“You seem familiar.” Daniel cocked his head, and Trisk hesitated. “It must be because you look alike.”
Trisk and Quen eyed each other, but Daniel slumped back into his thoughts, and Trisk pulled Quen aside. We look alike? Trisk thought, never having given it much consideration, but it was better than Daniel remembering Quen helping her summon a demon.
“I need to find a phone,” she said, voice hushed. “I have to talk to Rick.”
Quen’s eyes flicked back to her. “Rick? Why?”
Trisk glanced over her shoulder and to the waiting room. “Because he’s the boss. Will you watch Daniel?”
“What if he remembers me?”
Trisk looked past Quen to Daniel, the man’s expression stoic as he stared at the floor and watched his life crumble. “He’s not going to remember you.”
“Fine,” Quen grumbled. “But I don’t want to be your brother.”
She pressed her lips together, frowning. “Just . . . I’ll be right back.”
Quen’s heavy sigh seemed to echo as she went back to the lobby to find a public phone. There was one on a small table with laminated instructions on how to call outside the hospital, but she stopped dead in her tracks, staring at it, ashamed at her sudden reluctance to touch it. You made that virus perfect, she told herself, watching her hand as she reached out and picked up the receiver.
“Local only, please,” the receptionist called loudly, and Trisk absently raised her hand. She was halfway through laboriously dialing Rick’s office when the familiar silhouette of Global Genetics flashed up on the TV turned to the late news. Slowly she let the receiver drop from her ear. There were fire trucks and an ambulance. Trisk took a breath to ask someone to turn it up, her voice catching when a photo of Rick flashed up on the screen.
“CEO Rick Rales was pronounced dead at the scene,” the woman was saying. “His body was found in one of Global Genetics’ underground isolation field labs, suffering massive burns over almost his entire body. That it was after-hours is thought to be to blame for the freak accident. Doctors Daniel Plank and Trisk Cambri are wanted for questioning.”
Rick is dead? They’re blaming us?
Setting the phone back in the cradle, she turned. More people had come in, all with rashes and blemishes, all tired and looking winded. A woman in a nurse’s uniform was sitting with the family in the corner. She seemed fine, but the faint scent of redwood told Trisk she was a witch. Distress crossed the nurse’s face when the teenager ran for the bathroom and the sound of vomiting spilled out into the waiting room. The mother got up, staggering slightly as she followed her daughter in. At the coffee table, a crayoned picture of ghosts trick-or-treating drifted to the floor, forgotten.
Shit. Not only was Daniel’s virus out, but it was spreading. Daniel was right. It had found a carrier. Not my tomato. It can’t be my tomato. I made it perfect.
Wiping her hand on her jeans, Trisk backed away from the phone. Head down to avoid eye contact, she walked quickly to where Quen waited with Daniel. The man was still slumped in his chair. In contrast, Quen stood over him at parade rest, his stiff jaw and firm stance making him look military despite his longish hair and stubbled cheeks. His three years as Kalamack security were showing. “We have to go. Now,” she said.
Quen’s eyes shot to hers, drawn by her obvious fear. Daniel was slower, his focus distant as he pushed his glasses back up his nose. “The lab is on fire,” she added.
Daniel’s eyes widened. “What?” he asked, suddenly paying attention.
Clutching her purse in a white-knuckled grip, she looked up and down the hall. “Rick is gone. Burned to death in the fire. They think we did it.”
“Us? Why?” Daniel said, bewildered, and then his expression became slack. “Before I left the party, I caught Rick in the hallway. He said the government was upset. That our calculations were wrong and their own people were being exposed. But how . . .” His eyes went past her to the sound of the kid vomiting. “Trisk . . .” he whispered, scared as he immediately made the same connection she had.
She drew him to his feet, and Daniel rose, obedient in shock. “We have to go.” Trisk gave Quen a meaningful look, and he nodded. Pace even and unhurried, he started for the main door. His steps were light with tension and his arms swung easily. Trisk pulled Daniel stumbling in his wake.
“I don’t understand,” Daniel said. “Where . . . I don’t have my car. I took a cab here.”
She took a tighter grip on his arm as they passed through the emergency waiting room. It was starting to fill up. “We’ll fit in my truck.”
“Back to the lab?” Daniel said. “We have to find out what went wrong.”