What Lies Behind. J.T. Ellison

taken through a portable decontamination unit, had blood samples drawn and were told to stay put. Phones, her purse, shoes, everything, was taken away.

      Sam had an awful sense of déjà vu; she’d been through something similar a few months back, when a crazed man had used a homegrown biological weapon to gas the Foggy Bottom Metro station and she’d been sitting at ground zero at the George Washington University Hospital waiting to be cleared to go home.

      She pushed the thought away. No sense revisiting the past until she knew what she was dealing with. Or whom.

      Thomas Cattafi. She didn’t know the name—no reason she should, really, if he was a fourth-year M.D./Ph.D. student. Two years of med school, four years of specialized research, then back to the med school side to finish the clinical rotations. A hellish tract, one few students wanted, and fewer survived. Sam was only working with the first-year forensic pathology students, the dewy-eyed youngsters who thought everything about med school was cool. Soon enough, they’d become hardened and cynical, like everyone else.

      What in the hell was a student doing with a refrigerator full of pathogens? Even if he was an M.D./Ph.D. candidate, there was no reason to have the items at his home. They belonged in a lab. Cattafi was involved in something bad, that was for sure. Something this woman, Amanda Souleyret, had brought to his door?

      And what about the scene felt so familiar?

      Since she had a few moments of leisure, she thought back to the Hometown Killer files, the autopsy photos, ran everything through her head. Two of the women in the series had been stabbed—Terri Snow from Topeka and Jan Tovey from San Francisco. Blood everywhere, the women’s bodies found in the bedroom. The Snow crime scene was the one that struck her as familiar.

       You’re reaching, Samantha.

      She wanted to call Baldwin, demand a briefing, but he was on a plane. There was nothing he could do for her right now. She’d shot him an email before they took her phone, told him to get back to her the moment he landed. She had a problem, and he needed to be secure before he reached out. The last thing she needed was someone capturing the message and leaking this to the press. Hopefully they’d be cleared before he started burning up the wires.

      She watched the HAZMAT team move about, smelled the intense scent of rain coming. Worried, but just a little, about whether she’d been exposed to something horrible. The refrigerator had been empty of wine and unplugged, so the pathogens weren’t at the right temperature, nor were they specially packaged. It was almost as if Cattafi had been working on something, been interrupted and hurriedly shut the pathogens away in the refrigerator. Forgotten to plug it in.

      Or someone had purposely unplugged it.

      When and for how long it had been turned off was anyone’s guess—it had its own power source, so they’d have to track all that down, too.

      She hadn’t touched anything, and all the discs and vials she’d seen looked like they’d been properly handled and were sealed, except for the one that was cracked, leaking and smelling awful. But one never knew. A list of hemorrhagic diseases ran through her mind, countdowns, worried doctors, isolation chambers, right into visions of blood gushing from various orifices, leaking from fissures cracking open in her porcelain skin, until she shook her head to physically stop the thoughts.

      There was nothing to be done right now. Everyone who’d come in contact with Cattafi for the past few weeks would have to be examined, all the crime scene investigators tested. This was a mess of epic proportion.

      The autopsy of Amanda Souleyret was postponed, her body in isolation, until they knew more about what was happening. There was no sense infecting the morgue if it could be avoided.

      She soothed herself with a single thought—if Cattafi had been symptomatic, they’d have already heard from the hospital. Went back to worrying about a more immediate problem.

      The pack of vials and discs had seemed undisturbed, but she’d noticed there was a single spot in the tray of vials that was empty. She hoped like hell there wasn’t something missing, something the killer had taken.

      And with that thought, the scene began to make more sense.

      She was wrong. There was nothing familiar here. Cattafi had been targeted because someone knew about his little lab.

      She watched the HAZMAT team work, moving slowly, like they were underwater. Felt a bit like she was underwater herself, isolated and alone, though Fletcher was with her.

      “You okay?” she asked him.

      “Mmm-hmm. Annoyed more than anything.”

      “This is turning into something more than it first seemed.”

      He gave her a sharp glance. “With you, it always does.” But there was humor in his voice. “Entertain me. I’m bored.”

      “You’re joking, right? What do you want me to do, tell you a bedtime story?”

      “While that has its own compelling set of responses, I was thinking more along the lines of what sort of work Amanda Souleyret might be doing that’s drawn the attention of the FBI.”

      “Oh, it’s speculation you want. I’m good at that.” She settled herself more comfortably on the table they’d been given to sit on. “All right. You’ll find out soon enough. Souleyret is undercover FBI.”

      “Really?”

      “Yeah. She was working for a company called Helix.”

      “Explain.”

      “Helix is a huge European firm with offices in several countries that run all kinds of private investigations, from industrial espionage to pharmaceutical investigations. They also work on pharmaceutical espionage. Trademark infringements, ripping off formularies, passing off generics as the real thing. There’s a more...physical component to what they do, as well. An entire division of close protection, K and R—kidnap and ransom—the whole gamut. It’s like what Xander and his buddy are doing, only on a much bigger scale.”

      “Like the Pinkertons?”

      She smiled, imagining Xander and Chalk in suits and fedoras. “Something like that. Perhaps a little less gunplay, a little more computer-driven research. But yes. They’re essentially detectives, and protectors of the realm.”

      “And whichever realm pays the best gets their undying loyalty?”

      “For the term of the contract.”

      “So what’s an FBI asset doing there?”

      “It’s a great place for her, really. They have unlimited funds and unlimited access all across Europe. Until we know exactly what project she was working on, we won’t know how they benefited her, but until she got herself dead, she had it good. Xander and Chalk, they’re just starting out. Competing with a behemoth company like Helix is hard.”

      “And yet they’re going to try.”

      “Some people want more discreet protection. That’s going to be their niche.”

      “You’re good with that? Him being all heroic and stuff?”

      She hesitated before answering, and he nodded, touched her knee. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to tell me. I can see you’re worried about it, though.”

      “Close protection is dangerous, especially if they start working overseas. I don’t necessarily want to see him go back into Iraq or Afghanistan. Everything that happened with Eddie Donovan, the fratricide, it messed him up. That’s all.”

      “Then we should make sure to find him work here. I’ll put the word out, if you like.”

      She gave him that heartbreaking smile of hers. “Thank you, Fletcher. I appreciate that.”

      Jesus, no matter how much in love, in lust or whatever he was with another woman, the sight of Samantha Owens at full wattage still made his gonads clench. He decided he liked the reaction. To hell with it