A Question of Intent Page 13

  She forced her mind to cut through the kaleidoscope of her whirling thoughts and buzzed Rattler Control again.

  "What's Doc Richardson's present location?"

  With a few clicks of the keys, the controller pulled up the signal for the locator embedded in Cody's holographic ID.

  "I make him still at the clinic. Must have slept there."

  Jill swallowed the lump that kept trying to form in her dry throat. "Get on the horn to the Virginia Highway Patrol. Ask them to fax the report of the vehicle accident in which Dr. Richardson's wife was killed. It happened about three years ago. Her name was Alicia. Alicia Conway Richardson."

  "Will do."

  "I'll swing by and pick up the report in a few minutes."

  "Roger."

  Grimly Jill threw back the sheet and headed for the bathroom. When she arrived at the MP headquarters, she received the accident report from Rattler Control and a report from the glum Sergeant Barnes that the squadron mascot had died during the night.

  "Guess he didn't take to captivity."

  "Guess not," Jill muttered, skimming the report. She had other things on her mind right now besides a scaly diamondback. Foremost amongst them was the accident that killed Cody Richardson's wife.

  Cody hadn't slept all night.

  His eyes burned with fatigue, and every muscle in his body cried to go horizontal, but an after-midnight arrival at the clinic had put all thought of bed out of his mind.

  The Pegasus virus had struck again. One of the cooks from the dining hall had staggered in complaining of dizziness, stomach cramps and nausea. He was also burning with fever. Like Colonel Thompson and Private Harris, the man hadn't been off-site since his arrival.

  Cody started him on Ibuprofen and took turns with the corpsman on duty wiping both him and Harris down with cool cloths. With its limited staff, his small clinic wouldn't be able to handle many more patients.

  Nor could he put off reporting these cases to the Center for Disease Control any longer. Dr. Nez and the folks at Decker had notified CDC of the serology of the new strain. It was time to fill them in on its activity to date.

  Cody had already cleared the call with Captain Westfall. He'd also precoordinated with the CDC to determine who had the necessary security clearances to protect the information he intended to relay. It was still early, he noted with a quick glance at his watch, not quite eight o'clock East Coast time, but the individual he needed to talk to should be in by now.

  He was in his office, about to request a secure line from the Control Center, when Jill appeared. For the first time since the pale, sweating cook had staggered into the clinic, Cody relaxed and allowed himself the simple pleasure of a smile.

  "'Morning."

  "Are you busy?"

  "Another one of the cadre came down sick last night. I was just about to notify the Center for Disease Control of our problem."

  A flicker crossed her face, as if that was just one more worry added to her pile, but she didn't comment on the fact that maintaining the security of the Pegasus site might soon get a whole lot more difficult.

  "I need to talk to you."

  "What about?"

  "About the phone call I just intercepted from a Mr. Jack Conway."

  Well, hell! That's all Cody needed right now.

  The familiar mix of guilt and regret clutched at his insides. Part of him marveled that he hadn't felt those twin claws digging into him for some time now. Other, more pressing matters had blunted the sharp talons. Like the Pegasus project. And the woman standing just inside his office.

  Tipping back in his chair, Cody eyed her stiff spine and squared shoulders. It was obvious Conway had given her an earful.

  "Let me guess," he drawled. "Jack's pissed because I haven't responded to the dozen or so blistering messages he's left on my answering machine at home. Just out of curiosity, how did he reach you?"

  "Evidently he called your supervisor at the National Institute for Health, who told him you were working a special project. Your boss routed the call to the Department of Defense, who..."

  "Routed it here," Cody finished. "Sorry the old man flushed you out of bed. He can be a real bastard when he wants to."

  "As a matter of fact, Mr. Conway said the same thing about you."

  His mouth twisted. "That doesn't surprise me."

  "He said to tell you he wants your proxy vote on a new stock issue today."

  She delivered the message very deliberately, each word measured and precise. Cody could guess the vitriol that had come with it.

