at the tipping point. This time: leprosy and armadillos. I started writing this novel with an incorrect belief that leprosy had been eradicated worldwide. While it has been greatly reduced, the disease, now called Hansen’s Disease, persists. Lucky for us, leprosy is now completely curable with a course of antibiotics, and bears little resemblance to the fictional disease in the novel. My thanks to Dr. Carlotta Hill for her explanation of the real disease and its treatment. For further information on Hansen’s Disease (leprosy), you can go to www.hrsa.gov/hansens or call 1-800-642-2477.

  Dr. Hill also confirmed my suspicion that one might be able to become infected with leprosy from contact with armadillos. Armadillos carry massive bacterial loads but are unaffected by the disease. Their proliferation in the American Southwest and Mexico made them the perfect animal upon which to hinge my fictional disease. Imagine my surprise when, several months after speaking with Dr. Hill, I happened to read an article in the Chicago Tribune about researchers having confirmed that armadillos can transmit the disease to humans. I’ve never eaten armadillo meat, and after that article you can be sure that I won’t!

  Acknowledgments

  This book was a joy to write, and the team of people involved in bringing it to publication made the rest easy. Thanks to my agent, Barbara Poelle, for her marvelous humor and good advice. My editor, Lyssa Keusch, made my year by commenting that she was unable to put the manuscript down. Danielle Bartlett, my publicist at HarperCollins, is more organized than I will ever be, and I’m so grateful for it! Every year I’m intrigued to see the tour and marketing ideas that she puts together. Dana Kaye at Kaye Publicity handles the rest of the myriad big and little things that go into a book launch and always manages to throw in a cutting edge concept. Thanks also to Adrienne Di Pietro for her advice on all things marketing.

  This book received an outstanding cover. Thanks to Lyssa and the graphics team for creating such a standout design.

  In researching for this book I roped in a longtime friend from the years at my former law firm where we handled food, drug, and medical-device matters. Thanks to Jeana Bicknell, girlfriend and FDA compliance expert, for her excellent pharmaceutical lab input and handy tip on opening a wine bottle without use of a corkscrew. You’ll be seeing the second idea in book number four.

  Anita Pope is a Southern girl and knew exactly who I should speak t
o about white lightning. No cork problems with this brew. Thank you to Michael Sims for the recipe instructions that he remembered hearing from his paternal grandfather about stills during the prohibition era.

  Thanks also to my advance readers (and great writers), Darwyn Jones and Sharon Williamson, for keeping me on my toes.

  I can’t thank author Steve Berry enough for his wonderful blurb! When Lyssa sent me the email containing it I was ecstatic and grateful to him for taking the time to read the manuscript.

  And finally, to my family, who recognized that I was caught up in writing this story and began to quietly manage the household around me until the final word was written. Thank you.

  Turn the page for a sneak preview

  of the next installment

  in the pulse-pounding series

  featuring brilliant biochemist Emma Caldridge,

  coming soon in paperback from

  HARPER

  Emma Caldridge found the bloody offering on her credenza just before midnight. She had been working late, preparing samples and organizing slides in the makeshift lab set up in the rented villa’s spacious garage and had returned to the main house for another cup of coffee.

  A small votive candle flickered next to the pile of feathers and hacked off rooster foot, all arranged in a triangle on top of a pentagram drawn in a red substance that looked like blood. Emma’s employer, Pure Chemistry, was located in Miami and Emma had seen Santeria altars before, with their animal sacrifice and elaborate rituals, but this was nothing like that. This was voodoo. She pulled a pencil out of a cup next to the phone and used the eraser end to lift the mass of feathers. Underneath she found the doll. The body was fashioned of hastily stitched burlap, that sported brown yarn for hair and two black felt dots for eyes. A toothpick jutted from the center of the doll’s forehead.

  Emma snorted at the crude scare tactic. She was a scientist, unafraid of ghosts or demons and unbelieving of things that went bump in the night. If it made noise, then a human, animal, or physical element created it.

  She heard the sound of breaking glass in the distance. The intruder was in the garage.

  She dropped the pencil and ran through the darkened house, out the French doors at the back of the kitchen and onto the lawn. As she neared the garage she saw the shape of something that may have been a man, working his way through her carefully prepared slides. He swept something across the table and Emma watched in disbelief as bottles, jars and the containers holding a week’s worth of work went crashing to the cement floor. She ran toward him, the sharp gravel of the drive cutting into the soles of her feet.

  The garage’s overhead light cast a yellow glow over the tables that Emma had set up in order to form the workspace. The man, if that what the humpbacked shape was, pushed over the nearest table, upending it and sending another set of petri dishes, test tubes and even a microscope tumbling to the floor.

  “Stop it!” Emma’s voice was harsh. The man froze. As she neared she could see the machete in his hand. It was this that he had used to sweep the bottles off the table. “That’s my work. You have no right to be here.” The man stayed still, saying nothing and keeping his face turned away. Emma heard the gravel crunch behind her.

  “He responds only to me.”

  Emma turned around. A woman stood at the corner of the drive. The weak moonlight lit her dark skin. She wore a scarf wrapped around her head and a sarong skirt was knotted at her hip. The woman smiled and her teeth, straight and white, glowed in the night, giving her a feral appearance. “He’s my slave. A zombie.”

