Free What Lies Behind by J. T. Ellison Page B

they’d be cleared before he started burning up the wires.
    She watched the HAZMAT team move about, smelled the intense scent of rain coming. Worried, but just a little, about whether she’d been exposed to something horrible. The refrigerator had been empty of wine and unplugged, so the pathogens weren’t at the right temperature, nor were they specially packaged. It was almost as if Cattafi had been working on something, been interrupted and hurriedly shut the pathogens away in the refrigerator. Forgotten to plug it in.
    Or someone had purposely unplugged it.
    When and for how long it had been turned off was anyone’s guess—it had its own power source, so they’d have to track all that down, too.
    She hadn’t touched anything, and all the discs and vials she’d seen looked like they’d been properly handled and were sealed, except for the one that was cracked, leaking and smelling awful. But one never knew. A list of hemorrhagic diseases ran through her mind, countdowns, worried doctors, isolation chambers, right into visions of blood gushing from various orifices, leaking from fissures cracking open in her porcelain skin, until she shook her head to physically stop the thoughts.
    There was nothing to be done right now. Everyone who’d come in contact with Cattafi for the past few weeks would have to be examined, all the crime scene investigators tested. This was a mess of epic proportion.
    The autopsy of Amanda Souleyret was postponed, her body in isolation, until they knew more about what was happening. There was no sense infecting the morgue if it could be avoided.
    She soothed herself with a single thought—if Cattafi had been symptomatic, they’d have already heard from the hospital. Went back to worrying about a more immediate problem.
    The pack of vials and discs had seemed undisturbed, but she’d noticed there was a single spot in the tray of vials that was empty. She hoped like hell there wasn’t something missing, something the killer had taken.
    And with that thought, the scene began to make more sense.
    She was wrong. There was nothing familiar here. Cattafi had been targeted because someone knew about his little lab.
    She watched the HAZMAT team work, moving slowly, like they were underwater. Felt a bit like she was underwater herself, isolated and alone, though Fletcher was with her.
    “You okay?” she asked him.
    “Mmm-hmm. Annoyed more than anything.”
    “This is turning into something more than it first seemed.”
    He gave her a sharp glance. “With you, it always does.” But there was humor in his voice. “Entertain me. I’m bored.”
    “You’re joking, right? What do you want me to do, tell you a bedtime story?”
    “While that has its own compelling set of responses, I was thinking more along the lines of what sort of work Amanda Souleyret might be doing that’s drawn the attention of the FBI.”
    “Oh, it’s speculation you want. I’m good at that.” She settled herself more comfortably on the table they’d been given to sit on. “All right. You’ll find out soon enough. Souleyret is undercover FBI.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. She was working for a company called Helix.”
    “Explain.”
    “Helix is a huge European firm with offices in several countries that run all kinds of private investigations, from industrial espionage to pharmaceutical investigations. They also work on pharmaceutical espionage. Trademark infringements, ripping off formularies, passing off generics as the real thing. There’s a more...physical component to what they do, as well. An entire division of close protection, K and R—kidnap and ransom—the whole gamut. It’s like what Xander and his buddy are doing, only on a much bigger scale.”
    “Like the Pinkertons?”
    She smiled, imagining Xander and Chalk in suits and fedoras. “Something like that. Perhaps a little less gunplay, a little more computer-driven research. But yes. They’re essentially detectives, and protectors of the