She had absolutely no idea.
Her entire evening had been wasted trying to find the leader of the IPA. And speaking of the Invisible Patriot Army, good luck scrolling through the approximately 3,347,000 results that search generated. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack without knowing what, exactly, a needle looked like. Will had been useless. The FBI had been useless. Faith needed an age range. An identifying scar or tattoo. A vehicle. A known hangout. A last known residence. Even a possible regional accent would’ve been something.
Usually, the one thing criminals reliably did was spend time with other criminals. All you had to do was find somebody who knew somebody who was in a jam and wanted to make a deal. That TV stuff about not snitching was a load of crap. Everybody talked when talking would save their ass from prison. Faith had concentrated all of her searches on Carter, Vale, Monroe and Hurley, looking for a credit card charge or an ATM withdrawal or a phone number or a parking ticket or a GPS location that connected them to a Dashiell or Dasher or Dashy or any fucking body whose first or last name started with a D.
Nothing.
Faith stood up and looked out the window.
All that she knew right now was that Michelle Spivey had worked in this building. Or one of these buildings. There were several on the compound, with a rock garden and bridges and a daycare center for the children of employees. It was a stark contrast to the giant white box the GBI worked out of, but then the CDC had been a dump up until the 2001 Anthrax Attacks. Congress had suddenly realized that maybe it was a good idea to fund the organization that responded to anthrax attacks. It helped that two of the people who had been mailed the deadly bacteria were United States Senators. Crime was never more egregious than when it victimized a lowly politician.
Her phone vibrated with a new email. She’d forwarded Sara’s list of medications to two pediatricians and a GP. None of them had spotted anything abnormal. None of them could infer what the drugs were meant to treat. The new email was from Emma’s pediatrician, who’d sent a last-minute guess: Could be miliary tuberculosis?
Faith had heard of tuberculosis, but not that particular type. She pasted the words into her browser. Miliary referred to the millet-seed-like spots that showed up in lung X-rays. The symptoms were pretty horrific, especially if you were talking about a child.
Coughing, fever, diarrhea, enlarged spleen, liver and lymph nodes . . . multiple organ dysfunction, adrenal insufficiency, pneumothorax . . . 1.3 million deaths worldwide . . .
She opened her medical app and found Emma’s vaccination list.
Varicella—chickenpox; MMR—measles mumps rubella; DTaP—diphtheria tetanus whooping cough; BCG—tuberculosis.
Faith hissed out a relieved sigh. She went back to Google. Yesterday, Kate Murphy had said that Michelle Spivey’s recent work was in the area of pertussis, or whooping cough.
Runny nose, fever, coughing that induces vomiting and can break ribs . . . high-pitched whoop as they gasp for air . . . can last for ten or more weeks . . . pneumonia, seizures, brain damage . . . 58,700 deaths in 2015 . . .
Faith closed the browser. She could walk around the gutted remains of a murdered drug dealer but thinking about a child suffering from this was too much.
She sank down into her chair and let out a long, heavy sigh. Exhaustion was not new to Faith, but this was next-level fatigue. She could not believe that only yesterday she had been sweating her way through the Martin Novak transport meeting. The high-value prisoner had been an abstract, a briefing book filled with data, diagrams of cars and roads. And then the bombs had started going off and the only person who seemed convinced there was a connection between Martin Novak, Dash and the IPA was planted at the CDC sweating her balls off as she waited for a stranger to come find her.
Faith looked at the time.
2:44 p.m.
She wondered if she’d been forgotten about. Faith had dozens of things she could be doing right now, mainly working on trying to find Sara. She was close enough to Emory to go back at Lydia Ortiz, the surgical recovery nurse, see if she’d remembered anything new about Michelle Spivey or Robert Hurley. Ortiz had spent time with both of them while Michelle was coming out of anesthesia. There had to be a detail, a stray comment, that could pry open a clue.
Failing that, Faith could be providing backup to Will. Beau Ragnersen was taking him to meet Dash’s flunky at 4:00 p.m. The whole thing gave Faith a bad feeling, and not just because the Alberta-Banks Park in Flowery Branch was located off a city-owned street that was still called Jim Crow Road. She was worried the surveillance team wasn’t covering all the access points. She was worried that Will’s concussion was getting worse. What she was mostly worried about was Beau Ragnersen. Faith didn’t trust confidential informants. They were criminals. They always had their own agendas. Beau was also a serious drug addict. Black tar heroin was no joke. His role in this ruse was not a minor one. He was supposed to convincingly introduce Will as a former Army buddy who had fallen on hard times.
Hard times was not a stretch. Faith had barely recognized Will this morning. Without Sara, he had started to revert to his feral state. His scruffy beard, along with the scars on his face, made him look like a thug. If Faith had seen him in the street, her first impulse would’ve been to make sure her gun was visible.
She should be in that park right now, giving him support.
The door opened. Faith was surprised, but then she realized she shouldn’t be surprised, because of course Aiden Van Zandt was here.
He held open the door with his foot as he looked down the hallway. His glasses were no longer being held together by a white strip of tape. He was back in a suit and tie. Still not a Westley. His FBI credentials were on a lanyard around his neck.
He said, “Sorry I’m late. Murphy couldn’t make it, but she sends her best.”
Faith gave a genuine laugh.
“Seriously, she likes you. You remind her of your mother.” Van leaned out into the hall. He had his hand in the air, as if he was signaling for a taxi. “Can you let her know we’re ready?” He turned to Faith. “Bring your stuff.”
Faith grabbed her bag and followed him down a long hallway, because her life lately was either stairwells or hallways. “How does Murphy know my mother?”
“How does anybody know anybody?” He changed the subject: “Any news on your missing agent?”
Faith could change the subject, too. “Is the FBI still denying there’s a connection between Martin Novak, the bombing at Emory, and the IPA?”
“Reply hazy. Try again later.”
Faith didn’t like this game. “All right, Magic Eight Ball. I googled the IPA. It’s not on the internet. Not anywhere. Which I know doesn’t mean that it’s not real, and there’s the dark web and blah-blah-blah, but why isn’t it on the internet?”
“Ask again later.”
Faith wanted to punch him. “I need you to cross-reference Michelle’s files to see if she’s ever interacted with a man named Beau Ragnersen.”
He stopped, his hand on a closed door. “What makes you think I can do that?”
“Because you’re the FBI’s liaison with the CDC.” She assumed when he did not correct her that she had guessed correctly. “Ragnersen with an -en.”
“That’s Danish,” he said. “The s-e-n means—”
Faith reached past him and opened the door. A nervous energy filled her body. The room felt like the kind of place a civilian shouldn’t be allowed to see. The large space reminded her of a NASA control room. There were rows of empty open-plan cubicles with computer monitors and signs—South America, Latin America, Europe, Eurasia. Digital clocks gave ALFA, OSCAR and ZULU time. Giant monitors spanned the rear wall. A map of the world showed flashing red, green and yellow dots in various locations. The words “Red Sky” were in the corner alongside different tabs.
Faith assumed the red dot on Atlanta was because of yesterday’s attack, but asked, “Why is there a flashing yellow dot on the Georgia coast?”