Natalie wasn't particularly amused.
It wasn't that she minded doing leg work or scut work or any work for that matter. In fact, sometimes any excuse to get out of the lab or the hospital or the clinic–wherever the latest emergency had led them–was a good excuse, even if it was to run pick up medical supplies that should have been on hand when she reached the hospital. Not to mention, this wasn't her job. Sure, she knew this place was a backwater town with little or no medical backup, but she had been assured that the medical and lab supplies would be there, not thirty miles down a winding mountain road. Not even really a mountain of course, just a craggy rock faced wall, but the road was sharp curved and badly paved.
Not a fun drive after their plane ride here and no time to do more at the motel than to drop her bags on the bed.
She hadn't even gotten much of a chance to do more than a quick, cursory look-over of the lab before she found out that the med and research supplies were sitting in another town waiting to be picked up and there didn't seem to be anyone to spare to go get them. She hadn't even had a chance to meet Dr. Portman before she finally, in a fit of pique she admitted, decided to go get the damn things herself. An hour's drive more or less and she'd have what she needed. She told Eva where she was going, declined the offer of company. Eva had her own work to do and Nat didn't need a babysitter while she ran errands. So here she was following rambling directions scrawled on the back of a restaurant paper place mat and getting drowsier by the second.
At least the countryside was pretty, an overall sense of green taking over the world and she laughed at her own whimsy. It was just trees, trees and grass and winding roads and sunlight glinting off the windshield and she was getting so sleepy...
Her head was stuffed with cotton, her mouth so dry that her tongue was literally stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her arms were too heavy to lift and the new bracelet was cutting into her wrist. New bracelet?
That woke her completely. She didn't have a new bracelet but something was surely cutting into her wrist. Prying her eyes open, she had to take a moment to focus. If she hadn't known good and well that she had eaten eggs and bacon and drunk coffee aboard the plane that morning, she would have sworn she had dropped a bit of acid. Not that she'd been much for experimentation like that in her wild college years. She almost laughed. Natalie wasn't exactly a wild child, before or after college. But right now she would have sworn that she was on some sort of drug.
But her wrist...
That was no bracelet. In a reactive panic, she yanked her hand and only succeed in scraping a long red mark across her wrist where the handcuff tore at the skin.
"Stop it," she told herself, "just stop it and get in control."
She took stock of her situation. Her right hand was handcuffed to the steering wheel, she had a large, very sore bump forming on her forehead but no obvious sign of concussion. The car was still idling so she hadn't been unconscious long. The sleepiness that had probably driven her off the road in the first place was gone, something else to add to the drug reaction idea that was rapidly becoming more than just a passing thought.
"Okay, okay," she said, breathing hard, "I guess it's safe to say this was no accident." Somehow the sound of her own voice was a little reassuring. Until she looked out the window that is. The car was balanced at the edge of a break off on the side of the road. A sheer drop into what looked like a rock quarry. All it would take was for her to start trying to do something that would rock the vehicle, like trying to somehow break the steering wheel that held her pinned to the handcuffs, and she and the car would go over to break up on the jagged edges of stone below.
Now was a bad time to remind herself of her fear of falling too.
And that was when she saw it. On the seat right next to her. A small box, just like the one the doorman had given her this morning, only this one was placed carefully on the seat, open. Inside, nestled in a bed of purple satin was another silver charm. This one a plain upright piano but just as beautiful as the grand piano had been. A tiny sliver of silver.
There was no way Stephen had given her this one, no way anyone had given it to her except whoever had cuffed her hand to the steering wheel in a car balanced at the edge of a rock face. Someone who knew her deepest fear?
She barely kept herself from screaming.
"Did you know that I was up for your position?" George Portman asked as he handed over a cup of still steaming coffee.
Stephen's eyes jerked up from the cup, his hands having to take over from instinct to accept the hot mug. "No," he said honestly, "no one told me that."
Portman shrugged. "They wouldn't have, of course. It was all so hush hush. And that's one of the reasons I was glad you got it, Stephen, and not me, to be honest. I had just about had all the bureaucratic BS I could handle in one lifetime. Which..." He gave Connor a grin and nodded at the small office, "is why I ran off to become Grizzly Adams."
"You like it here?"
