Chimera (18 page)

As soon as he was free, his own phone chimed to
tell him he had a new text message. It came from the number (000) 000-0000 and
contained only two words:

yr welcome

Once the cops left, Chapel and Julia headed back to
the public park, where the helicopter picked them up. It took them to the
private section of Newark Airport, where all the corporate executives stored
their G5 private jets. The plane waiting for Chapel and Julia looked the same as
all the others—sleek and expensive.

“Does it secretly turn into a robot?” Julia asked.
“Or maybe it has hidden missile systems that flip up when your enemies least
expect it.”

Chapel grinned at her. She'd been through so much
trauma that day but she was bouncing back, delaying her grief and anger and fear
because there was still work to be done, still places to be.

There was something about this woman. Something in
the way she kept surprising him. She had been smart enough to lock herself in
the drug closet when Laughing Boy came for her. She had seen through his
necessary lies.

It didn't hurt that her delicate features were
perfectly framed by her mane of fiery red hair. He followed her up the stairs of
the private jet and tried not to be too obvious about enjoying the view.

“It's just a way of getting from point A to point
B,” he said. “Normally I would take military transports. There's always a
transport going from one base to another. My boss decided I needed to get to
Atlanta in a hurry, though, so he swung—this—”

He stopped because as he climbed aboard he got his
first look at the interior of the jet. Instantly he knew it had to be
Hollingshead's personal plane.

Most of the cabin except for the cockpit had been
turned into one spacious sitting area. Four leather-covered seats faced one
another in the middle of the space. They were huge and looked extraordinarily
comfortable. Chapel, who was running on fumes at that point, saw at once that
they could convert with a button press into reclining beds.

Clearly no expense had been spared in making the
plane cozy—and elegant.

The walls of the fuselage were lined in rich, red
wood, polished to a nearly mirror finish. The overhead lights were designed to
look like tiny chandeliers. At the back of the cabin was a massive oak desk with
built-in bookshelves. Chapel took a closer look and saw the books were real.
Black elastic straps held them in so they wouldn't fall out if the plane hit any
turbulence.

Hidden speakers in the ceiling played classical
music at a low volume. The plane smelled not like recirculated air but like
leather and sandalwood.

“This is nicer than my apartment,” Julia said.
“Bigger, too.”

A narrow door beside the desk opened and a woman in
a navy uniform came out, bearing a tray with two cocktail glasses on it. “Good
evening, sir, ma'am,” she nodded, and brought the tray over to a mahogany coffee
table that sat in the middle of the four seats. “I'm Chief Petty Officer
Andrews, and I'll be looking after you tonight. Please, have a seat and buckle
yourselves in. Our flight time to Atlanta will be a little over two hours, once
we're in the air. Can I get you anything while you wait for takeoff? Magazines,
blankets, food?”

Chapel hadn't eaten all day, not since breakfast.
It was the first chance he'd had to think of it. “I could use a sandwich,” he
said.

“Certainly, Captain. I have a nice roast beef with
cheddar in the back. I'll just put that together for you. Ma'am?”

Julia looked up at Chapel like she wanted approval
to ask for something. He shrugged.

“I guess . . . I could use a salad or
something,” she said, eventually.

Chief Petty Officer Andrews smiled. “I have a
romaine salad with goat cheese and mandarin oranges. For dressing, I have a
balsamic vinaigrette, a gorgonzola, or just oil and vinegar if you prefer your
dressing on the side. Do you take croutons?”

“Um . . . yes,” Julia said. Her eyes were
wide, as if this were the most bizarre thing she'd seen all day.

Petty Officer Andrews smiled and disappeared
through her little door again.

“I made such a mistake when I went to vet school,”
Julia said, when she was gone. “I should have joined the navy. Is it always like
this?”

Chapel smiled. “Always,” he said. “In the army we
ate dirt half the time, and we used rocks for pillows. In the navy they got goat
cheese and mandarin oranges.”

