Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
“It took me a moment to spot the notebooks lying on a benchtop. I was too busy trying to get my head around what I was seeing.” Samantha ran her hand over her closely cropped hair. “Because it made no sense.”
“He has a lab at Harvard,” Gary observed.
Yeah, but maybe he needs another because he doesn’t want people to see what he’s up to—even his wife.
Dan couldn’t give voice to the thought. An irrational fear seized him that by doing so, his words might prove prophetic, and Lord, he so wanted to be wrong.
“But he might’ve gotten some weird looks if he’d showed up there with a foam machine,” Samantha blurted.
Shit. Dan really hated being right.
“He had one?” Gary asked. “In this secret lab?”
She nodded. “It was stuck up on a shelf, gathering dust. You know, like the ones you use to create foam for kids’ parties? My sister hired one for my niece’s seventh birthday, so I knew what it was the second I saw it. Except these days, adult parties use them too.”
“I hear foam parties are really popular in gay bars,” Dan said quietly.
She gave a slow nod. “Which is exactly where my mind went as soon as Tyler told me about Florida, but at the time I was completely lost. There was other stuff too. Bottles of fluid. According to the label, they were filled with the soap solution used in the machines. There were canisters of nitrogen, and at first I couldn’t figure out what he’d want them for—until I saw a piece of tech, and then I knew.
” She paused. “There were also more notebooks, ones I hadn’t seen before.
By this point I wanted to know more, so I opened one of them.
” She swallowed. “When I was six, my mom said I was insatiably curious, so I looked it up. I think she nailed it.”
A child prodigy indeed.
“You found something,” Dan stated. “And now you wish you hadn’t.”
Her breathing hitched. “You see a lot. And yes, I wished that the moment I saw what he’d written in it.”
“What did you see?” Gary’s gaze was locked on Samantha.
She took a second or two before answering. “He’d plotted graphs.”
“Showing what?”
Another hard swallow. “The viability of monkeypox virus in foam solution, accounting for heat, alkalinity.” Her eyes were full of misery.
“And there was more. There were figures based on a recent outbreak of monkeypox in Florida in the spring of 2015. CDC figures. You know Robert used to work for the CDC?” They nodded.
“So you can guess what I was thinking. The machine, the soap solution, the notes, everything pointed to one conclusion—that he was responsible for the outbreak. So maybe Leo did see him in that bar after all.” She dug her fingers into the arm of the chair.
“And Leo ended up dead,” Gary added.
Her face fell. “That didn’t hit me until after I’d spoken with Tyler.
At the time what intrigued me were the nebulizers.
There was one in that lab in pieces on a benchtop, as if he was trying to figure out how they work.
And there was something else. He’d dismantled a laptop too.
Not to mention he seemed to be starting a collection of paper cups.
There had to be four or five of them on his bench.
” She wrung her hands. “None of it made any sense. And then there was the whole monkeypox angle. I mean, why choose monkeypox? Except when I thought about it later, that part did more than intrigue me—it scared the pants off me.”
Dan’s stomach clenched. “I can guess why.” She jerked her head to stare at him, and he shuddered. “Monkeypox isn’t that far removed from another pox. One I’m sure everyone in this room has heard of. Trust me, it scared my pants off too when I first realized what the implications were.”
Her mouth fell open, her eyes wide. “And here was I thinking my brain worked fast.”
Dan gave a shrug. “I just made the same connections you did.”
Mike shook his head. “Nathan was certainly right about you. Now I can see why he let you in on this.” He got up from the arm of the couch, went over to the sink, and filled a glass with water. He brought it to Samantha. “Here. Maybe coffee’s not the best thing right now.”
She took a long drink. “I didn’t have time to look at what was in the rest of the notebook.
Michelle knocked on the door and called up, asking if I’d found what I was looking for.
” She snorted. “If anything, I’d found what I wasn’t looking for.
I stuffed the notebooks inside my coat, went downstairs, and locked the door after me.
I made my excuses, said I’d received a phone call and I’d have to take a raincheck on the coffee and cake, and then I got out of there. ”
“You did well to drive under those conditions,” Gary said. “That must have been quite a shock.”
“Understatement of the century. I’m usually a careful driver, but that night…
. My head was all over the place. How I got home without totaling the car is still a mystery.
I went inside, poured myself a stiff drink, and dove in.
” She huffed. “I didn’t eat. I don’t think I’d have been able to keep anything down.
Because that first graph I’d seen was only the tip of the iceberg.
A cliché, I know, but in this case, it was so apt.
And the more I read, the worse it got. Now I knew why he kept Michelle out of there.
Because if she’d read what I did?” Samantha clenched her hands into tight fists.
“I knew I’d never look at him the same way ever again.
Professor Robert Martin, a man I’d admired for so long, a man I thought I knew, working toward preventing disease, saving mankind.
And yet this same man had done something so momentous, so unthinkable, that I couldn’t comprehend it. ”
Gary glanced at Dan before speaking. “We’re not talking about monkeypox anymore, are we?”
She shook her head. “He’s synthesized smallpox.”