"Oh yeah, I've become quite the redneck. I drink at Annie's Bar & Grill–you should stop there, by the way. Great food. Try the French Dip. I think Annie puts half a cow in each one. I've even been known to catch Montel once in a while."
He laughed, a big, booming laugh that Connor had forgotten. The laugh reminded them that they had been friends once, that they'd shared a lot of laughter and more than one beer together before Connor had been tapped for NIH and George had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth.
"Seriously, Stephen," he leaned forward in his seat, coffee cup warming his hands, "I've got all the time I want here to do any little research projects I want to do, don't have to answer to any bigwig who can't wait for a solution that might not even exist. I haven't gotten a single new grey hair since I"ve been here. Can you say the same?"
The question was an odd one and could have been taken as anything from a challenge to friendly banter. Connor wasn't sure how to respond. George saved him the effort.
"It's good to see you," he continued, "no, really, it is good to see you. Everyone changes, Stephen, and I'm no exception. I was a real son of a bitch when I was in the business. I know I was so don't bother trying to be polite. Don't look so uncomfortable. I've always wanted to make up for some that, and maybe this is my chance. Though I'm sorry for what brings you here."
Stephen leaned forward in the chair, his cup forgotten in his hands. "I'm glad you feel that way, George, but we can talk over old times when this mess is over, okay? What have you got? Our report was pretty sketchy."
"Sure, sure," Portman said, leaning back. "What was I thinking. I just wanted you to know that this is my home and these are my friends and neighbors. There's nothing clinical about this and not a whole lot about me that's the same as I used to be. I just wanted you to know that."
He considered his folded hands. "I've already lost two people and they were people I know. It's presenting as malaria and I'm treating with chloroquine and primaquine but only half those sick are responding to the meds.
"Weather conditions this year have set the stage for a bumper crop the damn things. The rains this year have flooded farmlands and filled ditches and low areas with stagnant water especially here in the southern part of the state. As you know, mosquitoes breed in stagnant water. We've had people out draining anything that even looks like it could harbor malarial mosquitos.
"We're doing a lot of clean up but not getting any closer to finding out what's causing this outbreak or why it's resistant to the usual treatments. I've got labs set up for your people with water samples from everywhere we could think of in the area, but you'll have to realize that this is backwater, USA. I only have so much at my disposal, and we've got more than 50 species of mosquitoes just here in Indiana."
Rubbing his fingers against his temple, he took a drink from the cup still held in his left hand, then added, "I've put out the word. You have to remember how small this place is... it's not a matter of starting a panic. Everyone knows what's going on anyway, probably even before I did. So putting out information isn't going to cause a great stampeded to Louisville or anything, just the opposite in fact in most cases. These folks have been here for several generations. Ain't no damn bug takin' what's rightfully theirs."
It was a credible mimickery of someone, Stephen just wasn't sure who, so it had to be local. "What steps have the locals taken?" he asked.
"Anything that can hold water, a birdbath, a wading pool, an old bucket, or a clogged storm drain, is a potential breeding spot, as you know, so these have been emptied or moved so that they don't collect water. Discarded tires, clogged rain gutters are more difficult to monitor, but the word's out and people are pretty conscientious around here. Especially when folks they know are dying."
He drained his cup, set it on the table beside him, then said, "The rest of it, I'm afraid, is up to you and your people. 'Cause I'm out of ideas."
They'd only been here twelve hours and he was already exhausted.
Miles sank back into the lone chair in the makeshift office and sprawled his lanky body back into as close to a lying down position as he could manage in a poorly stuffed 'easy' chair.
Dr. Portman had piled on cases of patient files for him to go through so that they could try to find common denominators. Miles had gone through every single one of them painstakingly but couldn't find any errors that stood out or mis-diagnoses in his first run-through.
He had, of course, visited the four new cases brought in since their arrival as well as the surviving cases still in the hospital. No breakfast, no sleep on the flight over and doing all the research work himself was making Miles not a happy camper.
Having to swat at another mosquito that had decided he was a good candidate for lunch didn't do anything to brighten his mood either. Especially since mosquitos were the most likely potential source donors of the current outbreak of this disease that was mimicking malaria.
He knew better than to skip meals too, though whether the stale sandwich he'd managed to snag out of the vending machine sometime in the vicinity of lunch counted as a meal or not was a different matter. Dinner was some vague promise he couldn't quite see yet–or was that breakfast again.
