Thanks for reading and big thanks to my proof reader, GDA...without whom my vague medical details would be even more vague. ;)

Chapter 13

Winnipeg, Canada

They were back in the first room. Exactly in the same positions as the night before.

Two nurses had come in earlier to draw blood from them. Left them a tray of food and some newspapers to read.

Karl was lying on the bed and Cal was staring into the adjacent room, through the glass window. Malin Fredriksen's bed was gone and Brandon was there in her place. He was the only one of the four who was still awake and alert.

There were visitors in the room now. Fully masked and gloved and suited up and limited to a few minutes a day, but visitors were allowed nonetheless. There was an elderly couple standing next to the Norwegian woman's boyfriend. Cal had no idea what his name was.

There were three people with Brandon.

But no one was there to see Eleanor or Gillian. Both of whom were sleeping.

Neither he nor Karl were allowed in the room. Not while they were still in quarantine.

The scene before him made Lightman realize he had to find and call Foster's parents. Much as he kept denying it, it was time to acknowledge that she might not make it. Three people had contacted this illness. Three people were dead. Those were some seriously lousy odds.

From the corner of his eyes, he saw Karl answering his cell phone.

Cal caught snippets of the conversation while his back was turned to him.

"Tomorrow? The Canadian authorities have agreed to it?"

"I'm not sure I agree...moving her, it's risky in her condition. It's not in her best interest..."

Cal frowned. What the hell was he talking about?

"What about the media? Haven't they made it clear how many victims there are? Won't they follow up?"

He heard Karl Bennett sigh. "Yeah...no. I'm fine so far. Another fourteen hours or so and I should be in the clear. If that's the decision, yes, sir, I understand."

"Who's moving who?" Cal asked.

Karl put down the phone. "I know there's no privacy here, but do you mind? Do you have any manners? At all?"

"No. None."

Karl shook his head in disgust. "Twenty-four more hours, Doctor Lightman. I'm counting them."

"Then what? You're not moving your wife. How could you in her condition? And where the hell to? Who would let you considering how contagious this thing is?"

Doctor Bennett was tight-lipped. "I have nothing to say to you." He walked over to the window and Cal thought he saw genuine concern when Karl's gaze drifted to Eleanor lying on the other side.

"How come no one's come to see Eleanor?" Cal asked him. If the relatives of Malin Fredriksen and her boyfriend had managed to fly in from Norway, how come no one had managed to make the trip up from the US for Eleanor Bennett and her quarantined husband?

Granted, Karl could be asking him the same thing about him and Gillian.

Cal's cell phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. He answered the call only to hear a stranger's voice at the other end.

"Dr. Lightman?"

"Yeah?"

"Where the hell have you been? Haven't you received any of my messages?"

"Who is this?"

"Dr. Philips with the APA! The man who confirmed your participation as a panel speaker at the APA conference. The panel that you missed two days ago with not a word of explanation!"

Cal winced. The APA conference. The speech he was supposed to give there to promote his book. The handsome appearance fee they were paying him for it.

He'd all but forgotten it. Could barely bring himself to care about it anymore.

"I was on the train," he explained. "The one that should have gotten into Winnipeg two days ago."

"The Ebola train? You were on the Ebola train?"

Cal cringed when he heard the name. "Yeah...that one. There was no phone service on the train to let you know."

"I see."

"I'm fine, by the way. Thanks for asking."

"Doctor Lightman...your absence, it put us in a difficult position."

"I'll pay back the advance."

He ended the call before he had a chance to hear what the man's response was. He should've cared. Should've probably even mustered an apology.

Instead, he stared at the window into the next room. There was a masked doctor tending to Gillian. Her nose was bleeding slightly and she looked half-awake. She was clearly uncomfortable and pain was the only thing he caught on her face.

At least she was still maintaining her oxygen levels. Cal noticed that Eleanor had an oxygen mask permanently strapped to her face now.

What did a speech about his crap book matter when Gillian was a few feet away from him, fighting to live? While he stood on the other side of a glass wall, watching and waiting. He'd never felt so utterly useless before.

Life was unfair, Cal knew that. But this was a whole other level of unfair.

Cal clenched his fist. "Stop it..."

He didn't do self-pity and he wasn't about to start now. So he might be helpless as far as Gillian was concerned. But there were things he could do. Things he had to do. Even if he couldn't do them himself.