IN TRANSIT: APRIL
12, T+15:37

The salad seemed to perk Julia up, though he
could see in her eyes just how tired she was. While she ate she actually smiled
at Chapel and met his eye once or twice and then turned her head away with a
little laugh. “It's funny how comforting having a good meal can be,” she
said.

“I imagine you could use a little comfort right
now,” Chapel told her.

She snorted in exuberant agreement. “I need to feel
normal, basically. I need to feel like I'm not about to be shot. And frankly, I
need a shower and a change of clothes. And a good nap in a real bed. And a
drink! Definitely a drink.”

“When we get to Atlanta, sure,” Chapel said. “Maybe
we both need that.” It had been a very long day, and it wasn't over yet. “My
instinct is to keep moving, to keep working. But if I don't get a little
downtime, I'm going to start getting fuzzy. Then I'll start making
mistakes.”

Julia met his eye directly and gave him a very warm
smile. “I know you're on a tight time frame. But I want you to promise me
something. The first time we get a chance, you have to let me show you how much
I appreciate your saving my life.”

For a moment—just a moment—Chapel thought he knew
exactly what she meant by that, and the thought made him feel very hot and
bothered. “You don't mean—”

Her eyes opened wide, and she put a hand over her
mouth. “Jeez! No. I meant you would let me buy you dinner. Or something.” She
laughed and reached over and patted his wrist, defusing the sudden tension.
“Wow, Chapel. You're blushing.”

He turned away, because he could feel the heat in
his cheeks.

“Oh, don't be embarrassed. It's cute,” Julia
said.

Nobody had called Chapel cute since he was seven
years old. It felt very strange to hear it now.

“There's something about you, Chapel. You're a
tough guy, I see that in the way you move, the lines in your face. But there's
an innocence underneath it. Interesting. It's like I can see that you really
believe in what you do. In who you are. You're not cynical about your job at
all.”

“I took an oath to protect my country,” he said. “I
take it pretty seriously.”

Julia shook her head. “I've met spies before. They
seemed to feel like having secrets made them better than everybody else.”

“The opposite is usually true,” Chapel said,
furrowing his brow. He was distinctly uncomfortable with where this conversation
was going.

Luckily Julia didn't push it any further. Though
she did say, almost under her breath, “I wish I could see you in your uniform. I
bet you look just adorable.”

Now that was one thing no one had
ever
said about him. He pretended he hadn't heard her
and went back to his sandwich.

After they finished their meal, Julia curled up in
her leather seat, covered in a thick wool blanket that looked very warm, and was
out like a light. Chief Petty Officer Andrews came out and touched a button on
the arm of Julia's chair. It reclined smoothly and without noise, so gently
Julia didn't even wake up. The chief petty officer expertly slipped a pillow
under Julia's head. She smiled at Chapel, then disappeared as silently as she'd
come.

Chapel watched Julia's body rise and fall with her
breathing for a while. He thought about how she'd held him when he rescued her
from Laughing Boy. About how good it had felt to have her body pressed up
against his. He'd felt like a hero, then.

He watched her brow wrinkle and knew she must be
dreaming.

She was beautiful. Beyond that, there was something
more to her. Real substance. She was strong and smart and kind. He hadn't met
anyone like her in a long time. He'd brought her with him to keep her safe. That
was all. She had kissed him, but she'd said she wasn't trying to start anything.
Whatever he was feeling now she probably didn't return it. How could she? He was
a man with one arm. That was enough to put anybody off. Maybe she'd just kissed
him out of pity. She'd called him cute and adorable, but those were words women
used to describe babies and kittens, not men they wanted to get to know better
in a romantic way. Weren't they?

Damn. He needed to stop thinking like that. He
needed to stop thinking about Julia as anything but an asset that needed to be
protected.

