Melanie kept the phone pressed to her ear, her other hand covering her free ear. She was talking somewhere between loud and shouting. Below her, she saw the South Lawn of the White House looming up. They were landing.
“Keep track of the temperature. Far as we can tell, when it gets hot, it’s ready to hatch. Don’t touch them in the meantime,” she said. “No. Wait. Scratch that. Find one of the local universities that has an entomology program and have them bring over some insectariums. Get the egg sacs in there, and then make sure they’re somewhere contained. Somebody has to have a lab in the area that will work. I think you’re safe for now, but I don’t know.”
She felt the jolt of the struts hitting the ground, and the battle-dressed soldier next to her grabbed her arm. “We’ve got to go, ma’am.”
She ducked her head instinctively as she ran out from under the chopper blades. “Let me know if anything changes,” she yelled into the phone. It was louder outside the helicopter. “And good luck.”
The soldier handed her off to a pair of Secret Service agents, and they hustled her through the halls and toward the Situation Room. It was overwhelming, and as they passed a bathroom, she stopped. One of the Secret Service agents tugged on her arm, but she shook her head.
“I’ve got to use the restroom.”
The agent, a young Latino man, kept his hand on her biceps. “We’re under orders to take you to Mr. Walchuck immediately,” he said.
She gently peeled his hand off. “I’m forty and have a doctorate. I’m the one who gets to decide when I pee.”
The hallway was buzzing with people moving back and forth, some of them running, all of them looking harried, and the bathroom felt cool and quiet. She ducked into the stall and peed. It was a surprising relief. For that matter, when had she last had something to eat or drink? She needed a coffee or a Diet Coke. She needed a few minutes to get herself together before she faced Manny and the president and a roomful of uniforms, she thought.
Dead spiders in the insectarium. Dried out. Used up. And the other spiders. Feeding machines. The egg sac in Bark, sticky and ready to hatch, and then the egg sacs in Minneapolis? Mike said they were cool. A little rough. She tried running the numbers in her head, thinking over the data. It was . . . something. There was something she was missing. She was so close. She needed her lab. She needed a nap.
She closed her eyes and then heard the door to the bathroom. She opened her eyes and stared at her knees, sitting on the toilet for a few more seconds, savoring the time to herself, before she finished up and stepped out of the stall. Stepped out of the stall to find Manny leaning against the sink and waiting for her.
“Jesus, Manny. Come on.”
“We were married for eleven years,” he said, and then shrugged. His version of an apology. “I needed to talk to you before you go in.”
She brushed past him to wash her hands. “What am I doing here, Manny? This is way past me at this point. I’m a lab kind of girl. What do you expect me to do?”
“I expect you to do your job,” he said. “You know spiders. That’s all we need. Tell us, as best you can, what we’re dealing with.”
“Minnesota,” she said.
“What?”
“They’re in Minnesota now. You knew that, right?” Manny turned pale, and Melanie had the answer to her question. “Mike—Agent Rich, the one who brought the spider from Minneapolis—called me when I was on the way here. They found a dead spider in a warehouse near the crash site and some egg sacs.”
Manny took a deep breath. “How many? How many egg sacs?”
“I think he said three. Three? But the good news is that they’re cool, and we might have some time before they hatch.”
“There’s something you need to see,” Manny said.
He walked her out of the bathroom and down the hall. As they passed the Situation Room, a young woman in army dress bounced through the doors, a cacophony of voices following her. Manny didn’t glance in. He turned, four doors down, and took her into a smaller, quieter room. It was nearly empty. Just Billy Cannon, Alex Harris, and a couple of aides.
“Show her the footage,” Manny said.
Melanie sat down in one of the chairs around the table. They all faced the same large screen on the far side of the room. One of the aides turned down the lights, and the screen lit up.
“We shot this forty minutes ago. Marines in Los Angeles.”