Cal pulled himself away from the window, grabbed his cell phone, stepped into the washroom cubicle and turned on the water, after closing the door behind him.

He didn't need Karl Bennett listening to this conversation.

Cal scrolled down to a number that was still one of his contacts but that he hadn't called in over two years.

He called the number, hoping it still belonged to her.

Her voice answered on the third ring.

"Torres?"

"Doctor Lightman?" The shock in her voice was obvious. They hadn't parted on good terms and he was lousy at staying in touch, so Cal didn't blame her. But the truth was, he'd been more than just her employer once. He'd been her mentor and while he'd never voiced it aloud, he'd been proud of her more often than not.

Cal also knew that after they went bankrupt, she'd made another effort to get the position at the FBI that she'd turned down during those final months at the Lightman Group.

Ria Torres didn't know, but Cal had called the FBI back then. Made it quite clear to them that it would be their loss if they chose not to extend their offer to her.

He heard she started her job with the FBI a few weeks later. The FBI might not have liked him, but they didn't doubt his skills.

That could be a gift to him now. It meant Ria Torres had the resources that he needed at her fingertips.

"I'm in a bit of a bind, Torres. I need your help."

"My help?"

"Have you been watching the news lately? Have you heard about this train in Canada that was struck by this virus?"

"The Ebola Train?"

"Yeah...that's the one. I was on it and they've put me into quarantine in Winnipeg."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. But I need your help with some things."

"What were you doing on that train?"

"Torres, listen to me..."

"I can barely hear you, what's that noise?"

"The tap is running."

"Can you turn it off?"

"No. Look, I need you to find out whatever you can about a Karl Bennett. Karl with a k, and his wife Eleanor. They're both American doctors. I don't know where from but I need you to find out everything you can about them."

"Doctor Lightman..."

"I also need a contact number for Foster's parents."

"What?" He could hear the irritation in her voice even in that one-short syllable.

"This is really important."

"I know this might come as a surprise to you...but I don't work for you anymore!"

"I know, I know...you're with the FBI now. Home-grown terror cell detection, that's your current specialty isn't it?"

"How'd you know?" Genuine surprise.

"Even after our kids go their own ways, we still keep an eye on them."

"Funny."

"Torres...can you just do this for me?"

"You have no idea how busy I am right now..."

"Look, Foster's fighting for her life in the room next to me. I need some help here. Please."

"What?" Her voice dropped an octave. "Foster was on the train with you?"

"She came down with the virus."

"Oh my god...is she going to be okay?"

"I don't know. But whatever you find might help her."

"Why didn't you say so? Of course...I'll get it as soon as I can. Whatever you need."

Cal exhaled, a half-smile on his lips. He should have said as much from the start. Maybe his ex-employees wouldn't drop everything to move mountains for him. But they'd do it for her.

"Thanks, Torres."

Later

Karl Bennett was speaking to one of the hospital doctors when Cal's phone rang. It was Ria Torres.

Running into the bathroom with the phone would've been too obvious, so he stayed in the same room as the other two men, hoping they were too focused on their own conversation to pay any attention to his.

"What'd you find out?"

"I found three Carl Bennetts that are or were members of the AMA. One's a seventy year general practitioner from Montana. He just retired."

"Can't be...who else?"

"There's a cardio-thoracic surgeon who works at St. Joseph's in Atlanta. I even dug up a photo. Big, African-American..."

"No...not him. Who's the third?"

"A Carl Ethan Bennett. Just opened a plastic surgery practice in Manhattan."

"Did you get a photo of him too?"

"Yeah. Blonde hair, skinny and short. By the way, none of them spell their name with a k. And I couldn't find any practising physician by the name of Eleanor Bennett."

"None of these fit, Torres." Cal stared at Karl Bennett, or whoever the hell he was, talking to the Canadian doctor. There was worry on his face as they discussed Eleanor's condition.

"Is it possible you have the name wrong?"

"Yeah..." He wondered what else he had wrong.

"I got phone numbers for Foster's parents too. Do you want to take them down?"

"Yeah...give them to me."

Cal entered the numbers she dictated into his phone.

"How is she doing?"

"Not good."

There was a pause on the other end. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Yeah...answer the phone and help me out when I call you again. I will call you again."

"Okay."

"Thanks, Torres."

He hung up the phone before she had a chance to reply.

