Germ

She disconnected and set the phone back on the bedside table. She had taken two steps toward the bathroom when it rang again. She picked it up and looked at the caller ID. Private number. Bonsai or Molland again. She pushed the talk button.

"This is Julia."

"We need to talk."

"Who is this?"

"Dr. Parker. Remember? We need to talk," he repeated.

"Parker?" She'd forgotten about leaving her number with him. "What do you mean, we need to talk?"

"Somebody tried to kill me last night. Twice."

"What? Who? No, wait—" Her head was spinning now. She expected Rod Serling to step through the door, calmly introducing the Twilight Zone episode her life had become. Meet Julia Matheson. Lonely federal agent. Her job requires her to think in terms of black and white, in logic and fact. But she's about to discover a place where logic and fact have no meaning. A place called .. . the Twilight Zone.

She said, "Are you where I can call you back in three minutes?"

"A pay phone."

"Give me the number." She memorized it. "Okay, three minutes."

Julia hung up, dug into her purse for coins, and walked in her stocking feet to the pay phone outside the hotel's management office. She dialed the number and dropped in the coins. When Parker answered, she said, "All right, who tried to kill you?"

"Three different people. One of them had a badge."

"A federal agent?"

"A local cop, a sheriff's deputy, I think. Another was a big guy, had a gun with a laser—"

"A gauntlet?"

After a moment, he said, "I didn't see anything like that. But he was fast and moved better than you'd think for a man that size."

"Glasses?"

"Yeah . . . thick black frames. You know this guy?"

"He attacked me last night too. He died in a shootout with the cops."

Parker made a noise that might have been a gasp or murmured profanity. She watched through the office's front window as an old man came out from a back room absently rubbing his chest under a stained T-shirt. He spotted Julia and waved.

Parker said, "So? Can we meet?"

"Me, as a cop?"

"No, not really. Maybe . . . Not officially. I don't know."

She laughed. "I think I know what you mean."

"Just you. No other agents, no cops, no surveillance."

"Just me."

"Okay. Meet us at the Appalachian Cafe on Market Street in Knoxville at—"

"Whoa, whoa. Knoxville?"

"There or nowhere."

"You're afraid of being in Chattanooga?"

"You're not?"

"I'm shaking in my socks. Who's 'we'?"

"My brother. He was with me last night. Noon?"

"Noon it is. Appalachian Cafe." She hung up.

A dozen thoughts tripped over themselves for her attention: the stolen body, the meeting with Parker, his attempted murder, Molland expecting her tomorrow morning . . . She squeezed her eyes shut and willed them all away. Not now, not now. Mentally, she constructed an agenda: shower (yes, long and hot. . . okay, not so long; Knoxville is a two-hour drive), enter the new data into her case journal (skip that, no time), check out of the motel (can't stay anyplace too long), hop a cab to a car rental company to replace her agency car, shoot up to Knoxville.

She went back to her room, stripped off her clothes, and laid them out on the bed. She added Call Mom to her list. Then she stepped into the steaming jets of the shower and let the pounding water wash away her concerns, if only for a short while.

She found a different phone booth to call home. Her

mother sounded tired, but she claimed to be mobile. She insisted she didn't need help. The next call Julia made was to Homecare, the home health agency. The company had a check-in service; a nurse would swing by the duplex every four hours to make sure everything was as it should be. That ought to drive her mom crazy.

thirty-five

Gregor knocked on the observation window until

Karl Litt turned from a biosafety cabinet. His arms were pushed into gloved ports that allowed access to the cabinet's sensitive contents. Gregor motioned and Litt nodded, pulled his arms out, and spoke to a young man standing beside him. A moment later, the laboratory door opened and Litt stepped through.

"A lead on Parker and the Matheson woman," Gregor said as Litt stripped off surgical gloves and smock and dropped them into a bin.

"Can we count on it?"

"Coffee?"

The compound's break room always featured a half pot of vile black sludge. Litt loved the stuff.