“Because?” Diesel asked.
“Because her late husband didn’t leave her enough funds to live the way she wants and the marriage contract includes a generous stipend for Ria’s mother after the nuptials.”
An alarm blared to life.
“Now what?” Cam wondered at his capacity to take in more bad news.
“That’s the medical alarm, isn’t it?” Axel asked no one in particular.
Gage looked at his communication device and spat out a colorful swear word. To his brothers, he said, “Someone opened a vent they shouldn’t have.”
Diesel asked, “Is the virus loose in the way station?”
He looked up, his expression miserable. “No. Worse.”
“What’s worse than that?”
“The med lab where the patients have been quarantined was vented to the outside of the station, right next to the gas pumps.”
Nova, Diesel’s assistant, burst into the reception area. Her flushed cheeks and wild eyes said she’d sprinted all the way down from Diesel’s upstairs office at the back of the truck stop’s convenience store. “Come quick!” Between gasps, she said, “Upstairs. The humans.” Their eyes followed her pointing finger to the truck stop above them.
A sickening feeling shot to Cam’s belly. “What about the humans upstairs?”
“They are sick or something.”
“Sick?”No!“What kind of sick?” Cam started moving toward the nearest exit up to ground level, his brothers right behind him.
“Don’t know. I think it might be bad.” Nova, hand on her chest as she labored to breathe, kept pace. “They’re dropping like flies in the parking lot and out by the gas pumps.”
She sounded like she was about to cry.
Grimly, Gage said, “You all go ahead. I need to go back and round up a medical team. If there’s any chance we can help the humans, we’ll need to act fast.”
“Do it,” Diesel said.
Cam took the stairs two at a time. If the accidental venting had spread the mysterious illness to the earthlings and it was so virulent it affected them almost instantaneously, this problem was catastrophic on a level he wasn’t sure the way station could recover from.
Chapter Sixteen
“Five are down that I saw,” Nova reported as they reached ground level and hurried to the front of the convenience store. “A car drove in as four people hit the ground. The driver jumped out to help and immediately got taken down by whatever affected the other humans. He must have forgotten to put the car in Park, because it rolled and took out several stacks of a brand-new shipment at Satellite Tire. Snow tires rolled everywhere, including onto the highway…”
Cam stopped short of the door and stared outside. A disturbing stillness characterized the chaotic scene. Black rubber circles dotted the area. A newer model car, engine still running, driver’s door ajar, butted up against a diminished stack of tires beside Satellite Tire. A man lay facedown between the pumps and Satellite Tire, and Cam guessed he was the driver who’d tried to help. An SUV and a compact, gas nozzles stuck in the tanks, waited beside the pumps. A woman in capris and a halter top slumped beside the compact’s front end, head to chest and squeegee still held in one hand. Three other humans could be seen from where he stood.
He hoped they were only unconscious.
Cam reached for the door. Diesel pulled him back. “What are you doing?”
“Going outside.”
“What if you go down, too?”
“Then you’ll know whatever it is affects Alphas, too.”
“No.”
“No?”