And where the heck was Natalie?
She should have been back hours ago, doing half of this work as well as most o f the required research. He'd called the pharmacy in Indianapolis but they told her she'd left right on schedule. If she'd had a break down or a flat tire, why hadn't she called to say she was going to be held up?
The question remained, where was she?
He thumped up to an actual sitting position in the chair. Sure, it was possible that she hadn't called, or just hadn't been able to get through and there was nothing more wrong other than that she was waiting for car parts somewhere in TeenyTinyVille, Indiana with no mobile service and all the phones in town broken down, but for twelve hours?
He pushed his weary body out of the chair and went looking for Stephen.
Sometime during the late evening it had started to rain.
The wind rose steadily, then would recede almost visibly, each time with a new spate of scratching at the car doors. Were they locked? She couldn't remember and in the darkness now, she couldn't see the other side of the car. Which didn't matter anyhow, she reminded herself with a twitch of irritation at having forgotten something so basic as remembering whether or not she had locked her doors. They were that 'magic, no visible lock' wonders so there was no post to see, and with the electricity gone, she couldn't try them. The car was dead. She'd tried so many times to turn the key and beg a response from the engine that she'd quit counting fruitless attempts.
Besides even if the windows were locked, what good would it do? If she couldn't get hers–the only one she could reach with the handcuff–open from the inside... besides if she did get it open, she was just going to step into ebony emptiness.
All she really knew was that she was way out in the middle of proverbial nowhere. Ideas swirled in her head, and the scritch/scratch on the sides of the car didn't help. She began to wonder if there were wolves in Indiana. Stupid, she berated herself. Even if there were wolves the only time she'd have to worry about them would be if she were in a Stephen King novel and she was pretty sure that wasn't the case. And wolves! What on earth was she thinking?
"I'm thinking I'm alone in a car that's poised to go over the side of a rock face who knows is how far down," she found herself saying out loud, just for the comfort of her own voice, "after being sabotaged and stalked..."
Stalked.
Only then did it actually sink in. She'd been stalked. The charm. The one she'd so foolishly thought from was from Stephen. Get over that schoolgirl crush, she chastised herself automatically. He already had one wife dump him because he's got one love and one love only and it doesn't have anything to do with a living, breathing, needy woman. But the charm, it was something terrible and sickening now. And the one on the seat beside her... well, no longer... she'd swept it to the floorboards somewhere in a moment of panic... that meant that whoever had sent them had been in the car with her. Had sabotaged the car, then set her up cliffside, cuffed to the wheel and helpless.
That was what the most terrifying... how helpless she had been, how helpless she was now... she'd checked long ago for her cell phone... gone, like her purse, even her sweater.
Now all she could do was watch the rain, listen to the snickety-snick of wind against the sides of the car and try to keep herself still so that she didn't sent the vehicle–and herself–hurtling over the edge.
"Stephen, she left on time, there's no paper trace of her on the way back here, and the local polie have no reports of an accident between here and there, so she's somewhere between here and there," Eva said, the tightness of her voice betraying her worry. "I alerted the Highway Patrol and the local law enforcement forces. They're searching right now."
"We need to get out there and look ourselves."
Connor held up a hand. "Frank, we'd only be getting in their way right now. We don't know the area, they do. They have the manpower and equipment to search and we have a job to do right here."
"Natalie's out there somewhere," Miles was on his feet, nearly in Connor's face, "she could be hurt, dead. And you trust strangers to find her?" he demanded.
With surprising kindness, Connor rested a hand on the young doctor's shoulder, stared into his weary eyes and said, "Miles, I feel just the same as you do. I want to get out there and find her myself too. But we have to do our job here. There's a bad storm out there. We wouldn't be able to see what we were doing and we don't know the area well enough to go into it blind. If we were out there instead of here and just one person died needlessly, do you think Natalie would want that?"
Defeated, Miles dropped back into the chair, rubbing at his eyes. Connor stepped over to him and again touched his shoulder. "I want you to go get some sleep. Now. No arguments. Just get a few hours rest and then come back. Your patients need you awake and alert."
He turned to Eva, "Eva, I want you to keep in touch with the locals of course, let me know anything that you hear. Anything. And as soon as you hear it."