He turned his seat to face the window and watched
lights blinking on the tarmac. He had to get his mind off Julia. He grabbed his
phone and his hands-free set out of his pocket. He put the hands-free set in his
ear and forced himself to close his eyes. “Angel,” he said, “I don't know if
you're listening. I wanted to say I'm sorry.”

“Magic words,” Angel told him. “Do you have any
more of them?”

“I was letting this case get to me,” he told her,
“when I accused you of having your own agenda. That was wrong of me. You've done
nothing but help me. You've been an utter godsend. I'm starting to see that I
could never do this without you.”

“That's a start,” she said.

“This case—this operation—is like nothing I've ever
had to do before,” Chapel told her. “I'm starting to get worried. There are
three more chimeras out there. There's no way I can catch them all before they
kill someone.”

“It's looking pretty grim, I'll admit,” Angel told
him.

“And now I have Laughing Boy to worry about. He's
killing people, Angel. He's killing anyone who comes in contact with a chimera,
just in case they're infected. He was going to kill Julia.”

“I know.”

“I couldn't let that happen,” he said.

“I know. Director Hollingshead wasn't very happy
when he heard you'd brought a civilian along for the ride, of course. But I
explained everything to him and made him see it was necessary to prevent another
death.”

“You did that for me? Even after what I said?”

“I care, Chapel. I care about people, just like you
do.”

Chapel nodded to himself. He was very glad to hear
it. “So he's . . . okay with this?” He glanced over his shoulder and
saw Julia's sleeping face half covered by her blanket. She was beautiful like
that, in repose. When she wasn't angry or grief-stricken. He wondered what it
would have been like to meet her before all this. In just ordinary
circumstances. But then again, how could that have ever happened? A veterinarian
in New York and a defense intelligence analyst in Virginia would have very
little to talk about. Almost nothing in common. “He won't demand I turn her over
to the CDC?”

Angel was silent for a moment. After recent events,
Chapel worried she might not come back on the line. “She could be infected,
Chapel.”

“I know,” Chapel sighed. He'd known it from the
moment he'd found Laughing Boy inside her clinic. She had, in fact, been exposed
to the chimera, and if it so much as scratched her while they were in the back
of the hijacked cab together, she could have the virus already. “If Hollingshead
orders it, I'll bring her in. Turn her over to his doctors so they can screen
her for the virus. Treat her if necessary. But I can't just send her off to face
Laughing Boy on her own.”

“He won't order that. Even if she does have the
virus, she's probably better off with you where you can watch her and make sure
she doesn't spread it. Still—it's just going to make your job harder if you have
to babysit her at the same time.”

“I'm not so sure about that. She's proved herself
to be pretty resourceful, and she might have information I need. Answers to
questions I haven't even figured out how to ask, yet.”

“Fair enough. Hollingshead says it's okay, she can
travel with you. Just make sure she doesn't learn anything
too
sensitive, and it should be all right.”

“That's good,” Chapel said. “About Laughing
Boy—what can we do about him? If he's running around killing people, then he
must have gone rogue, right? Please tell me that Banks didn't order him to kill
Julia. Please tell me we can have him arrested and remove him from the
field.”

“I wish I could,” Angel said.

Chapel tapped at the armrest of his seat with his
good fingers. “The CIA doesn't just kill American citizens. I mean, it has, and
I suppose things happen that I don't get to hear about. But—”

“Chapel, he was authorized to do this. And the
authorization came from higher up than Banks.”

Chapel grabbed the armrest hard enough to make the
leather creak. “So he's got a license to kill? That's something from the movies.
Only the president can authorize the execution of American citizens without a
trial.”

“Higher up, I said,” Angel told him.

Chapel shivered at the thought. “Is the threat of
this virus really that high? That they would just kill people on suspicion they
might have it?”

“I don't have a lot of information on it. But
clearly someone thinks so,” Angel told him. “This is way beyond top secret
stuff. What we do know, and this from confidential sources, is that the disease
caused by the virus is incurable and almost impossible to detect until it's way
too late to do anything.”