As he sped the car away, his mind raced. She had been so tired she left the lab through one of the side doors, not wanting to run into anyone. That was logical. Just what she would have done. The gate guard had missed her, probably asleep. She would go to her condo. He would slip into bed beside her. She would sense his presence without waking up. She would smile in her sleep, murmur, and move close to touch him. Her hip would press warm against him. He would smile, kiss her shoulder lightly, watch her sleep before he fell asleep himself. He would . . .
__________
Few guidebooks listed Fort Detrick as one of the attractions to the historic City of Frederick. With its chain-link fence and guard post at the entrance, Detrick was a medium-secure army base set in the middle of a residential area. Sophia’s condo was five blocks away. Parked up the street again, Smith saw no signs of anyone watching here. He stepped from the Triumph, closed the door softly, and listened. He heard the distant coughs of sleepers. The occasional laughter or a voice raised in drunken anger. A solitary car squealing around a turn. The constant low hum that was the city itself.
But no clandestine sounds or movements he could identify as threatening.
He used his key to the lobby of the three-story condo building and strode across the exposed expanse of the tile and carpet to the elevators. All were empty at this hour.
On the third floor, the Glock in his hand, he stepped off warily. The corridor echoed to his footfalls like the empty rooms of an ancient tomb. When he reached her door, he listened again. He heard nothing from inside. He turned the key, the quiet tumblers clicking in his mind loud as explosions.
Silently he pulled open the door and dropped flat to the carpeting inside.
The apartment was dark. Nothing stirred. His hand felt a film of dust covering the side table near the door.
He stood and glided through the shadowy living room to the short corridor that led to the two bedrooms. Both were empty, the beds made, and unused. The kitchen showed no sign that anyone had eaten a meal or prepared even a cup of coffee. The sink was dry. The refrigerator was silent, turned off weeks ago.
She had not been here.
Feeling numb, Smith walked like a robot back into the living room. He turned on lights. He inspected for signs of an attack, an injury, even a search.
Nothing. The condo was as clean and undisturbed as an exhibit in a museum.
If they had killed or kidnapped her, it had not been here.
She was not at the lab. She was not at the house in Thurmont. She was not here. And he had no indications that anything had happened to her at any of those places.
He needed help, and he knew it.
The first step was to call the base and alert them to her disappearance. Then the police. FBI. He grabbed the portable telephone to dial Detrick.
His hand froze midair. Outside in the corridor, footsteps echoed along the walls.
He switched off the lights and set the phone on the table. He dropped to one knee behind the couch, the Glock in his hand trained on the door.
Someone advanced haltingly toward Sophia’s condo, bumping into walls, progressing in fits and starts. A drunk staggering home?
The steps stopped with a hard thump against Sophia’s door. There was ragged breathing. A key probed for the lock.
He tensed. The door swung open as if flung.
In the shaft of light, Sophia swayed. Her clothes were torn and stained as if she had been crawling in a gutter.
Smith leaped forward. “Sophia!”
She staggered in, and he caught her before she collapsed. She gasped, battled for breath. Her face burned with fever.
Her black eyes stared up at him, tried to smile. “You’re . . . back, darling. Where . . . where were you?”
“I’m so sorry, Soph. I had an extra day, I wanted…”
Her hand reached up to interrupt him. Her voice sounded delirious. “…lab …at the lab …someone …hit …”
She fell back in his arms, unconscious. Her skin was pasty. Two bright fevered spots glowed on her cheeks. Her beautiful face was pinched with pain. She was terribly ill. What had happened to her? This was not just simple exhaustion.
“Soph? Soph! Oh my God, Soph?”
There was no response. She was limp, unconscious.
Shaken and terrified, he fell back on his medical training. He was a doctor. He knew what to do. He laid her on the couch, grabbed the portable phone, and dialed 911 as he checked her pulse and breathing. The pulse was weak and rapid. She breathed in labored gasps. She burned. The symptoms of acute respiratory distress plus fever.
He yelled into the phone, “Acute respiratory distress. Dr. Jonathan Smith, dammit. Get here. Now!”
__________
The unmarked van was almost invisible beneath the tree on the street outside Sophia Russell’s apartment. Above, a weak streetlight hardly pierced the night, giving the van’s inhabitants exactly what they wanted— darkness and camouflage. From the interior gloom, Bill Griffin watched the paramedic van, its beacons flashing blue and red, in front of the three-story condo building that blazed with light across the street.
Nadal al-Hassan’s hatchet face spoke from the driver’s seat, “Dr. Russell should not have been able to leave her laboratory alone. She should never have reached this far.”
“But she did both.” Griffin’s round face was neutral. In the darkness, his brown, mid-length hair was ebony. His big shoulders and muscular body appeared relaxed. This was a different, harder, colder man than the one who had met his friend Jon Smith just hours ago in Washington’s Rock Creek park.
Al-Hassan said, “I did what was ordered for the woman. It was the only way she could be handled without suspicion.”
Griffin’s silence covered the turmoil inside him. The sudden and unforeseen involvement of Jon was something he had never imagined. He had tried to warn Jon off, but al-Hassan had sent Maddux after Jon in Washington before Jon even had a chance to think about running. That would have told Jon the warning was true, but with the woman attacked, too, Jon would not back away. How in hell was he going to save his oldest friend now?
He and al-Hassan had been waiting for the others to locate Smith again when the call from their spy inside USAMRIID, fake Specialist Four Adele Schweik, came in on al-Hassan’s cell phone. The motion sensor she had planted in Sophia Russell’s office and lab had gone off, and when she had activated the hidden video camera, she had seen Sophia staggering from her office. She had rushed to Fort Detrick, but by the time she had gotten there, Russell had vanished.
“She couldn’t drive in her condition,” Schweik had told al-Hassan, “so I checked her file. She owns a condo close to the fort.”
They had driven straight to the building only to find the paramedics already there, and the whole building awakened by the commotion. There was no way they could get inside without attracting attention.
Bill Griffin said, “Only way or not, if she can talk and tells Smith too much, the boss isn’t going to be happy. And look at this.”
Four paramedics pushed a gurney out through the lobby doors. Jon Smith strode alongside the gurney holding the hand of the woman on the stretcher as he bent close to talk to her. He appeared oblivious to anything else. He went on talking and talking.
Al-Hassan cursed in Arabic. “We should have known of the condo.”
Griffin had to take the chance of making al-Hassan hate him more than he already did in hopes of goading the Arab into making a mistake. “But we didn’t, and now they’re talking. She’s alive. You blew it, alHassan. Your hide’s going to be stretched for this. Now what do we do?”
Nadal al-Hassan’s words were soft. “We follow them to the hospital. Then we make her dead for certain. And him, too.” He turned to stare at Griffin.
Griffin knew al-Hassan was watching his reaction for even the slightest hint of discomfort with the idea of killing Jon. A faint stiffening, a flinch, a microscopic shudder.
Instead, Griffin nodded at the paramedic van. His expression was arctic. “If necessary, we may have to kill them, too. Maybe they heard her say something. I hope you’re prepared for that. You’re not going to wimp out on me, are you? Turn soft?”
Al-Hassan bristled. “I had not thought of the paramedics. Of course, if it is necessary, we will kill them.” His eyes narrowed. He paused. “It is possible Jon Smith is conversing with a corpse. Love makes fools of even the most intelligent. We will see whether she dies on her own. If so, then we have only Jon Smith to eliminate. That makes our jobs easier, yes?”