A Cure for Love

Chapter One

“What are you doing up?” Chase sighed at the interrupted solitude.

“Come back to bed,” Olivia pleaded, her grip tightening. Chase didn’t need to turn around to know her eyes were heavy with fluttering lashes, her plump lips in a full pout. She gave that look often.

“Soon. I’m just going to check some work emails.”

Olivia seemed to know better than to question at this point.

Their relationship was casual. She was there for one thing, and they were both all right with that.

Chase told herself she didn’t have time for much else and loved to drop the “married to the job” cliché as often as possible.

But in reality, she wasn’t sure that was it.

Their arrangement served its purpose—great sex.

Sometimes, on nights like this, that arrangement involved a sleepover.

Chase liked having someone to hold in her bed at the end of one of her marathon days at the CDC.

And then, she liked for them to go home.

Fortunately, Olivia wanted to go home equally as much.

She was sexy, and great in bed, and on the rare occasion the two of them would go out and get downright obliterated, they had fun with their clothes on too. But that was all it was.

Chase finally turned around, kissing Olivia coolly on the cheek. “Go to sleep.”

Olivia just shrugged and walked off, leaving Chase to retrieve her laptop and move to the couch.

She kicked her bare feet onto the coffee table and opened the computer.

The city lights poured in through the window, casting shadows around her small one-bedroom apartment.

They say New York never sleeps. But it never failed to bewilder Chase how no city actually does.

Outside her dark apartment, late-night stock traders were up talking to investors in China.

College students roamed the streets looking for a twenty-four-hour burger joint.

And countless others who didn’t sleep well probably stood at their own picture windows staring at the night.

Chase always found something comforting about the constant movement, like ambient noise reminding her she wasn’t alone.

After a few drab work emails that mostly entailed one boring meeting or another, Chase closed her laptop again and clicked on the TV.

She actually used only two of the channels and wished Comcast would allow her to purchase just CNN and ESPN.

The late-night reporters hadn’t signed off yet, the B-list journalists far more upbeat than the hour called for.

“An update now on the crisis in Louisiana.” Chase straightened and turned the volume up, pulling off the readers she’d been wearing and tossing them onto the coffee table.

“Thirteen more confirmed cases of the deadly H7J1 virus in the small town of Abita Springs, which, as we know, is only an hour from New Orleans. The death toll is now at 118, with a believed nearly 230 infected. Those are startling numbers in a sleepy bayou town like this, population 7,263. Here to tell us more is CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.”

Must be prerecorded. No way Gupta gets off his ass in the middle of the night for an interview.

“Thanks, Tanya. This virus, which I like to think of as a sort of flu on steroids, has a nearly sixty percent mortality rate. It starts off as a typical influenza-like illness: cough, fever, runny nose. Then, after about thirty-six hours, the victims develop a very high temperature, usually close to 104-105 degrees, and severe respiratory issues follow. Unfortunately, for these sixty percent, that means fluid flooding the lungs, respiratory failure, and ultimately, a very unpleasant, slow death.”

Fucking TV doctors and their damn scare tactics.

Chase knew better. She’d been following H7J1 since it first came across her director’s desk at the CDC last month.

So far, it was classified as nothing more than a watch—something to pay attention to.

The data showed a decent mortality rate, but that was usually in the elderly and the ill.

And the virus was largely contained in the small town.

Chase and her colleagues had been briefed when the virus made its first appearance, and that was it.

She was just a peon at the CDC for now, and it was rather unusual to see such lethality from a flu, but if H7J1 was anything more than a nasty inconvenience, she’d hear about it.

“Good night, Sanjay,” Chase whispered, turning off the TV and placing the remote back in its designated spot on one of the end tables. Everything in Chase’s apartment, like her life, had a very specific place and order. Olivia seemed to respect that fact. And Chase liked that about her.

At 0400 hours, like every morning, Captain Norah Bishop’s alarm gently roused her from yet another restful night’s sleep.

Without hitting the snooze button, she pulled back the covers, opened the heavy curtains as if there was any daylight to let in yet, and padded to the kitchen.

She hit the brew button, the coffeemaker already waiting with beans and water filled the previous evening.

