Free The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) by Evan Ronan

I’ve done. You can let me in so I’m playing with a full deck, or I’m walking and I’ll do it myself. What’s it going to be?”
    Pater went back to the desk and sat on the corner. “There is usually an environmental trigger that causes MPIs. People in a unique setting, be it a school or an office, believe they’ve been exposed to something, either a germ or a poison. Someone begins to experience real symptoms. Others observe this and react, beginning to experience these same, very real symptoms.”
    “I don’t think you can say usually. Nobody understands the illness and it seems to be a last resort diagnosis. If they don’t think it’s anything else, they call it MPI.”
    I stood. My legs felt rubbery.
    I said, “Most often the looming presence of extraordinary, systemic anxiety across a group is enough to trigger symptoms.”
    Pater smirked. “So what’s causing this one?”
    “You talk like you’ve ruled out an organic cause. How do we know it’s not something in the environment?”
    Pater shook his head no. “We don’t. This is speculation.”
    “In that case, I don’t know that I care. The trigger won’t help me find Megan.”
    “But the trigger—”
    I cut him off. “Won’t help us predict the symptoms or attendant behavior in any way. The girls in Africa suffered from anxiety and nerves due to political upheaval and social turmoil. So they started laughing. You can ID cause and effect after the fact but foresight is blind. And besides, we know what the symptoms are already.”
    Pater held out a palm. “If we remove the trigger, the symptoms might resolve quickly and Megan will return to her old self. We won’t need to find her.”
    “Yeah, sounds peachy, but I’ll leave that to you guys, the experts. It’s likely something you can’t fix, like the lunacy of the current North Korean leadership. In the meantime I’m going to look for Megan in case that doesn’t work out for you.”
    Pater grew serious. “There are more people at stake than Megan here, Eddie.”
    “I’m not the man for that job, Pater. I’m the man for the job I’m on. I’d love to save the world but I can only do it one person at a time. I have no background in psychology, epidemiology, sociology, predictive or regressive modeling. You don’t put a kicker on the O-line.”
    Pater ignored what I’d just said. “Assuming worst case scenario, we think Patient Zero became Patient Zero three weeks ago. Our predictive modeling tells us we’re overdue for the spike. We’re headed for a major event, I’d say sometime in the next couple of days.”
    “You talk like you know it’s going to happen here. But Megan could be anywhere by now.”
    He nodded. “A reasonable assumption. But we are dealing with an unreasonable situation. We have reason to believe that Megan and her companions cannot leave this town.”
    “Why?”
    Pater said nothing.
    I looked at Riehl. “Why do you think they don’t leave town?”
    Riehl just stared back at me.
    I shrugged. “Okay, don’t tell me. That just means I should get back to work ASAP. So are you going to help?”
    Patterson narrowed his eyes and studied me. “There’s one more thing about the model, Eddie. All recorded MPIs come with a variety of symptoms, some of which don’t manifest until much later in the disease process. We may not have seen the worst yet.”
    “So we use a two-pronged approach,” I said. “You look for the trigger, I look for Megan. Everybody’s happy, at the end of the day we can all sign each other’s yearbooks.”
    “I agree a two-pronged approach would be for the best.”
    I nodded at Riehl. “Great. I’ll take Riehl then. We’ll find Megan before you find the trigger.”
    Riehl gave me a flip smile and exchanged a look with his boss.
    Pater said, “You still haven’t explained how you’re going to find Megan. And I need Riehl to continue with the work I’ve already assigned him.”
    “Which is?”
    He didn’t answer. “Manetti