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СКАЧАТЬ wasting your time.”

      Natalie Patterson looked up from her microscope as Chuck Randolph spoke. Wearing wire-rimmed glasses, his sport shirt covered by a white lab coat identical to hers, he was standing beside her workstation, closer than was necessary, and he was making her uncomfortable.

      Natalie frowned. Chuck was a nice guy. He was good-looking, too, if she chose to discount the way he stared at her with his sober brown eyes, and concentrated instead on his pleasant features and slender, athletic build—unusual for a man who spent the greater part of the day either peering through a microscope or writing reports. But she didn’t discount it. Nor did she choose to consider that he was single and only a few years older than her twenty-four years, also unusual in her line of work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of the men there were either years older than she, married, or not interested in a serious-minded brunette who was dedicated to her work—or worse, were married and interested.

      Actually, she liked Chuck. She had gone out on a few casual dates with him. He was intelligent, resourceful and had a dry sense of humor that she enjoyed. They had a lot in common, but like was the operative word. She had taken a step back when it seemed his feelings were beginning to run deeper.

      It appeared that she hadn’t stepped back far enough.

      Chuck continued, “Just about everybody in the lab has already checked out those specimens with negative results, Natalie. I know New York is frustrated by the case, but we don’t have an answer for them.”

      Chuck’s tone was casual, but he was still looking at her in a way that said his feelings for her didn’t match his tone, and Natalie did not immediately respond.

      At her silence, Chuck frowned and prompted, “Why? Have you come up with something?”

      “No, but—”

      “But?”

      “I don’t know…something about these specimens bothers me.”

      “You can’t be more explicit than that?”

      “No, and I guess that’s the problem.”

      Chuck said flatly, “Give it up, Natalie. Those specimens have gone the whole established route, from the New York City Police Department, to the health department and sentinel labs, and now to us. We’ve conducted every possible test on them here, including a PCR test for the presence of DNA unique to disease agents, just in case. It bothered every one of us when we came up empty, but we’ve all accepted that we’ve done everything possible to determine the cause of the deaths.”

      “I know, but—”

      “That isn’t what I came here to talk about, anyway.” Chuck moved closer. She noted the line of discomfort between his brows as his expression softened and he said, “I thought you might like to go to lunch today. George is out of the office and we can take a little extra time.”

      Dr. George Minter, their gray-haired, stoop-shouldered supervisor who suffered from a severe case of myopia, had been like a father to her since she’d arrived at the CDC. She knew that even if he were in the building, he would look the other way and pretend he didn’t notice if she took an extended lunch hour. But that wasn’t the point. Chuck was too nice. She didn’t want to lead him on.

      She replied as gently as she could, “Not today, Chuck. I have to finish up here.”

      “Maybe tonight, then. Dinner.”

      “Maybe.”

      Encouraged by her response, he replied, “There’s a restaurant on Ponce de Leone Avenue that I think you’ll like. You favor Italian food and I figured that you—” He halted at her uncertain expression, then continued more softly, “It’s just dinner, Natalie. No commitment involved. Give it a chance. You have to eat, and you might end up enjoying yourself.” He added, “Think it over. I’ll talk to you later.”

      Later.

      Natalie sighed and turned again to her microscope as the lab door closed. She really liked Chuck. She enjoyed his friendship, but she wasn’t sure how to handle the situation so they could remain friends. Despite her age, her experience with men was limited. Aunt Charlene hadn’t been much help in that department. Incredibly dear but a confirmed spinster, her aunt had raised her after she was orphaned by a rare virus that struck her parents when she was eight years old. Her first serious love affair in college with a jock named Billy Martindale hadn’t afforded much additional insight. It was a disaster. In retrospect, she realized that Billy never saw past the present or the physical. He didn’t understand her dedication to her studies or her dreams for the future.

      The sad truth was that for a while, she actually started believing Billy’s incessant mantra that she was too serious, she was wasting her youth, she’d regret not taking advantage of all he had to offer her—until she learned the hard way that he had used that line too often on too many other girls. After that experience, she had sworn that she’d never let anyone get her that much off course again.

      She had then turned even more firmly toward her books. She had devoted all her energy to her renewed desire to emulate her heroes, the researchers who had identified the virus that had killed her parents just in time to save her life. She’d graduated with honors and dated casually afterward. Being hired by the CDC a few years previously had been the realization of her dream.

      Natalie glanced around the lab, noting for the first time that with Chuck gone and everyone else out to lunch, she was alone in the state-of-the-art facility, but she had no desire to stop to eat. The unusual appearance of the liver specimens nagged at her.

      Natalie adjusted the microscope focus as she reviewed the specimens’ background again in her mind.

      A young woman named Mattie Winslow, living in Queens, New York, had invited her family to her house for an outdoor barbecue. By the end of the day, many of the guests had gotten sick and died, including Mattie and her husband, Gus. It was a tragic circumstance, but not entirely unusual on a hot day when the possibility of food contamination was at its highest. The only problem was that local public health officials had found the food from the party to be uncontaminated. Nor had they found contamination in the water, soil, or air at the Winslow residence. Every other possible substance was tested, including insects, plants, and pollen gathered in the vicinity. All came up negative, but even the few guests who survived the sickness suffered extensive, permanent damage to the liver that was incapacitating.

      A mystery.

      Yet the appearance of the liver specimens was tauntingly familiar to her.

      Natalie looked at the specimen under her microscope more closely. The erosion of the surface, the peculiar deterioration—she was certain she had seen it before.

      Frustrated beyond measure, Natalie drew back from the microscope. Her jaw was set when she walked out into the hallway toward the medical library.

      Hardly aware that hours had passed, she was filing through yet another shelf of medical journals when she found an issue that was excitingly familiar. She leafed through it, her hands shaking with anticipation as she scanned the article she had read shortly after arriving at the CDC a few years earlier.

      A British facility conducting cancer research had developed a drug called Candoxine, which their scientists used to induce cancer in laboratory rats. The lab reported progress against a particularly virulent strain СКАЧАТЬ