  “He’s a trespasser. And so are you,” Emma said. Her anger fizzed at the deliberate destruction of her work. She leveled a stare at the woman. So here’s the source of the voodoo offering, she thought.

  The woman moved toward Emma, walking in an exaggerated, swaying motion. “You are the outsider on this island. We belong here. Leave. And take your bottles and experiments with you.”

  Emma glanced at the man, but he remained still, not moving a muscle. His stillness was strange and Emma felt a frisson of a chill run through her. She wished that she had thought to bring her cell phone. She was loath to leave these two even for the time it would take to retrieve it. If she did, she was afraid they would destroy even more.

  “You don’t belong here either. This island has no history of voodoo,” Emma said. “I saw the mess you made in the entrance hall. I’ll be sure to let Island Security know about your breaking and entering.”

  The woman chuckled, but the noise sounded evil, wicked. “Island Security knows better than to interfere with a Bokor Priestess.”

  Emma was glad that the man stayed frozen during this exchange. She didn’t want to grapple with both and the machete in his hand made him the more dangerous of the two. She took a step toward the woman.

  “But I don’t know better, and I’m telling you one more time to leave. Now. And take your companion and ridiculous talk of zombies with you.” The woman raised an eyebrow.

  “Ahh, the scientist in you doesn’t believe? Be warned. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here. With one word from me he’ll cut you to ribbons. There’s no negotiating with him.”

  “I don’t recall offering any negotiation. I said leave. Both of you.” Emma kept the man in her peripheral vision. With the machete in his hand he didn’t need to be a zombie to hurt her. Flesh and blood human would be enough.

  The woman flicked her hand. “Kill her,” she said.

  The man burst into motion. He raised the machete and sprinted to her, closing the distance between them in seconds. His hair hung in thick rasta braids down his back and his face was contorted in a strange spasm. His eyes pointed straight to the sky even as he ran toward her swinging his machete. It was as if his body was responding to a force outside of his mind and even less controlled by it. His tongue whipped right and left, adding to the horrific sight. He started screaming in a high pitched wail.

  Emma spun and started to run toward the villa. She heard the priestess’s harsh laugh and the man’s pounding feet on the driveway behind her. She had the fleeting thought that the man was insane and if he were to catch her he would show her no mercy.

  She made it to the French doors and wrenched them open, tumbling through the entrance and slamming them behind her. She turned and flipped the deadbolt just as he crashed into the glass with his hands. The machete’s blade made a clanging sound on the pane.

  He stood there, breathing heavy, his weirdly canted eyes still staring upward. She crossed to the phone on located on the kitchen counter, dialed the emergency number and glanced back.

  He was gone.

  Cameron Sumner sat at the blackjack table and watched the croupier deal out the cards. The woman to his left watched as well. She had long, blond hair, a full figure, pretty face with brown eyes, and wore no wedding ring. He estimated her age at about twenty-eight. It was unusual that such a young woman played the Casinos alone. Perhaps she had a gambling problem, he thought, but rejected the thought as soon as he had it. She didn’t appear desperate or stressed at all, and wasn’t sweating with the thrill of the game, as most chronic gamblers did. Sumner had noticed that whatever table he joined, she inevitably appeared. She didn’t speak to him, but played her hand with intelligence and calm, hitting when the odds were against the dealer and sticking when they weren’t. She won three out of four hands.

  He kept playing, scratching the table slightly with his cards to indicate to the croupier that he wanted a hit, making a small wave to stick and watched the woman do the same. When the cocktail waitress appeared Sumner ordered a Maker’s Mark whiskey, the woman seltzer water with lemon. It was at that moment that he knew she was staking him out. She was on duty and not drinking.

  He completed the hand, tipped the croupier, took his chips, and pushed away from the table. The Maker’s Mark came with him to the roulette wheel where he played his favorite number: 32.

  Twenty minutes later the blond joined a nearby wheel. Close enough to
see him, but not at the same table. She would move closer, he was sure of it. After twenty minutes more she strolled over and took the empty seat next to him. He smiled inwardly. After a few moments she made an attempt to reach across the roulette wheel to place her chips on a number located at the far side.

  “Excuse me,” she said as she leaned over him. He smelled her perfume and was treated to a full view of her chest in her low, but not too low, blouse.

  “Of course,” he said. He shifted his chair back to allow her access. The wheel turned and landed on 32. The croupier doled out Sumner’s winnings and pushed them across the felt table top with his stick.

  Sumner was on the small island of St. Maartin on business. As a supervisor in the Air Tunnel Denial program, he flew intercept planes for the United States Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense program. Generally he and his crew operated out of Key West, but the recent upsurge in the areas of the Caribbean and West Indies islands had altered the ATD’s focus. Sumner’s job was to locate suspicious flights, usually flying under radar, warn them against crossing into the United States’ territories, and, once they did, arrest or intercept the planes before they landed. He was also charged with investigating the origin of the flights and putting an end to the drug operation.

  He figured the woman could either be an undercover security officer hired by the casino, a member of the small island’s police force undercover, or a foil hired by the drug cartel to compromise or eliminate him before he had a chance to shut down the operation. He hoped she wasn’t part of the cartel, but he thought that to be the most likely scenario.

  He won two rounds in a row, decided that was the best he would do against the house, and once again collected his chips. He swallowed the last of the whiskey before strolling to the window to cash out. After pocketing his winnings he headed to the exit. The blond woman intercepted him.