The doctor walked towards Cal now for his daily update.

"Good news, Dr. Lightman. We still haven't found any traces of the virus in your blood."

He didn't care. "How's Foster?"

The doctor paused. Weighing his words as people were prone to doing when they wanted to limit the impact of what they had to say. Softening the blow.

Cal hated it. He liked his truth straight up.

"I won't lie to you."

"Good. I don't advise it."

"I'm not going to tell you that we're...optimistic. She's been receiving extensive supportive therapy these last 24-hours, to combat the severity of her symptoms, and yet she's shown virtually no improvement. If anything her symptoms have worsened. We've barely been able to bring down her temperature."

Cal felt as though he'd been punched in the gut.

"That doesn't mean we're giving up," the doctor assured him. "Quite the contrary. Because we don't know yet what kind of VHF we're dealing it means we're using various treatments. We've started Doctor Foster on a course of Ribavirin which has shown effectiveness in treating patients with Lassa Fever."

"So you're saying she's a guinea pig."

The doctor bristled at the suggestion. Cal knew he had the ability to put everyone on the defensive. At the same time he could hear Gillian's exasperated voice in his head.

"Is it really necessary to antagonize everyone in the room? All the time?"

"No, I'm saying we're pulling out all stops. Trying everything."

Cal bit his tongue. "Thank you." The last thing he needed was to piss off the people who held her life in their hands.

The doctor's face softened. "It goes without saying Dr. Lightman."

Later

He'd made several other calls that day. On the cell phone he wasn't supposed to use in his room. Two to his daughter who'd picked up right away and done a lousy job of hiding the fear in her voice.

One call each to Gillian's mother and father. He didn't catch either of them in person. Instead, he left urgent messages. Urgent enough that he was genuinely surprised that the day had come and gone and he hadn't heard back from either of them yet.

There'd been a call to Zoe too. Letting her know he was sorry for worrying their daughter. And her. That he was behaving, in spite of his confinement.

He'd called Gillian's cell too. Not because he'd finally lost his mind and imagined her picking up. But because he suddenly needed a reminder of what she sounded like when she was healthy and full of life. Even if her voice came in the form of a recording that sounded too bloody professional for his taste.

That night Cal waited until Karl Bennett fell asleep. Waited longer than that, really.

It wasn't until he heard him snoring softly in the bed across from him, that Cal grabbed his cell phone and quietly made his way across the room to the closet where their new clothing hung. Courtesy of the Canadian government.

Cal opened the door slowly, barely seeing it move in the darkness. His fingers groped for Bennett's jacket and the wallet that was inside it.

Noiselessly, he closed the closet door and took his loot to the bathroom, where he turned on the lights.

Cal went through its sparse contents. Two hundred and twenty-three dollars in US cash. Eight-five in Canadian.

A couple of ID cards that somehow didn't look right.

Then he spotted a tiny slit that looked like it marked the opening of another pocket. Cal clumsily tried to wedge it open. He almost gave up when he caught the glimpse of a plastic edge.

It looked as though a credit card might've been wedged into that pocket.

He fiddled with it until finally his nails caught a hold of it and then he grabbed it between his teeth, until the card finally slid out.

It wasn't a credit card after all, but an ID card, complete with a magnetic swipe.

It had a photo of the man he knew as Karl Bennett with a different name underneath.

Dr. Anthony Pirelli

USAMRIID

"How convenient..." Cal whispered aloud. Stunned. "That my quarantined room mate with the fake name just so happens to work for the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases."

He dialled Torres' number on his phone only to have it go to voice-mail.

He tried a second time. Then a third before she finally picked up sounding half asleep.

"Lightman?"

"Didn't I tell you I'd call back?"

"Not at three thirty in the morning..." He heard a yawn at her end.

"I had the name wrong," he told her, remembering what Gillian had told him on the train. "I want you find out whatever you can about a Doctor Anthony Pirelli and something called R1H9..."

"Hang on, I need to write this down..."

"Then call USAMRIID and tell them you need to know about Dr. Pirelli and his research concerning R1H9."

"Think they'll volunteer that information?" she asked, wide-awake now.

"For god's sake, Torres, make something up. You're calling from the FBI because you think some far-right nut job has got a hold of this thing. That it's a potential internal terror threat...that's your field now, isn't it?"

"And then?"

"Then tell me what you found out."