Moments later, her heart thundering and her breath panting out, she tried to back away from the intimacy and return to playfulness, even as her eyelids began to droop. “I guess you won, right?” she murmured sleepily.
The glimmer in his eyes somehow darkened even further. “Not yet, no. But I fully intend to.”
Chapter Nine
Early morning, after dropping Nora off at her temporary CDC office, Deke finished searching Zach Barter’s makeshift hospital room. The plastic gloves covering Deke’s hands pulled at his skin, and he fought the urge to rip them off.
Instead, he gingerly grabbed a leather-bound book from the night table to open it. Genius boy kept a diary, and he’d obviously left the journal to be found.
Deke sighed. He had an ex-wife who hadn’t quite realized her importance in his life, a possible bacteria from outer space that was killing people, a dead president, a weak vice president, and a stalker he needed to stop but not kill. To think that just the week before he’d been trying to mellow out his life.
Taking a deep breath, he flipped through the beginning pages of Zach’s writing, noting equations, theories, and quotations about Einstein. Every once in a while, personal notes about Zach having a crush or wanting to ask a girl out but lacking the courage filled the pages.
Deke turned to the last couple of days. Pencil drawing after pencil drawing of Nora. At her desk, staring dreamily into space, nude on a bed.
Zach had gotten her tits wrong. They were rounder at the base.
The fire of his ancestors blazed through Deke’s chest. He continued to read as Zach detailed how much he hated his former self for being such a wimp. The last entry stole Deke’s breath.
I’m finally free. No worries, no concerns. How could I have been so fucking weak? So unwilling to take what I want? This fever created a god. I’ll take what I crave, and tonight I start with Nora. That bitch has ignored me long enough.
HEY SCOTTISH DICKHEAD: I put this in big letters so you’d see it, you fucking idiot. You might be a soldier, and you might have fucked her, but I’m smarter than you. I’ll get her, and she’ll be mine. You lost her.
Deke shut the journal. Fury made his hands shake. Scorpius had taken a nice guy and turned him sociopathic. Did the bacteria work harder, stronger, on already nice people? Impossible.
Zach had even left him a note, so focused was he on Nora.
Slowly, deliberately, Deke withdrew his phone and called his men. “I want Barter found and right now.” The fact that Zach had tried to kidnap Nora was just the beginning.
Obviously Zach’s brain scans hadn’t told the whole truth. Or any truth, really. Deke left the room and endured the many decontamination steps before emerging into clean air. He jogged for the stairwell, his mind focused, his hands calm. Training dictated he drop into a mode of thought ready for action, and he allowed himself to do just that. The last thing he wanted to do was scare Nora off now, but every instinct he possessed bellowed she was in danger.
The real kind.
He’d stand between her and any threat, whether she liked it or not. This danger to Nora had forced the soldier, the warrior, deep down inside him to the surface again. To face the light of day.
He couldn’t help but wonder if the return had always been inevitable.
Hours after Deke had rocked her world in a way that left her both satisfied and incredibly uneasy, and hours after not enough sleep, Nora worked with her best friend handling test tubes, meteorites, and a piece of brain matter from a dead student. Finally all of the supplies had arrived. For now, as she worked, special lights illuminated the space, and Lynne looked more like a Martian in the white protective suit than an expert in biological contaminants.
“Any news on Zach?” Lynne asked, dropping blue liquid on a slide.
“No.” Nora stretched her back and slipped a slide under her microscope. “Everyone is looking, but so far, nothing.”
Lynne nodded. “We’ll find him, and we’ll cure him.”
Hopefully. “I know.” Nora wrinkled her nose in the helmet. “How’s Bobbi doing?”
Lynne snorted. “Not great. I hadn’t realized the depth of her quick crush. She’s a maniac on social media right now trying to find Zach. It’ll probably work, too.”
Good. “Whatever works. So long as we get him back.” Nora adjusted the device. “We’ve had twenty more cases reported throughout the country since last night.”
“I know.” Lynne shook her head. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Yes,” Nora said.
“Speaking of crushes, with all the danger, we haven’t had a time to talk, just the two of us. The Scot is every bit as sexy as I expected,” Lynne said through the headset in her suit.
Nora rolled her eyes and leaned closer to peer through the microscope lens. “You’re looking for a biological killer. Worry about my love life later.”