  He brought his chair tipping forward with a thump. Frustration surged through him in hot, angry spikes. Damn Jack, anyway! His daughter's death had left him so angry and bitter he'd destroy Ditech just to get back at the son-in-law he once trusted to run his company. Cody had hoped the anger would ease with time. Instead, it had eaten into the man's soul. Now Conway had dragged Jill into the morass of his hatred and enmity.

  "I've already told Jack twice I won't support his plan to spin off one of Ditech's divisions and put out an IPO," he said evenly. "That's an Initial Public Offering of stock, designed to bring in—"

  "I know what an IPO is."

  Cody narrowed his eyes at the clipped response. Belatedly he realized she'd switched into full cop mode. He kicked himself for not noticing it before this point. He could only blame his bone-deep weariness.

  "I'm a little slow on the uptake here," he said, his gaze locked with hers. "I should have realized you tracked me down to do more than deliver a message about the stock issue."

  "Why else would I track you down?"

  "You tell me."

  "All right."

  She didn't pull her punches. Her voice hard and flat, she put the issue squarely between them.

  "Your father-in-law said you killed your wife. Care to tell me why he'd make such an allegation?"

  Cody's jaw clenched. He'd expected the accusation. Had heard it countless times before. Skewered by his guilt, he gave her the only answer he could.

  "Because it's true."

  Chapter 13

  Jill wasn't buying Cody's confession. She'd pored over every detail of the incident report the Virginia Highway Patrol had faxed in. The report documented a rain-drenched night. A high-powered Mercedes convertible driven much too fast for the slick roads. A turn taken too sharply. The investigating officers hadn't so much as hinted the deadly crash was any-thing other than an accident.

  Yet Jack Conway certainly believed otherwise. And Cody had just flat-out stated his culpability.

  "When a man voluntarily admits to killing his wife," she said, still struggling to make sense of this, "the appropriate response at that point is to Miran-dize him."

  "Before he incriminates himself any further?" His mouth took a bitter twist. "You don't have to read me my rights. I'm guilty as hell, but not in the eyes of the law."

  "Then maybe we'd better back up a step here. What happened to your wife?"

  "Exactly what I told you the last time you asked me. She died in a car crash. What I didn't tell you is what led up to the accident." His eyes went bleak. "And what came after."

  "I'm listening."

  "Not here," he said grimly, pushing out of his chair. "Let me check on my patients and I'll meet you outside."

  That worked for Jill. She needed to get past the aftershocks, to let the predawn air clear her head.

  She went outside and leaned against the fender of her ATV. She'd driven the ATV the short distance to the clinic with the fuzzy thought that she'd drive up into the mountains as planned after talking to Cody. Now she could barely remember climbing into the vehicle, much less crossing the compound. His stark admission of guilt had driven everything else out of her head.

  Cody pushed through the door of the clinic a few moments later. The cords in his neck were as tight as steel cables. His shoulders had knotted under his lab coat. He saw Jill take off her cap and shag an unsteady hand through her hair, and the irony bit into his soul.

&nbs
p; He'd kissed her here, in this exact same spot, only a few hours ago. He'd brushed a hand down her cheek and felt the ground tilt a few degrees.

  Now...

  Now she squared her hat back on her head and regarded him with the cool, assessing gaze of a cop.

  "Alicia and I argued the night she died," he began without preamble. "It wasn't the first time by any means, but we both said some things that night that didn't need saying. She was crying when she snatched up her car keys and ran out of the house."

  The shouts and recriminations from her rang in Cody's head. He didn't love her. He'd never loved her. He'd only married her because of the fat research budget her father had dangled in front of him. He'd used Ditech to build his reputation, and if he thought he was going to walk away from their marriage with fifty percent of the stock he'd acquired over the years, he had another think coming.

  She'd refused to believe he didn't want the damned stock, that he didn't want the eight-thousand-square-foot town house in Maclean, didn't want to stay locked in a marriage that had hit bottom years ago. Nor did he have any desire to continue working for a company where research was channeled more by potential profit than by science, but Alicia had refused to believe that, too.

