“That poor, sad little man,” he said, head shaking as the sound of Daniel’s car leaving filtered in and his headlights flashed in the hall and were gone. “You’re really hard on your boyfriends, you know that?”
Lump in her throat, she pushed past him, going to the couch and flopping onto it. She set the bag on the table and stared at her mug, wanting coffee but not when it tasted like that. “He was never my boyfriend, and you’re not helping.”
“I’d say the curse is holding,” Quen added as he sat beside her and dragged the bag to him. “What’s wrong with your tomatoes?”
“If Angie is out sick, she probably just forgot to water them before she left.”
The paper bag crackled as he unrolled it, and Quen looked in, recoiling with a sudden jerk. “Are they supposed to smell like that?”
Brow furrowed, she reached for the bag. “They smell?” She looked in, seeing the clear lab-sample bag inside. It wasn’t sealed, and a foul stench made her lips curl. She reached in to snap it shut before carefully lifting it out. The vegetation was coated in a black slime, falling apart in places. Daniel wouldn’t have been able to put it in the bag like that, meaning it had decomposed over the course of a few hours.
“That doesn’t look right,” Quen said, poking the bag with a finger.
“It’s not.” Stretching, she reached for her phone and toggled the receiver button for a dial tone.
“Who you calling? Kal?” Quen asked, and she gave him a dry look as she dialed Angie’s home number from memory. It rang twice before it was picked up and a masculine voice said hello.
“Hi,” Trisk said, pulse fast as she looked at what was left of the tomato. “Is Angie there?”
“Who is this?” the man asked, and Trisk pushed herself up on the edge of the couch.
“Dr. Cambri,” she said, rising to pace within the confines of the phone’s cord. “Angie works with me. I wasn’t in today, and I just found out she was home sick. Is she okay?”
“Dr. Cambri,” the man said, his suspicion replaced by a heavy relief. “I’m glad you called. I’m Andy, her boyfriend. They wouldn’t give me your number when I called this afternoon. Angie threw up this morning, but the fever wasn’t high, so I didn’t think anything of it. But she had a rash when I got home. It’s all over her face and back. I think it’s spreading.”
Shit. Trisk gave Quen a sick look. Vomiting wasn’t a symptom of Daniel’s virus except in an overdose, but a fever and a rash were. How did she come in contact with it?
“We thought maybe she was coming down with chicken pox since the kid next door has it. But she’s coughing up blood now. Dr. Cambri, is she okay?”
Trisk put a hand to her forehead, fighting the nausea. “I would think so,” she said, not knowing for sure. “But it wouldn’t hurt to take her into the emergency room.”
“The emergency room?” Andy said, voice worried. “But it’s almost after six.”
“That’s why they call it emergency,” Trisk insisted. “Make sure they know she works at Global Genetics. Tell them I said to put her into isolation. Just as a precaution.”
“Dr. Cambri?” His voice was higher, threaded with panic. “Is she going to be okay?”
She couldn’t bring herself to say yes.
“Dr. Cambri?” Andy prompted again, and her jaw clenched.
“I think so,” she said, soft so the lie wouldn’t show. “It doesn’t sound like anything we’ve been working with. I just want to be sure. Take her in right now, okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Dr. Cambri.”
The connection clicked off and she was left listening to a dial tone. Feeling unreal, she hung up the phone. Quen was watching her when she looked up, his eyebrows high.
“Aren’t those the symptoms of—”
“Daniel’s virus, yes,” she said, brow furrowed. “But there was no way she could have come in contact with it. She never goes in his lab, and if Daniel brought it out accidentally, he’d be sick, too.”
Quen’s eyes slid to the ugly bag of black slime. “You don’t think . . .”
Trisk shook her head. “It can’t jump to a plant,” she said, starting to pace a wider arc. “I’ve worked with both their genomes, and they don’t mesh.”
“But if they did?”
She stopped, gripping the back of the chair with a white-knuckled strength. “Then Angie will be fine,” she said, pulse slowing. “If she was exposed to Daniel’s virus, she’ll be fine. It can’t reproduce outside of the lab.” But that she’d come in contact with it was a problem.
Quen shifted farther away from the foul, black bag. “I didn’t think coughing up blood was one of the symptoms.”
“It is if you overdose,” she said absently, wondering if she should call Daniel. “But she’d have to eat, like, a tablespoon of it,” she finished, a horrible feeling of having been remiss settling deep in the pit of her soul as she looked at the remains of her tomato. Angie had taken one home Thursday. If Daniel’s virus was attacking her plants, the toxins might build up to a lethal dose before the plant died.
Fingers shaking, she grabbed her purse and keys. “I need to go.”
16