The Paris Betrayal by James Hannibal (the dot read aloud .txt) 📗

flashlight laser-pointer key chain against the window and dropped the red spot on the Honda’s hood. A glance his way and an almost imperceptible nod told him she saw it and had traced the source to his second-floor room. He closed the curtain and retreated to the bed.

Ten minutes later, he heard a knock.

“It’s open.”

The door swung inward, leaving the diminutive medic silhouetted in the frame, dwarfed by the oversize duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She lifted the strap over her head and let the duffel fall with a heavy thump on the threadbare carpet. “When I said, ‘It’s a date,’ Calix, I meant a meal, not a motel room.”

He shrugged. “Don’t read into it. Although, we both know I move pretty fast—four years from asking a girl out to taking her out. Glad you remembered.”

“Oh, I remembered.” Tess reached outside the doorframe and lifted a Shake Shack bag and a drink carrier into view. “Even the applewood bacon.”

While Tess donned protective gear in the bathroom, Ben gave her a rundown, including the Behemoth, the files he saw at Kidan’s place, and Giselle’s return from the grave to declare her loyalty to the enemy and stab him with a new strain of the bacteria. Then he dove into the food she’d brought him. He’d pictured the burger as some kind of momentary heaven, but the bacteria robbed him of that too. His taste buds failed him. The burger might as well have been warm, soppy ash.

“You smell like goat,” Tess called from the bathroom. “You know how I feel about goat.”

“Sorry. I crossed the pond using an alternative transport solution—deeply alternative. I showered, though.”

“Didn’t take.” She reappeared wearing white polypropylene from head to toe, along with a mask and googles. “No biggie. The mask helps. Welcome to dating in the post-pandemic age.”

“Yeah. Right.” Ben answered the joke with a sad smile.

“Too soon? I thought we were flirting, but if you’re still upset about Giselle, I—”

“Strangely enough, it’s not her. I encountered someone else along the way. I lost her too. I think I . . .” He trailed off. “Never mind. Forget it.”

Tess sat down on the bed beside him. “Wow. Someone else. You do move fast, Calix.”

“Can’t help it.” He circled a finger over his exhausted features—the sunken, bloodshot eyes, and the frostbitten nose. “Women throw themselves at a face like this.”

She took samples of his breath and blood and slid the receptacles into a compact analyzer linked to her tablet. “I heard about your severance,” she said, waiting for the machine to do its work. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Ben sensed an unspoken caveat. “But . . .”

“But nothing.”

“Spit it out, Tess.”

“Okay. We can go there if you want.” She walked away from the bed and turned, looking stern behind the mask and goggles. “You have to admit. The circumstances are odd. Severances don’t come every day, Calix. And they don’t come undeserved.”

Tess too? How did all his colleagues find it so easy to see him as a traitor?

Before he could defend himself, she went on. “Take Giselle, for instance—your secret against-policy girlfriend-turned-traitor. How could you not know about her treason? Reason suggests you did, and either joined in or turned a blind eye.”

“Either way, I deserve what I got, right?” He looked down at his hands, beginning to believe they were as dirty as she claimed.

“Calix . . . Like I said. I’m sorry.”

The tablet beeped. Tess checked the screen, then removed the mask and goggles. “At least Giselle told the truth about one thing. You’re not contagious, as long as you don’t bleed on anyone.”

“Silver linings.”

“It is a silver lining. And here’s another one.” Tess shed the upper half of her polypropylene overalls as she spoke, tying them around her waist below her T-shirt. “This bacterium isn’t too far removed from the one you encountered in Rome. I had an inkling, so I came prepared. I brought meds.”

A hope Ben spent the last thirty-six hours suppressing rose to the surface. “You can help me beat this thing?”

“I can help you fight the battle. I can’t help you win.”

“Meaning?”

She showed him the tablet. A computer-generated bacterium rotated on the screen. “See this? That’s your bug. Mean and nasty. Normally we fight plague with antibiotics, but a weaponized bug resists them. Only the specific cocktail of engineered antibiotics, enzyme inhibitors, and stimulants created by the same folks who created this ugly bug can stop it.”

“The antidote.”

She nodded. “Think of it as a key to the bacterium’s lock. Unique and intricate—able to work all the tumblers. With a month of study, a team of microbiologists might pick the lock, but—”

“By then, I’ll be dead.”

“Yeah.” She removed a CO2 injector from her kit and wiggled it in the air. “I can give you this, my own cocktail, to slow down the replication and treat a few symptoms. Take a breath. Here it comes.” She jammed the injector into his thigh.

The hiss and cold of forced air.

The prick of a needle stabbing through his jeans.

Ben felt every milliliter of medicine entering his bloodstream. Would it help?

As if reading the question in his thoughts, Tess pursed her lips, handing him a packet of five similar injectors. “At best, these’ll buy you two extra days. Take one in the morning and one at night.” She handed him another, larger injector. “I brought this too.”

He turned it over in his hand. A clear window enabled him to see the red fluid inside. “What is it?”

“We call it a kick. Think of it as adrenaline on steroids combined with the ultimate painkiller. The effects are impressive, but there are . . . Let’s call them drawbacks. The Company hasn’t fielded it for safety reasons. In your case, those reasons don’t matter.”

Tess explained how the kick worked, and Ben slipped it into his pocket with the other injectors. He stared at the curtain separating him from shops and streets outside, filled with unsuspecting Americans who’d already suffered through one terrifying pandemic. “What about them? What if Leviathan’s weapon gets out?”

“The R0 you told me