Lost Immunity by Daniel Kalla (free reads TXT) 📕

hasn’t told anyone else yet, not even Dominic or Amber.

“About damn time.”

“You think so?”

“You haven’t been happy in years, Lisa. Not really.”

“I guess not, no.”

“And you kept making more excuses. Fertility issues, blah, blah, blah.” Angela nods to the couch. “One thing I’ve learned through all of this is how much it matters to be with the right person.” Her voice cracks. “Especially at the end.”

Lisa doesn’t have words to respond, so she keeps quiet and continues to cling to her friend’s hand.

Angela finally breaks the silence. “I was never willing to consider you my protégée before. Too worried you’d disappoint me.” She winks. “But you made me proud.”

Lisa fills with paradoxical emotions. Angela’s approval means the world to her, but it only emphasizes how important her friend is. Lisa has no idea if Angela has days or weeks left, but it devastates her to think how much she’s going to miss her. She can barely croak out the words, “Thank you.”

“You’re going to land on your feet, Lisa.” Angela chuckles. “Take it from someone’s who isn’t.”

CHAPTER 63

Nathan knocks at the door to Lisa’s office. She looks up from her desk in surprise. “Your assistant said it would be all right if I dropped in,” he says.

“Sure. Come in.” Her tone isn’t warm, but at least she doesn’t sound as suspicious as she did during their last few encounters.

Nathan steps inside, closes the door, and sits down across from her. “I just came to say good-bye.”

“You’re heading back to New York?” she asks, tugging at her ear.

He can’t help but notice that the wedding band is missing from her ring finger. “Yeah, for good this time. One of our other VPs, Sonya Silverstein, will be taking my place here.”

“Here? So you’re not leaving Delaware?”

“Nowhere else to go.” He would love to explain it to her, but he can’t. “I just won’t be overseeing the day-to-day operations on Neissovax anymore. I’ll connect you and Sonya via email this afternoon.”

“Thank you,” she says. “All things considered, the relaunch of the campaign has gone smoothly, wouldn’t you say?”

“Better than I expected, for sure. Obviously, we’re still fighting a headwind on the publicity front, but back at Delaware they’re pretty pleased.”

She eyes him knowingly. “Its share price has rebounded well in the past week, hasn’t it?”

“For now. Let’s see what happens after the class-action suits are launched for the damage Fiona inflicted.”

“Have you had any contact with her?”

“No,” he says nonchalantly, hiding his conflicted feelings. He hates Fiona for what she did, but he can’t help missing his friend and confidante. And a small part of him empathizes with her desire to make Delaware pay. “I talked to her attorney. Apparently, Fiona hasn’t spoken to anyone while in custody, not even him.”

Lisa nods. “The night we caught her, she swore Peter Moore was behind the hack of the website and the cover-up of Darius’s death.”

“Did she have proof?”

“No. And in almost the same breath that she accused him of masterminding the hack, she also made up a story about some doctored European study to frame Peter for the adverse reactions.”

“Hard to know what to believe, huh?”

“Or whom.” Lisa stares hard at him. “It doesn’t make any sense for Fiona to have been involved in the cover-up. She wanted those reactions to come to light.”

“You still think it was me?”

“The FBI is investigating. But I get the feeling the tracks are too well covered. Not sure we’ll ever find out who was behind it.”

He’s silent for a long moment before he stands. “With all the terrible stuff that happened after the launch, you were the one bright spot in all this. I really respect you. I enjoyed working with you, Lisa. And the time we spent together.” He meets her eyes. “I’m sorry it had to end like it did.”

She shows him a hurt smile. “I wish it had been different, too, Nathan.”

He lingers in her gaze a brief moment, before he finally turns to go.

A tinge of melancholy accompanies him as he trudges down the hallway and out of the Public Health office.

It could have been all so different. Especially with Lisa.

But Nathan is glad to be heading home to his boys. Not to the office, though. He’s dreading what punitive reassignment Peter will have in store for him. Leaving Delaware isn’t an option. Peter has him over a barrel, as he hasn’t been hesitant to remind him.

Nathan would give anything to go back and do it over again. It was such a pivotal time. Everything hung in the balance. He was convinced Darius’s death was a tragic coincidence and not caused by the vaccine—and time had proven him right, technically—but he also understood that word of it would destroy the campaign. So Nathan had his dark web IT consultant purge the report on Darius, which he would’ve never done if he had any inkling of the other serious reactions that were to follow.

Maybe, from a criminal perspective, he got away with it. Maybe. But what’s done is done.

In the process, he sacrificed a piece of himself and his soul.

And for what? It changed nothing. And cost so much.

CHAPTER 64

The thirtieth-floor, northwest-facing condo is a quarter of the size of the home Lisa left behind, but she doesn’t mind. The house always felt too big for just Dominic and her. She’s happy to have traded all the unused space for the view from her new place. Last night, she got butterflies standing on the balcony and watching the sun set behind the Space Needle and the Olympic Mountains beyond Elliott Bay, against a fuchsia sky.

The condo is finally furnished, but the unopened boxes scattered on the living room floor and piled against the far wall represent a problem that the bedrooms and bathrooms also share.

“What are you going for here?” Amber gently kicks at the box by her foot. “Warehouse chic?”

“Yeah, Tee,” Olivia chimes in. “When are you going to unpack?”

Lisa sweeps Olivia up in her