She usually didn’t take time to grind her own.

Not when she’d become accustomed to the instant stuff they had over in Iraq that reminded her of liquid rotten apple cores and plastic.

“You know the routine,” Norah said, noting the grating meow of her four-year-old rescue Pumpkin.

She took out her coffee cup and placed it by the now-gurgling machine, adding a generous amount of cream.

When Pumpkin protested again, this time with far more gusto, Norah went to the cupboard and removed a can of Iams, cracking the top to the tune of Pumpkin’s ever-evolving melody. “Can’t train a cat, I guess.”

She dumped the food into Pumpkin’s dish and retreated to her bedroom, where she pulled a pair of leggings and a worn US Army sweatshirt from her drawer and tied her running shoes.

She didn’t need to check the time, although she did anyway.

It was somewhere around 0430 hours, give or take a minute.

Norah knew this every morning, never deviating from the schedule.

“Captain.” A uniformed soldier met Norah at the gates of Fort McPherson, his back board straight, hand in salute.

“Private.” She returned the salute, and the gate opened. She drove her 2008 Toyota Highlander toward the entrance of the base, a warm summer breeze snaking in through the driver’s side window she’d forgotten to close.

She made her way to the brick building that always reminded her of an old schoolhouse, where another soldier greeted her at the door.

This private was young, barely out of high school, Norah guessed, fresh-shaved and eager-eyed.

He was usually there when Norah arrived in the mornings and always greeted her with a marked enthusiasm that she enjoyed, in spite of its borderline inappropriateness.

“Good morning, Captain Bishop.” He smiled a goofy, youthful smile that was not the smile of the ones who’d been to war, his salute fervent and eager, as if he were trying to keep a secret that was bubbling up inside of him.

“Good morning, Private.” Norah once again returned the salute and then smiled back. When she first joined the army nearly ten years ago, the formality of saluting had felt tremendously strange. Now, it was as integrated into her being as a heartbeat. “How are you?”

“Very good, ma’am.”

“And the baby?” Norah had taken a liking to Garvis from the day he arrived on base. That kind of innocence and purity was rare around places like this.

“Oh, he’s just fine.” Garvis’s accent always betrayed his Kentucky roots immediately. “Thank you for asking.”

Norah assumed he’d grown up calling everyone ma’am. The convention of the military probably wasn’t a huge stretch.

“Enjoy your day, Private.” She saluted again, and Garvis opened the door for her.

Norah hardly had time to set her bag on her desk when another soldier, this one equally as young but female, appeared in her doorway.

“Excuse me. Captain Bishop?”

“Yes?”

“Major Briggs would like to see you in his office. He says it’s urgent.”

Norah rolled her eyes. Everything with Briggs was urgent. Mostly, the dickhead just wanted things done when he wanted them done.

“Thank you. I’ll be right there.”

Norah sighed and turned her computer on, noticing for the first time the thick manila envelope labeled “H7J1.”

The large CDC building loomed like a glass shield protruding out of the Atlanta horizon.

It wasn’t tall, but with its mirrored walls and modern horseshoe shape, it suggested a certain presence that always made Chase’s skin tingle.

She was surprised to find that even at eight a.m., her office was largely empty.

Usually, at least Tom or one of her other cubicle-mates was already there, bleary-eyed, sipping an extra-large coffee and perusing the latest data on the Congo’s Ebola outbreak or the upcoming flu season.

It was August, which meant their already busy schedule was about to be obliterated by trying to keep the general populous up to speed on the likelihood of succumbing to the never-predictable influenza.

The virus changed just enough every year to keep the CDC on its toes.

“Where is everyone?” Chase spotted Loraine, the medical unit’s secretary, stapling together some packets of paper by the copier machine.

“Didn’t you get Justin’s text this morning? They’re all in the meeting. And you should be too.”

Meeting? What meeting? Chase frantically ran back to her desk and fished her cell phone out of her backpack. No text. Fuck. She’d been meaning to upgrade from her less-than-dependable iPhone 6 for the last couple of months.

“Where are they, Loraine?” Chase zipped her bag back up and tossed her jacket haphazardly over her chair.

“Miller 5 Conference Room.”