He took the shovel from the truck, tamped out the last glowing embers, scooped up the fire’s remains, and deposited them in two five-gallon buckets. He filled the hole back in, drove the truck another half mile to the banks of the Canadian River, and slipped his waders on. He washed the blood off the tarp in the river, then cut it into small pieces and scattered them, along with the ashes from the buckets. For half an hour he dropped the remains in the river, watching them flow out of sight. Then he washed the truck bed out with bleach and cleaned his hands.

At a grocery store in Noble, he loaded up on supplies.

He camped in another field that night, though he didn’t light a fire.

First thing in the morning, he visited a lawyer. He brought his uncle’s will and the deed to the house. The man was a professional, fair on his fees, and amenable to what Desmond suggested, though he said it was highly irregular.

Two hours later, Desmond signed a series of documents, which the receptionist notarized. The three of them walked to the courthouse for a brief meeting, which went as expected.

Desmond drove out of town that afternoon, heading for a place he’d never been but which would change his life forever: Silicon Valley.

Chapter 53

Chapter 53

Peyton opened her eyes. Slowly, the room came into focus: metal walls, a narrow bed, and a glass partition. Her head throbbed. She felt hung over. She sat up, and a wave of nausea greeted her. After it passed, she still felt a slight motion, almost like a vibration. She recognized the feeling: she was on a ship.

A man with a badly scarred face and long blond hair was sitting in a metal chair beyond the glass partition, reading a tablet.

“Good morning,” he said, an insincere cheeriness in his Australian accent.

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Conner McClain.”

Petyon studied him a moment. “What do you want?”

“Information.”

Peyton wanted information too. She sensed that this man had it. “You started the outbreak in Kenya, didn’t you?”

“We merely accelerated the inevitable.”

“Pandemics aren’t inevitable.”

“You know they are, Peyton. You’ve said so yourself.”

“I’ve said that pandemics have been inevitable—throughout human history. Not anymore. They can be a thing of the past. I’ve dedicated my life to that work. And you’re destroying it.”

Conner stared at her, a mildly amused expression on his face. “There’s one person in this room who’s going to make the human race safe from pandemics. And it isn’t you. Your life’s work is a drop in the bucket compared to our plan. We’re implementing a real solution—one final pandemic to end all others.”

One pandemic. “They’re related, aren’t they? The flu pandemic and the hemorrhagic fever in Kenya.”