Free Kill Shot by Liliana Hart

who’s your top pick?” Jack asked.
    “The deeper level background checks just
finished, and it looks like a Dr. Allen Standridge quietly resigned
from MIT three years ago after a couple of graduate students
complained they saw him experimenting on human test subjects
without the people’s knowledge. It was never proven since it was
their word against his, and Dr. Standridge insisted the students
were just holding a grudge because he’d rejected their theses. But
it made the MIT board nervous enough to ask for his early
retirement and resignation.”
    “And what’s Dr. Standridge been up to for
the past couple of years?” Jack asked.
    “That’s the million-dollar question. He’s
disappeared, or at least he’s hidden himself well enough that my
limited tracking abilities can’t find him. I couldn’t find a death
certificate or an obituary. And his name’s not attached to any new
project. I figured I’d turn this over to Ethan. He’ll be able to
dig deeper.”
    Ethan followed Jack into the room, his
glasses skewed on his face and his hair mussed. “Rad. I like spying
on other people. You find out the damndest things. They’re
strange.”
    Jack snorted out a laugh, and Grace buried
her face in the computer so Ethan wouldn’t see her smile. God,
everything about this mission felt odd to her. She’d cut herself
off so completely for the last two years that being around anyone
was a culture shock. Guilt ate at her. She shouldn’t be smiling and
enjoying the excitement of starting a new team mission while her
daughter was buried in the ground back in Virginia. Not while her
murder was still unavenged and the monster who had killed her was
roaming free.
    Her smile disappeared, and she watched Ethan
pull a can of soda from the fridge and pop the top, oblivious to
their amusement or anything else. She and Jack had been rotating
the room, checking their positions in the windows and watching for
anyone outside who happened to pass by the building more than once
or seem too interested. They’d been doing the things they’d been
trained to do to stay alive. But Ethan just existed in his own
world. He’d make a terrible field agent, and she hoped to God they
didn’t get him killed. She had enough blood on her hands.
    “What are you guys staring at?” Ethan asked,
his drink to his lips. Grace looked at Jack and she could tell he’d
just had the same thought. Ethan was either going to be a great
help or a huge hindrance. Only time would tell.
    A hard knock on the apartment door kept them
from having to answer Ethan’s question. Gabe came into the room,
his iPad cradled under his arm and his phone in the other hand.
    “We’ve got another infection site. It’s the
same MO,” he said, placing his things on the coffee table before
looking at Grace.
    The tension in the room skyrocketed, and she
broke his gaze, returning her attention to the computer screen. She
heard Jack mumble something profane under his breath, and Ethan, as
unworldly as he was, asked, “What’s going on?”
    Gabe headed into the kitchen and came back
with a cup of coffee. He took a sip and grimaced, and Grace felt a
small satisfaction at his pained look.
    “Christ, Grace, do you always have to boil
it to death?” Gabe went back into the kitchen and poured milk into
the mug.
    Jack broke the tension by picking up Gabe’s
iPad and scrolling through the pictures of the new infection site
he had stored on it. “This site isn’t wiped clean like the others.
They didn’t finish the job.”
    “No,” Gabe said. “I’ve been monitoring the
World Health Organization’s communications since Bennett sent me
that package a couple of weeks ago. I got a hit about five a.m.
from a panicked caller in central Mexico that a small native tribe
was showing signs of an unknown virus. There are more than a
hundred dead, but they’re at the seventy-two hour mark, and there
are still survivors.”
    “Maybe it really is an isolated epidemic,”
Grace