Jeff Buick - Lethal Dose

“You said there were three companies having success with the virus. Which are the other two?”

“Marcon and Beringer Ingels. Both are major players in the pharmaceutical business.”

“I know who they are,” Rothery snapped, immediately wishing he could have the comment back.

“Anything else?” Warner asked, his voice cool.

“No, just keep me in the loop with their progress.”

“Good luck with the president.”

“Thanks. Stay next to your phone in case I need to patch the president through. He may want to speak with you directly for an update from NSA.”

“Okay,” Tony said, his voice back to normal. The line went dead.

J. D. Rothery exited the car clutching his leather attache case. He was ushered through security, joined by two serious-looking secret service agents, and whisked down the wide hallway toward the Oval Office. There was an urgency to their stride, and Rothery was pressed to keep up with them. He reached the outer door of the nation’s most hallowed sanctuary and stood quietly as they got clearance to enter. One of the

agents touched his earpiece, then turned to him and asked, “Are you ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Rothery said. How could you ever be ready to face the president with the news that a lethal, contagious virus was being unleashed on the nation by an unknown enemy? The door opened, and he followed the agents into the room.

Thursday.

Two days since he had left Jennifer Pearce teetering over the edge of a cliff in the Shenandoah Mountains. Two days with no contact from Bruce Andrews. Two days of sitting on a powder keg with one burning question that had yet to be answered.

Was Veritas really terminating its brain chip program?

Evan Ziegler had no idea if what the woman had told him was true. And he had no way of finding out, save calling Bruce Andrews and asking him. And that was not going to happen. He had searched the Internet, using every keyword he could think of, to see if there had been any press releases about Veritas phasing out the program. Nothing. The only proof he had that Andrews was using him was the word of a woman facing certain death. And he knew that when a person was placed in such a predicament, integrity went out the window. Even the most honest person would lie if she thought it might save her life. He knew this from firsthand experience. Not knowing the answer to that question was killing him.

On top of that, Evan Ziegler’s mind had been consumed with Jennifer Pearce’s fate over the last 120 hours. She had been drugged and asleep when he left the scene, and still alive. But her car had been perched precariously on the lip of the dropoff. And the result of the car going over was not in question- she would die. A sudden gust of wind, an updraft surging along the cliff face, a small animal running across the hood of the car-all were insignificant events that could cause the vehicle to slide slowly into the valley. Jennifer Pearce could not possibly survive such a crash.

There had been no word from Richmond since Wednesday morning, and he took the silence as an indication that she had not survived. If Jennifer Pearce was alive and Bruce Andrews had found out, all hell would be breaking loose. Andrews would have called on the private line with questions. Questions that would be difficult, if not impossible, to answer. But that had not happened. And as time progressed, he had to assume there was only one possible scenario.

Jennifer Pearce was dead.

But the other factor that was weighing on his mind was the sudden appearance of Gordon, whoever the hell that was. Some guy who had talked Kenga Bakcsi into providing him with information on that Triaxcion drug. What had he been doing at Pearce’s house early Sunday morning? Had he managed to find her before the car went over the cliff? And if so, why had he not heard from a pissed-off Bruce Andrews? Nothing was making sense.

And what had she said about both Albert Rousseau and Kenga Bakcsi being innocent victims? Had Bruce Andrews asked him to kill these people for other reasons? He’d been adamant that both Bakcsi and Rousseau were threats to the brain chip program. But Andrews could have been lying.

He glanced at the clock on his desk. Three-thirty. He shut down his computer and told his receptionist he was leaving early. She often closed the copier office when he was out on sales calls or enjoying a midweek round of golf. Traffic was light for a Thursday afternoon, but he figured that was probably because he was an hour ahead of the peak hours for commuters heading home. He pulled into his driveway and killed the engine. His wife’s van was parked on her side of the drive, the side that allowed her to load Ben’s wheelchair in through the sliding doors. He pocketed his keys and entered the house, a slight gust of cool air exiting through the open door. It was strange, he thought, for his wife to have the air conditioner turned up that high. It wasn’t that warm out today. He took a few steps into the house and stopped. Something was wrong. He had felt this before, many times. He felt the presence of death.

Ziegler moved quietly through the living room and down the hall to the master bedroom, where a fully loaded Glock 17 rested under some shirts in his drawer. The door was open and he slid into the room, every sense on high alert. He moved quickly to the bank of drawers and eased open the third one from the top. He slid his hand under the shirts and felt for the gun.

It was gone.

He turned and ran from the room, down the hall to Ben’s room. He had no weapon save his skill at hand-to-hand combat, but he had to see that his son was okay. Ben’s door was closed, and he opened it slowly, not knowing what he would find. As the door swung back, his son’s wheelchair came into view. Ben was facing away from him, and all Evan could see was the back of his son’s head. He glanced about, then crept quietly across the room. He reached the wheelchair and turned it slightly so he could see his son. And then, despite all his years dealing with violent death, he vomited.

Ben’s neck was cut wide open from one side to the other; the knife had cut so deep that it exposed the boy’s spinal cord. His shirt and pants were caked with blood, just starting to dry. His eyes were wide open and locked in a horrified stare; suggesting that his mind had known he was going to die but his body had been unable to defend against his attacker. Evan wiped the vomit from the edges of his mouth, his face contorted in rage. He turned back to the door, his stomach heaving again at the sight of his wife, nailed to the wall behind the door, her chest and stomach sliced open, her vital organs hanging from the cavities. In the doorway stood a man. He had a silenced gun aimed at Ziegler’s head.

“Too bad about your family,” the man said. “Your wife put up quite the fight, but your son just sat there. Never moved a muscle.”

Evan rushed the man, his mind a blur of red. He felt the first bullet hit his chest but kept moving. The second slug tore into his neck and snapped his head back. He tried to push with his feet, but all momentum was gone. He crashed to the carpet, twitching as he bled to death. The man with the gun appeared above him, looking down as one would inspect a stepped-on bug that was still moving.

“Why didn’t you kill her, Evan?” he asked. “What was it about Jennifer Pearce that was so different? All you had to do was kill her and we wouldn’t have made this trip out to visit you and your family.” He unscrewed the silencer from the gun and pocketed it. He slipped the gun into a shoulder holster and stood still, watching Evan die.

Evan’s eyes slowly closed, his killer’s face the last earthly image recorded in his memory. And he had a strange thought as he died. That he had seen that face on television recently.