Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
He would never have admitted such a thing if he hadn’t known they were dying. She deserved to know she made his life so much better. That she was special. Exceptional. “You look like an innocent angel, Shylah, but you kiss like fucking sin.”
Her eyes danced at him, lighting her face. Her skin was pale and creamy, her freckles a dust of gold. That fist inside him closed tightly around his heart and squeezed hard. She got to him every time.
“You ready for this?”
She nodded. “If we can raise your unit, do you think I could speak with Bellisia and Zara? Tell them good-bye.”
It was the first time her voice broke, and that got to him. He swept his arm around her shoulders and brought her in close to him. “Sure, but I’m going to ask them about this habit the three of you developed, practicing your skills on one another.”
Color swept up her face, but she laughed, just like he hoped. “I didn’t say that, and don’t you dare say something like that on an open channel.”
He laughed. “I like that you think I would. It might keep you in line. You’re always tempting me when I have work to do.”
He got exactly what he’d hoped for. Shylah laughed and smacked his chest with the flat of her hand.
Draden kissed the top of her head and then took the lead, moving up the stairs to the door of the hut. He pushed open the door with two fingers. He didn’t have gloves, so he used a wad of paper towels he’d gotten from the ranger’s cabin, but wasn’t certain why. He was already infected. Habit maybe. Stepping in front of Shylah might protect her from a bullet, but not from the virus he was certain he shared with her. Still, he did it. He couldn’t help needing to shield her.
He looked around the hut. It was very typical of the remote labs the Navy set up when helping the WHO contain an outbreak of Ebola. He was very familiar with the Navy’s solar-powered lab in a box, and knew he was looking at one. The three virologists had set up the field lab just as they would have had they been assigned to help the WHO with the outbreaks.
Ebola, he was well aware, had killed over eleven thousand people in six countries. As recently as the year before there had been an outbreak in the Congo and another outbreak had just been reported, not more than a week earlier. Looking at the extremely well-put-together field lab, Draden wondered if these three men had worked on any of those outbreaks. It was certainly possible with Whitney’s ties to the military.
“They brought a solar-powered lab in a box with them and quite a few hazmat suits along with gloves. You have to wear three layers of gloves. They have air respirators. See where the remains of the suits they’ve used have been incinerated? In that barrel? They clearly have been taking precautions to make certain they didn’t get infected.”
Draden tried to keep the little sneer from his voice. It was there in his mind. “These men, for whatever reason, allowed an entire village to die,” he murmured aloud. “For what? Money? I detest the fact that they would trade a few dollars for human lives.” At the same time, the hazmat equipment meant the virologists weren’t vaccinated, and that wasn’t good.
Shylah shrugged. “I’ve never had money one way or the other, so I certainly don’t understand it.”
“I have,” Draden confessed. “I grew up on the streets and had to fight for everything I ever got. In the end, some woman who owned a modeling agency saw me and turned my life around, at least monetarily. Then I found I had just traded one jungle for another. I thought having money was the answer, but believe me, sweetheart, it isn’t.”
“Power?” Shylah guessed.
“I don’t understand the need to feel powerful, to hold life and death over others. I’m a soldier and I have to kill enemies. That’s a fact of the life I’m in and I do it. I’m good at it. But I certainly don’t think of myself as a god, making decisions like that. Most of the time it’s kill or be killed. Some of the time, it’s save the world, like now,” Draden said.
“Whitney craves power,” Shylah said. “He definitely has the idea that he’s superior to all others and that entitles him to make life-and-death decisions. I imagine the three virologists he hired got sick of him always putting them down. Intellectually, they had to believe they were his equals. I didn’t hear that, Bellisia did. We often practiced hiding in plain sight. She was doing that near their laboratory, and they had taken a break and all of them were very angry with Whitney.”