"Stephen, I'm a toxicologist. I've run every test known to man on this stuff and come up with malaria. We know it's not malaria. But it's telling us it is malaria. At least a strain we haven't previously identified in any known trials. There are no other tests left to try to separate any inconsistencies out of the bacteria or the cells. I've juggled blood, body fluids, skin cells. I've scoured homes, vehicles and bodies. It's up to the medical team now."
Connor looked up from the papers he was trying to wade through. He almost hated to look away from them because they seemed to multiply every time he wasn't watching closely.
"What are you telling me, Frank?"
"I want to go out there."
"Looking for Nat."
"That's right."
"Go."
It was pretty ridiculous to think that he was going to find something that the Highway Patrol and the locals hadn't been able to turn up considering the darkness, the storm, and that he wasn't familiar with the area, but that didn't stop Frank. Besides, he rather doubted that any of the people currently searching for Natalie had as much invested in her well-being as he and the rest of the team did, nor had they been trained for jungle warfare like he had.
That warfare training included dealing with an enemy most people didn't consider: the weather.
Weather like this was a physical entity. It had behaviors. Functions. Secrets. And he knew how to deal with them. He knew how to see signs beneath the storm that other people would miss. It was just a matter of time, time and long, hard, tedious work.
Three hours after he'd started looking, in a lucky strobe of lightning, he saw the tracks, nearly washed away by the still streaming rain.
Leaving his own vehicle after radioing his location to the authorities searching with him, he found the car completely concealed behind trees and brush, right at the edge of the embankment of a deep ravine, the front, driver's side tire resting on air, the rear end tipped precariously. Too much rocking would dislodge the entire thing and send it hurtling below onto jagged rocks. He slid down the mud-treacherous slope until he reached the passenger's side window.
When he tapped on the glass and shone his light inside, Natalie turned her head and nearly screamed, then gasped, "Oh thank God, Frank. Thank God."
"Don't move," he told her. "Don't move. I'll get you out."
And he prayed he was telling her the truth.
Eva was so accustomed to being able to call upon her own resources that it came as somewhat of a culture shock to realize that 'resources' here in Henryville consisted of take out dinners from the one diner in town and hunting licenses from the postman/shop owner/ranger at the proper times of the year.
It was a matter of 'run your own errands' and hope there was time enough to fit them all in.
So far, the trip to what passed for town hall.., the basement of one Miss Elmira Ferguson.., hadn't yielded much in the line of past medical records or history of any prior outbreaks of anything resembling malaria in this or surrounding counties.
Elmira was a sweet faced woman in her 70's who was thrilled with the company of someone other than her two yellow-striped tabbies and an old hound who reminded Eva of old movies about chain gangs -- she kept pushing tea and cookies on her because Eva was "way too skinny" and needed to fatten up. The old gal was most forthcoming with local lore and town gossip but nothing like this had happened in her memory or in any of the records she had browsed through herself so she wasn't much help, much to her dismay. She wanted nothing more than to be a help.
And to have company. For Eva to stay just a little while longer.
Her memory of the town records was amazing, Eva thought, and she was a little saddened to realize that this was probably all the old lady had... her musty town records and her two cats, Tom and Skeedaddle, not to mention Copper, the hound, who stared at her balefully from beneath the dining room table. The little house was impeccable, all the way down to the doilies on the tables and the antimacassars on the arms and backs of the chairs. Eva almost grinned at remembering that antimacassars were furniture protectors and not some kind of 'macassar' hater, as she had informed her great aunt when she was nine years old, and been firmly corrected.
Eva was probably the highlight of her year. Maybe even her decade.
She was almost sorry to leave because of the crestfallen look on the woman's road-mapped face, but there was nothing more to be learned here except what she had: nothing like this had happened in this area for more than 150 years and no records went back further than that.
She was halfway back to the town proper when she saw the fishtailing tire marks even through the rain on the highway, leading around a sharp, tree-concealed curve. An old, beater–a sedan of indeterminate model–was skewed sideways on the road once she rounded the curve, one door open, a man leaning forward from the driver's seat, his head in his hands.
Pulling in behind him, she reached under the front seat for her first aid kit, then ducked her head as she sprinted through the rain toward the car to offer what help she could, her cell in her hand to call for assistance as soon as she triaged the situation.