Kilburn glanced over to Lopez and laughed. “You kidding me? I’m from Vancouver. Up there, we don’t tan, we rust.”

She groaned at the old, old joke. “I grew up in Phoenix. Did my med school at UCLA, and fellowship in Atlanta. Rain was kind of a novelty for me until I moved here to become the EIS regional officer.”

“So why did you move?”

Sweeping a hand toward stunning Puget Sound at the bottom of the hill, she said. “Who could turn down this kind of natural beauty?” Her lips broke into a smile and her features softened. “And I never said I didn’t like the rain, just that you have to like it to love this town.”

Kilburn chuckled. He had a sense that Lopez was not the type to back down from any argument, even one as trivial as regarding Seattle’s rainfall. Louise was right again; Lopez wasn’t lacking in spunk. “How long have you been doing this job, Lina?” he asked.

“For a year and a bit.”

“Is this your first public-health crisis?”

She glanced at him with an expression that straddled amusement and gravity. “Before this, I spent most of my time combating West Nile Virus, which has never even been reported in the Pacific Northwest.”

“Same for us.” He nodded empathetically. “So far, in Vancouver, West Nile is the microbiological equivalent of the bogeyman.”

“Exactly!” Her smile abruptly faded. “But there’s nothing imaginary about MRGAS.”

“No,” he said quietly. “Lina, can you tell me a little more about the Seattle cases?”

“Sure.” She gave him a concise chronological recap of the spread through the Seattle area. “After you and I spoke this morning, I heard from my boss in Atlanta. Cases have been reported in San Francisco. Similar pattern of spread through an infected drug user. There already have been four deaths.”

Kilburn felt as if he had been punched. “MRGAS has made its way to the Bay Area?”

She nodded at the windshield.

He rubbed his eyes and temples with a hand. His stomach sank. Suddenly he felt weary. “Lina, this thing is spiraling out of control.”

“Hmmm,” she murmured. She glanced over at him and her expressive eyes burned with curiosity. “Graham, I’m not a clinician, but you’ve managed a couple of cases of MRGAS, right?”

“‘Managed’ might be a stretch.”

Lopez looked back at the road. “And?”

“Both were parents of young kids. And both died miserable deaths.” He looked down at his hands. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt more useless as a clinician.”

She offered him a sympathetic smile. “This is one miserable son of a bitch, huh?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” he sighed. “We’ve got to stop it in its tracks,” he said, but his words rang hollow even to him.

Her eyes pierced into his. “And if we can’t?”