The Gemini Virus Read Online Free PDF Page B

back to her trademark I’m-so-damn-bored posture—chin in hand, lips tight, and the tiniest trace of resentment in the eyes. He smiled again and decided to let her be. Maybe the song would seep through her defenses, act as a kind of antidote. Music had the power to bring warmth and joy and relief to a troubled soul, he knew, and Cara Porter was certainly burdened with a troubled soul. One look at her gave that away—the goth makeup and jewelry, the perpetual scowl, the hunched shoulders. Beck had taken a huge chance on her. When she ended up on his doorstep with a freshly minted master’s degree in one hand and a résumé in the other, he thought someone down the line had made a mistake. Then he caught a sense of the real person behind the armor and thought he detected much more. In time, he came to realize he had been correct. When she was working, an alternative persona—the one, Beck thought, represented the true individual—emerged. The professional Cara Porter was inspired, intuitive, and boundlessly compassionate. Their exchanges were more substantial and mature. And her sensitivity, usually kept so carefully guarded, was remarkable. From human patients to laboratory animals, she treated all living things with uncommon kindness and respect. This one, Beck often thought, has the seeds of greatness. Now, if we can just get them growing.… He came to think of her as a surrogate daughter, although he never told her this for reasons of his own.
    “I’m not saying everything you listen to is bad,” he said. “For example, that Guns N’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy, is pretty good.”
    “It’s excellent.”
    “I agree. I do play it when you’re not around, you know. I’m not a total dork.”
    “Just mostly.”
    He nodded. “Yes, just mos—”
    An iPhone trilled.
    “Is that yours or mine?” she asked.
    Beck waited until it called out again. The ringtone was the first few bars of “On and On” by Stephen Bishop. “It’s a good melody—must be mine.”
    She shot him a look as he grinned and drew the slender device from his front pocket. He also thumbed down the volume via the button on the steering wheel, and his beloved “lightweight”’70s music disappeared.
    “It’s the boss,” he said, looking at the caller ID. Then he put it on speaker. “Hello, there.”
    “Michael?”
    “Yes?”
    “I can barely hear you.”
    “We’re in the rental car right now with the top down. Hang on a second.”
    He pulled to the shoulder and engaged the roof. It came up like a giant hand in a monster movie. Once it was in place, he set the phone on the dashboard.
    “Better?”
    “Yes. Listen, where are the two of you?”
    “On I-91, heading back from the conference.”
    He could sense she was stressed even beyond what was customary for her. After working together for eleven years—the first nine when she was drifting up through the CDC’s ranks, and the last two after she was elevated to the top role—there wasn’t much he didn’t know about her. Sheila Abbott was the type who lived for stress, ate it in handfuls. The kind, it seemed to Beck, who followed the motto, ‘There’s something wrong if there’s nothing wrong.’
    “What’s up?”
    “I need you in northern New Jersey as quickly as possible.”
    Beck checked his rearview mirror, then eased onto the road again to search for the first available U-turn.
    “Something’s happening, I assume?”
    “Seven deaths, all in the town of Ramsey. Two of the dead are police officers, so the news media already has it and is running with it.”
    Beck shivered. Could a problem exist that wasn’t made forty times worse because of the media’s love for scaring the hell out of everyone?
    “Well, that should help keep things under control.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “What do we know so far?”
    “The victims were covered with large pustules from head to toe and exhibited symptoms of extreme delirium. It also appears they had extensive subcutaneous