“But this is Harborcenter we’re talking about.” She downshifted, allowing the engine to rev higher. “They’re the best. And they checked the results three times.”

He nodded.

She tapped the steering wheel restlessly with her fingers. “There is no such thing as group-A streptococcus resistant to all common antibiotics.”

“Was no such thing, Cat,” Warmack said. “Was.”

Since her father died, Catalina Lopez hadn’t let anyone else get away with calling her Cat, not even her former fiancé. The nickname always conjured memories of Papa. It had been ten years but she could still picture him so clearly; from his broad shoulders, bushy moustache, and kind laughing eyes down to the faint scent of the cigars he swore up and down he never smoked. Though Warmack’s use of the nickname stirred the same memories, somehow it felt okay to Lopez. He reminded her a little of Papa. And she liked that.

“David—” She cleared her throat. “I was in Zaire during an outbreak of Viral Hemorrhagic Fever. And I was in Atlanta at the CDC when SARS first broke.” She felt herself flush, embarrassed to admit to her clinical inexperience. “But I’ve never been in the potential hot zone of a new emerging pathogen.”

“This is what you’ve trained your whole life for.” The lines around his mouth crinkled into a warm smile, but Lopez detected a trace of gentle mockery in his eyes.”We’re epidemiologists, Cat. We live for this stuff, right?”

She nodded, willing the redness away from her face. “Tell me what it’s like.”

“I’ve never been there for the first case report either,” Warmack said. “But I’ve witnessed my share of emerging pathogens. I saw one of the earliest outbreaks of legionnaire’s disease. And I was doing this same job in the seventies when Herpes came along and scared the pants off everyone.” He chuckled. “Technically, it scared the pants back on. For a while, people almost stopped screwing indiscriminately.” His smile vanished. “Then hepatitis C and HIV showed up, and the smart ones really did stop having unprotected sex.” He paused. “Funny thing is, Cat, it doesn’t matter what the threat du jour is—HIV, toxic shock syndrome, legionnaire’s, or SARS—there’s always one common denominator.”

“Fear?” she offered.

“Not just fear,” he said wistfully. “It’s healthy to fear what is dangerous. But emerging pathogens always bring out irrational fear. You understand?” He pointed at the roof of the car. “The sky-is-falling kind of stuff.”

Lopez was struck again by Warmack’s understated wisdom. He had such a youthful manner that she sometimes forgot he had been an epidemiologist for almost forty years. “It’s a fine line between protecting the public and panicking them,” she said, “isn’t it?”