Time of Attack

EPILOGUE

Still uncertain about the effects of the plague, CDC personnel kept the quarantines in place. Once word got out that the disease was being spread one person at a time, hospitals in the western United States began to turn loose of their ventilators and ECMO machines. Before long, Todd Elton had more machines than he had sick patients. The only two fatalities were Mrs. Johnson, who was the oldest of those infected, and R. J. Howard, who, Elton thought, had just plain given up because his wife had left him.

Marta Bedford continued to count her boils, even after Mrs. Johnson had passed, but began to notice fewer and fewer every day. Brody Teeples’s wife pulled through as well, but he was in jail for riding his ATV drunk when she came off ECMO, so he wasn’t there to see her.

Sheriff Young interviewed all the victims and found that each of them had received a “particularly rough” pedicure at the hands of Haifa, Marta Bedford’s new employee. Of course, Haifa was nowhere to be found.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in coordination with the FBI, seized all the vaccine manufactured at Yanagi Pharmaceutical. Lab tests confirmed that it was not a vaccine at all, but the potent virus itself.

Fairfax County officer Jenny Chin’s funeral was attended by over four hundred uniformed representatives from departments all over the United States. Detectives weren’t able to make a solid case against Larsson for her shooting, but volunteers kept him busy in interrogation so he was not able to sully her memory with his attendance.

The arrest warrant for Jericho Quinn remained in effect.

Bowen and Hase met up with Quinn at a Buddhist temple cottage in Fukuoka. The monk, Kobo, stood by and played Angry Birds on his cell phone as they talked in his neutral zone.

“I never believed you did it, you know,” Bowen said, keeping his eyes flitting between the big Cajun, Garcia, and Emiko Miyagi. Thibodaux was as tough looking as they came, but Bowen somehow knew that if he’d tried to arrest Quinn at that moment, these women would chew him up and spit him out.

“That’s comforting,” Quinn said. “So what now?”

Bowen blew air into his cheeks, thinking. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. It’s a damn strange coincidence that both the president and vice president were killed while you’re being framed for murder. I’m no superspy like you, but I’d say some things don’t add up.”

Quinn sat mute, offering no explanation.

“Anyway.” Bowen took a piece of white paper from his inside jacket pocket. It was folded once down the middle. “I did a sketch of you on the way over, you can have—”

Garcia snatched it out of his hand. “I’ll take that,” she said. “He’d just throw it away.”

“So, you’re going back to the States?” Miyagi asked. It was more of a suggestion than a question.

“That’s what they tell me,” Bowen said. “Like I said, I’m not an international person of mystery like you guys are. I’m just a POD.”

Quinn extended his hand. “Having someone among the front lines might be handy in the near future.”

Hase stood back a bit, looking more at the ground than anyone in particular. “There is the matter of over a dozen deaths of Japanese citizens,” he said, still staring at the floor.

Everyone in the room tensed. They couldn’t go back to the U.S., and Detective Hase appeared about to make it impossible to stay in Japan.

“What about them?” Quinn asked.

“I was wondering,” the detective said, “if you ever hear anything regarding these deaths or who might have perpetrated them, would you be so kind as to let me know?”

Vice President — elect Lee McKeon’s wife had returned to the governor’s mansion in Salem to make things ready for their move to the Naval Observatory once Bob Hughes’s widow moved out. Secret Service agents, not Oregon State Police, now stood outside the door to this suite at the Hay Adams — on high alert considering the state of the nation.

McKeon stood in front of the bathroom mirror and slowly unbuttoned his shirt. As far as his protective detail knew, the pert little staffer in the other room was supposed to be helping him with some correspondence. It would, he hoped, be a very, very long letter.

Putting his hands flat on the counter, he stared at himself and couldn’t help smiling. His biological father had envisioned this day, methodically moving aside anything and anyone that got in his way. And then, Jericho Quinn had come along and forced him to kill himself. McKeon knew Quinn was still out there and that he would come for the president. And, McKeon thought, that was all right. For all anyone in the United States knew, he was not the son of Pakistani doctor Nazeer Badeeb and the Chinese Muslim Li Huang, but a natural-born citizen of the United States of America, perfectly capable of assuming the presidency if Hartman Drake happened to be assassinated by a madman.

The pert young staffer walked in and stepped between him and the mirror. In her mid-twenties, she was Japanese, with long black hair and eyes that were more ochre than brown. She wore nothing but a long-sleeve pajama top, deep maroon to match her lipstick.

Round where he was angular, pale where he was dark, she was over a foot shorter than McKeon and had to stand on tiptoe to get her arms around his neck. She pressed against his body and kissed him long and hard.

“You don’t need those stupid Secret Service agents,” she growled, biting him on the lip.

He jerked away, finger to his mouth, tasting blood.

“Maybe I need them to protect me from you.” He grinned.

“Nonsense,” the woman said, letting the pajama top slide to the floor.

His hands snaked around her naked waist, pulling her roughly to him.

Her lips nuzzled his neck and his eyes fell on the intricate tattoo inked across her back — a snarling foo dog, mouth open, fangs bared.

Sinking her teeth into the soft flesh of his ear, she once again drew blood. He shuddered at her whisper.

“I am your protector.”