“Dr. Kilburn? It’s Nancy Fischer. Angelica’s mother.”

Angie! He suddenly remembered the name of the teenage IV-drug user presumed to be responsible for the Vancouver outbreak. Days earlier he had left two messages on her parents’ machine, but he’d given up hope of hearing from them. “Thanks for getting back to me, Mrs. Fischer.”

“I’m not sure how much help I can be to you,” Fischer said quietly. “I … we … haven’t seen Angie in a long time.”

“I understand,” Kilburn said. “That must be tough.” Fischer didn’t respond, but Kilburn heard her swallow on the other end of the line. “Ah, Mrs. Fischer, it’s very important that we find your daughter. She might have been exposed to an infectious disease.”

“Oh, God,” Fischer said and her voice quavered. “She has AIDS, doesn’t she?”

“That’s not why I was calling,” Kilburn said, sidestepping the fact that the ER records established that Angie did indeed have HIV.

“What other infection could it be?” Fischer demanded.

“An unusual skin infection,” he said. “We don’t know too much about it yet, but it’s important that we find her.”

“Is it dangerous?” She began to sob quietly. “Of course it is. Why else would you call?” She sniffled. “In spite of it all, she’s still my little girl.”

“I know,” Kilburn said. “But I can’t really answer your questions until we find Angie.”

“I don’t know exactly where she is,” Fischer said. “Before she was sixteen, I could get the child welfare authorities to track her down for me, but now that she’s eighteen, I can’t do anything legally. It’s so stupid! She’s just a confused little girl.”

“Okay, Mrs. Fischer,” he sighed. “Thanks for getting back to me—”

“But she still stays in contact with her brother,” Fischer cut in. “Glen told me she called three days ago. She had gone down to meet her boyfriend.” She hissed the word. “Dealer, more like it.”

“Gone where?” Kilburn asked.

“The parasite is from the States. He moved back to Seattle last year.”

“Seattle?” Kilburn blurted out. “Angie’s been in Seattle recently?”

“You sound upset,” she said.

“No, no,” Kilburn said, recovering his composure. “It will just make it that much harder to track her infection.”

But he didn’t say what he was really thinking: Has Angie already spread her deadly germs across the border?

24 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

24

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Head down, Horton dodged the crowds on Walnut Street heading away from SeptoMed’s headquarters. Lost in her thoughts, she barely noticed the warm sunny day on her way to the New York Deli. The diner was the closest thing the three key members of the Oraloxin development team had to a regular lunch spot, though they met there at most once a month.