Lost Immunity by Daniel Kalla (free reads TXT) 📕

which are separated by curtains, until she sees “14,” dashes over to it, and yanks back the curtain, terrified of what it will reveal.

Amber sits in a chair at the bedside while Olivia is propped up in the bed, wearing a hospital gown.

“Tee!” Olivia says with a huge smile.

A sense of relief overwhelms Lisa. Her tears flow at the sight of her niece, whose color appears normal, and whose face is unmarred by blisters or rash.

Olivia frowns. “Why so sad, Tee?”

“Not sad at all.” Lisa’s voice quivers, and she wipes her eyes with the back of her forearm.

Amber reaches out and gives her elbow a quick squeeze. “Turns out it’s just a localized reaction. They’re seeing lots of them, apparently.”

“Let me see your arm, Liv,” Lisa says, stepping toward the bed.

Olivia slides the oversize gown off her shoulder to show the saucer-sized raised red welt at the site of the injection. Lisa immediately recognizes it for the harmless reaction that almost any vaccine can induce. “Thank God,” she murmurs.

“I didn’t want to overreact,” Amber says. “But after all your concerned calls…”

“I get it.” Lisa steadies her breathing. “But why didn’t you pick up your phone? You scared the hell out of me with that message.”

“Sorry, they asked me to turn it off.”

“I’m OK, Tee,” Olivia reassures her.

She strokes her niece’s cheek. “I know, hon.”

Lisa stays a few minutes longer to confer with Olivia’s attending physician, but she has to head back to her car once the page comes on the overhead speaker demanding, “Whoever is parked in the ambulance bay, please move your vehicle immediately!”

Lisa drives back to her office. On her way in, she stops at her assistant’s desk. “Did you find the number I asked you to track down?”

“I did,” Ingrid says. “It’s the FBI. They have a field office here in Seattle.”

“Can you put in a call in for me? I need to speak to the agent in charge. Tell him or her it’s urgent.”

Lisa heads straight into her office and is closing the door behind her when Tyra puts her hand out to stop it. “Where have you been?” the program director asks.

“Come in,” Lisa says, and shuts the door as soon as Tyra is inside.

“What in the name of Jesus H is going on, Lisa? Angela told me about the website. I feel so violated. As in personally.”

“Oh, Ty, it gets a lot worse than that.”

“How could that be possible?”

Tyra’s eyes go wider as Lisa explains the toxicology results on Mateo’s syringe. “Who?” Tyra whispers.

“No idea. But it had to be someone with access to the vaccine.”

“And you’re sure the vaccine was tampered with after the vial left the manufacturing plant?”

“Almost certain,” Lisa says. “We’ll round up a bunch of vials from Delaware for testing. But it makes no sense that they were tainted at the plant. You’ve seen how anal Fiona is. It would have been picked up on the quality-control testing.”

“Unless the quality-control folks were in on it…”

“There are too many barriers,” Lisa says. “Besides, the lab is going to test all of the syringes from that clinic. The vials were packed together in boxes of two hundred and fifty. If the whole batch was tainted, the toxins will turn up in every one of those syringes.”

“Not if someone at the factory was only randomly poisoning individual vials.”

“True.” Lisa tilts her head and studies her friend. “Ty, it sounds as if you want the toxins to have come from the plant.”

“I do,” she says gravely. “I really do.”

“Why?”

“Think it about, Lisa. If the vaccine wasn’t tampered with in the factory, then it means the vials were poisoned here in Seattle.”

“And?”

“How many people around here would have access to those vials?”

Lisa sees what she’s getting at. “Very few outside of our own staff.”

“Maybe a couple of the folks from Delaware,” Tyra says. “But even then, they didn’t handle the individual vials after they were opened. Our nurses were the only ones who did.”

Their eyes lock. “Tyra, we’ll need to go through a list of the nurses who worked the clinic where Mateo got his shot. And cross-reference them with all the nurses who worked that first clinic where Mia and Darius got sick, too.”

CHAPTER 52

Lisa has walked, jogged, cycled, and driven past the nondescript building on the corner of Third and University in the heart of downtown multiple times without ever realizing that it housed the Seattle field office for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

She heads to the seventh floor and opens a glass door that’s emblazoned with the distinctive FBI seal. Even though she has never been inside an FBI office, it’s exactly as she envisioned, down to the large framed side-by-side photographs of the president and the FBI director hanging on the near wall.

“Can I help you?” asks the young man behind the reception desk.

“I’m Dr. Dyer from Seattle Public Health. I have an appointment to see Special Agent-in-Charge Douglas.”

“I’ll let the SAC know you’re here,” he says as he lifts the phone.

Moments later, two people emerge from the corridor, both wearing dark suits. The man is handsome, midfortyish, and African American. The woman walking beside him looks to be in her thirties, and she is as tall as he is, at least six feet, with a fair complexion and curly red hair.

They both offer Lisa somber smiles. “Good to meet you, Dr. Dyer,” the man says. “I am Chris Douglas. And this is our ASAC—assistant special agent-in-charge—Eileen Kennedy.” He motions back down the corridor. “Please. Join us in my office.”

Lisa follows them down to his office, which is no bigger than Lisa’s but boasts a better view, looking down the hill and out onto Elliott Bay. Lisa and Eileen sit down across the desk from Douglas. “I hope you don’t mind getting us both for this meeting, Dr. Dyer,” Douglas says.

“Lisa, please,” she says. “And at this point, I’ll take all the help I can get.”

“I saw your press conference on the vaccine, Lisa,” Eileen says. “I