  A rain-slick street had forever silenced their bitter arguing, and guilt still corroded Cody's conscience.

  "It was raining." He forced each word, reliving the nightmare that came with them. "Alicia lost control of her car and slammed into a bridge abutment. Since she'd run out without her purse or any form of ID, I didn't learn about the accident until the Highway Patrol traced the vehicle's registration."

  "Through Ditech."

  "Through Ditech. By the time I got to the hospital, Alicia had suffered massive cerebral hemorrhaging and had been declared brain dead. I signed the consent form to harvest her organs and take her off the respirator later that afternoon."

  Jill sucked in a swift breath. Cody heard the small hiss, registered the sympathy buried in the small sound, rejected it. He didn't want pity from her. Or anyone else.

  "Jack Conway has never forgiven me for signing the consent form," he stated flatly. "He never will."

  "And you've never forgiven yourself?"

  He made a quick, impatient gesture of denial. "I examined Alicia and concurred in the diagnosis of brain death. I don't regret taking her off life support and harvesting her organs. As a doctor, I can't regret that."

  "All right. As a husband, then. You blame yourself for the argument that sent your wife running out of the house in tears?"

  "I'll always carry the blame for that."

  The flat statement lifted some of the weight from Jill's chest. Cody's next words piled it right on again.

  "Alicia was Jack's only child. It didn't take long for his pain at losing her to spill over into hate. He's convinced I retained my seat on Ditech's board because I'm out to destroy the company, just like I destroyed his daughter."

  "That's pretty much what he said."

  "He doesn't care that I risked my standing with the Public Health Service by asking to be excluded from any research involving Ditech. Or that I sank every penny I had into the company to keep it afloat after one of his more disastrous decisions."

  "The flawed research for an antianthrax vaccine?"

  "You know about that?"

  "Rob, the young research assistant at Decker, said you forced Conway to terminate the project."

  "I did."

  "Which gave him one more reason to hate you."

  Something nibbled at the edge of Jill's mind, something that wouldn't quite come into focus. Frowning, she tried to recall Conway's exact words.

  "Your father-in-law said you would both go down if the company failed."

  Cody's shoulders lifted under the white lab coat. "That's true enough. I put my Ditech stock in a blind trust. I couldn't dump it if I wanted to. After the anthrax fiasco, I used my other stocks and bonds as collateral for a loan to make payroll and operating expenses."

  "So Jack Conway not only hates you," Jill said slowly, "he owes you. That's a pretty potent combination."

  "I know." The stiffness went out of Cody's shoulders. Pity stirred in his face. "I also understand how hard the past three years have been on him."

  Jill didn't feel quite the sympathy for Conway that he obviously did, but then she hadn't lived through the hell the two men had.

  "Those years have been hard on you, too, Cody. Isn't it time you cut yourself a little slack?"

  He blew out a long breath and looked to the gold and red dawn spearing up from behind the jagged peaks of the Guadalupes. When he brought his glance back to Jill, it lingered on her face.

  "Maybe it is."

  His tension might have eased a little, but she was still wound tight. She scrubbed a hand over the back of her neck, kneading the knots. She needed to think. She also needed more information on a certain Jack Conway.

  "Look, I've got to make a run up into the mountains to preview the track Pegasus will take tomorrow. Can we talk more about your father-in-law when I get back?"

  "We've pretty well covered all the bases."

  Maybe. Maybe not. Jill couldn't shake the feeling she'd missed something, either in her conversation with Cody or in the call from Conway.

  "I'll see you then."

  Preoccupied with her thoughts, she slid into the driver's seat and missed seeing the step Cody took toward her. About to reach meltdown point, he decided to take another quick check on his patients and hit the shower before making the call to his contact at the CDC.

