“Yeah,” she said so gently it hurt.
Recently, he’d felt so hollowed out, petrified almost. Only now did he realize his insides were teeming with the things he’d seen. Memories that ate at his soul like gangrene.
He shut his eyes and searched for something else to give her. Anything.
A random picture popped into his mind. “You ever see Chronos Corp headquarters?”
Leo might have shaken her head no. If so, he couldn’t make out the movement.
“It’s this massive half castle, half bunker, built into a mountain, blended into the boulders and forest. And at the bottom, there’s this, I don’t know, like big, old-fashioned mansion, commissioned by some guy who wanted to rival the Rockefellers, I heard. Surreal. Anyway, there’s a top-secret lab in there. Subbasement level five. Highest security I’ve ever seen in my life.” He coughed out a humorless sound. “Not that there’d have been anything to find when I went there.”
“How’d Turner get the virus out? How’d he steal it?”
He smiled. Finally something he could hold on to. “He didn’t.”
Her exhalation puffed loudly between them. “He destroyed it?”
“All but one sample.”
“Why not destroy it all, if it’s so devastating?”
He sighed, shut his eyes, and thought of all the people who’d be alive if things had been different. “It’s deadly. To everything.” He inhaled, let the cold, clean air burn his sinuses and clear out his lungs. “Including cancer, Leo. Turner showed me photos of documents. The Frondvirus could literally obliterate cancer from the surface of the planet.”
“Were they doing that?” Her voice was laced with a quiet excitement. “Working on that?”
“No. They’d just been given the new directive: no more cancer work.”
“So, instead of saving lives, they decided to start taking them.”
“Exactly. The virus was too important to the government. There were threats, insinuations. People started dying.”
“People? Were researchers getting contaminated?”
“No. They were dying mysteriously.” He couldn’t help the raw edge to his voice. “Dissenters were put down. Like dogs.”
“Turner got scared.”
“They were all scared. Every person who worked in that facility was slated to die.Turnergot angry.”
“So what did he do with it?” When he didn’t answer, she pushed harder. “Did he take it or not?”
He puffed out a loud breath, shook his head, and looked at her. “Shit, Leo… If they find out about this…”
“What? What is it?”
“It’s still there.”
“There?”
“The virus is in the facility. He never took it out. He hid it. And I’m the only one who knows where.”
“Whoa.” After a few quiet seconds, she shifted closer, talking fast. “It’s still there? In that building you described? The Chronos headquarters in West—”
“They wouldn’t be after me if they’d found it, would they?” He stood abruptly, dislodging Bo and disturbing the quiet around them. “I’ll get the blankets. It’s cold out here.”
It was colder in the tent. And lonely.
The second he returned to her side, the desolate feeling fell off, despite the gaping dark around them, the endless distance.Thisshould be the lonely, echoing place, but it wasn’t—not with her pressed against his side and Bo covering their feet.
