“And?” Lopez asked.

“You made your point, Lina, I’ll give you that, but you can’t afford to lose your cool with the press. Ever.” Amar paused. “Otherwise, I thought it went fine.”

“Thanks,” she said distantly.

“Lina, have you managed to contact Dr. Kilburn from Vancouver?”

“Yeah. He’s coming down today.” Then she stopped to take a breath. “Nelson, it seems there may be a plausible connection after all between the Canadian outbreak and ours.”

“Oh?” Amar said.

She told Amar about the teenage drug addict, Angie Fischer, and her connection to the first Vancouver case. “According to her mom, she came to Seattle to visit her boyfriend. It would’ve been within a couple of days after having her MRGAS abscess was drained. This was before we saw our first case in Tonya Jackson, a fellow user.”

Lopez took a breath and braced herself for the expected I-told-you-so reproach, but instead, Amar said: “Good work, Lina. This could be crucial. Have you found the girl yet?”

“I have an address for the boyfriend from his parole officer,” Lopez said. “I’ll start there. Finding her is our number-one priority.”

“Should be. She needs to be interrogated and quarantined.” Amar’s voice dropped lower. “And under the Communicable Diseases Act, we don’t need her consent to do either.”

“I know,” she said.

“Good. I would like to interview her myself when I get to Seattle tomorrow,” Amar said. “The day after at the latest.”

“I can handle it here, Nelson,” Lopez said, more defensively than she had intended.

“No one says you can’t,” Amar said. “But after I report to the secretary of health and the surgeon general in DC, I want to review the situation in person. Besides, I’m planning to visit Vancouver and San Francisco on the same trip.”

“San Francisco?” Lopez said.

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“There are two confirmed MRGAS-related deaths in the Bay Area,” Amar said flatly. Lopez’s heart sank. San Francisco! How far can the reach of one teenage junkie extend? Then a bleak thought hit her: not as far as the reach of Tonya Jackson’s dark-eyed dealer.

30 - Vancouver, Canada

30

Vancouver, Canada

Five minutes past noon, Kilburn walked into his empty waiting room. The moment Louise looked up and saw him, she dropped her pen. “Oh, Dr. Kilburn,” she groaned. “Not Parminder!”

“Yeah,” Kilburn said.

Louise rose from her desk and hobbled over to Kilburn. She swept him into another enveloping hug, which felt as unexpectedly comforting as the last one. When they broke off the embrace, he forced a smile. “We keep doing this, people will talk.”

“Damn that little parasite!” Louise huffed.

Technically, bacteria weren’t parasites, but he nodded in agreement.