“To each his own, I guess,” Nate said with a smile. “Thanks again for the flowers and I wish you the best.”

###

Nate leaned back in his chair, the phone against his ear. He’d just finished bringing his supervisor up to speed on his progress. “That’s pretty much it for me, Jeff. I’ll be meeting with Dr. Gutierrez later today to see how things are going. I made sure he has no e-mail accounts and the audio dictation he’s doing has AES-256 encryption being employed.”

“Sounds good,” Jeff said. “Continue keeping things on the QT until we make headway on who’s responsible. I have an update for you, too. I just heard from the deputy director’s office, and it looks like our communications folks sent an international alert through INTERPOL about what happened in Nevada. Pretty soon the details will be in the inbox of just about every law enforcement agency in the world.”

With his mind racing, Nate sat up straight and asked, “Do you think this’ll end up flushing out whoever is doing this?”

“It’s hard to know. The three deaths are no joke, and the idea of some unidentified biological agent miraculously appearing in some poor rancher’s back yard should get people’s attention, spur some action—maybe even flush out whoever’s doing this, if we’re lucky.” Jeff sighed. “It’s nasty, this genetic modification. So much room to do good, but so many ways for stuff like this to get out of control.”

Nate felt the same way. He was all for scientific progress, but what he’d seen on this case had made him more than a little uneasy.

Through the phone connection, Nate heard the sound of someone knocking on a door, and his supervisor said, “Nate, keep me posted on whatever you guys find. I’ll keep you apprised of what I hear on my end. I’ve got to get going.”

The line went dead and almost immediately someone knocked on Nate’s door. Glancing at his watch, he raised his voice and said, “Come in, Juan.”

His door opened and the disheveled researcher walked in carrying a large brown courier envelope.

As Juan took his seat, Nate pointed at the envelope and asked, “What have you got there?”

“No idea,” Juan said. “Some guy who said he’s from DCS stopped me as I was walking here, looked at my badge, and had me sign for the envelope. I haven’t opened it—actually I was going to ask you whether it was okay for me to even look. I’m not sure what I’m read in on.”

Nate studied the plain brown envelope and frowned. “Well, it’s addressed to you…” He glanced at Juan and asked, “It was a DCS courier?”

“That’s what he said. I don’t even know what that means.”