  Jill mulled over everything Cody had told her during the drive up the mountains. They loomed ahead, rising out of the scorching desert floor like the backbone of some monstrous dinosaur. The bare granite peaks glistened in the sun, but the scattered stands of juniper and ponderosa pine dotting the slopes gave some promise of shade. The end of August was fast approaching, but the sun hadn't lost its brutal daytime punch. Sweat trickled between Jill's breasts and stuck her brown T-shirt to her back. Her lightweight BDUs felt as heavy and hot as canvas.

  "Guess we should have ridden in the Humvee instead of taking this ATV," she muttered to Goofy as they jounced along the ruts that passed for a road. "At least the Hummer's enclosed and air-conditioned."

  A glance in the rearview mirror showed the chase vehicle lumbering along behind. With the recently installed mods, the tanklike Humvee had no difficulty keeping up with Jill's lighter, faster ATV. Now the question was whether the heavily armed chase vehicles could keep up with Pegasus when he charged up the mountains tomorrow.

  "Assuming he gets to slip his halter," Jill muttered to her traveling companion. "If this damned bug infects any more of our little band of warriors, we can forget about putting Pegasus through his paces for a while."

  The prospect of additional delays added to the nervous tension rolling around in her stomach. Things were heating up in the Middle East again. American troops were also slogging through jungles in Indonesia and the Philippines in search of terrorist training cells. The antidrug war in South and Central America had been shoved to the back burner since 9/11, but it still consumed incredible resources and personnel. Pegasus had been designed to operate in all these environments. He was desperately needed in the field.

  Her hands slick with sweat, Jill gripped the wheel. Every bone-rattling jounce set her thoughts churning along with her stomach. Like a badminton shuttlecock, her mind batted back and forth between preplanning tomorrow's mission, the call from Jack Conway and the virus attacking personnel at the site.

  "Why only us?" she asked Goofy. "Why no one else? And what's spawning the damned thing?"

  The long-eared hound offered no answer to the puzzle.

  "Then there's that business about desert sand storms and depleted uranium particles."

  Jill had lost a few hours of sleep thinking about the Gulf War research Cody had mentioned.

  "What if someone knew about that research?" she said, bouncing her thoughts off the plastic figure o
n the dash. "What if they wanted to test the theory that nasal irritation lessened a soldier's ability to block inhalation of harmful airborne particles? Maybe they wanted to develop—and sell to the Department of Defense—a nasal spray or a mask or a filter that purified the air?"

  Like the ultraviolet water purifier Ditech had developed to aid earthquake-devastated Guatemala. Simple, inexpensive, easy to use, but now in such demand worldwide it had made the company billions.

  Jill's stomach clenched. Another big win like that would certainly lift Ditech out of its present doldrums. Jack Conway wouldn't go down. Neither would his son-in-law, whose financial future was inextricably tied to that of the man's company.

  No!

  Her mind slammed the trapdoor on that thought before it could crawl out into the searing light of the desert. No way Cody would release a laboratory-altered bug at the site for any personal gain.

  But Conway might. Assuming he somehow found out about the top-secret project Cody had been detailed to work.

  Scowling at the stretch of sand still ahead, Jill shoved back her black felt beret and swiped her arm across her sweaty forehead.

  "Maybe that call last night wasn't about voting a stock option," she said, still thinking out loud. "Maybe Conway just wanted to talk to Cody and try to find out what was happening at the site."

  Like Cody, he'd have access to the Center for Disease Control's databases. Ditech was first and foremost a pharmaceutical company, after all, and the whole purpose of the database was to disseminate information about diseases. Conway could have searched for reports of an outbreak of an illness caused by a new strain of virus. He'd know it would have to be reported sooner or later for the public's safety. And he'd be all ready with a possible solution to the problem.

  Only the CDC hadn't reported an outbreak. Right now no one knew how many folks had been infected except Cody.

  And he intended to report it today.

  "Dammit!"

  She pounded a fist on the steering wheel. Everything kept coming back to Cody. The realization had her stomach pumping pure acid, but the cop in her wouldn't let go of the notion. Like a hunting dog worrying a rabbit, she chased it around and around in her mind until a call from the Humvee broke into her chaotic thoughts.