Kay held the passport and the credit card tightly. The card bit into the palm of her hand. She welcomed the little bite of pain, it helped ground her. Fleeing to Rio would make her an international criminal. She had good reasons, but if the truth never came to light, if all the good guys died, then she'd live the rest of her life in hiding.
"It's a lot to take in," she said, meeting his sad eyes.
"It is. And we're asking a lot of you. But-you know what's at stake."
She nodded. She did know. Perhaps the fate of the world. If a worldwide pandemic hit, it could take generations for mankind to come back from the brink, if it ever did.
"In the meantime," he waggled the flash drive, "it will take me some time to digest this material."
Kay gave a crooked smile. "Yeah. I think there's well over a petabyte of information."
"When Priyanka contacted me, she gave me an indication of the data and how to sort through it." His tired, serious face lost a little color. "If even half of what she suspected is true, it would be catastrophic. We'll go through every word, every chart and table. I have people and I have software. But still. It'll take a couple of days to decrypt it and go through it with my team, and it will take us a week to put together an article. Probably a series of articles. So, stay underground for at least ten days, more if you can. It's good that you asked for leave. If you need to, say you've taken ill and need treatment. Keep an eye on my site and when the articles start coming out, you can reassess. Nothing should happen to you once everything is out. You'll be the last person they'd be interested in. You should be safe." He looked suddenly fierce. "I don't want what happened to Priyanka to happen to you."
"No," she said softly. "I don't either."
"I will protect your identity no matter what. No one-" He broke off and looked around with a frown. "What's that?"
"What's what?" But she heard it too. A soft buzzing, louder by the second. The louder it got, the more she realized it was coming from above their heads. Some kind of electricity glitch?
She looked up, puzzled, when Mike suddenly shouted, "Drone!" and pushed her head down. She was initially stiff, not understanding. "Keep your head down," Mike shouted. "Don't let the drone photograph your face!"
Oh God!
Somehow the bad guys had followed Mike! Oh God! She couldn't allow the drone to photograph her! As a government employee, her face was in the CDC database. Two people had been killed for the information she'd handed over to Mike. Kay pulled the wide-brimmed hat lower, glad she had sunglasses on. "Let's get out of here."
He nodded, took her elbow, ready to run for it. He kept his head low, features in shadow from above.
Maybe it would be okay.
Holding on to the hat, Kay risked a glance up and saw with horror that the drone wasn't hovering.
It was diving. Straight at them.
Mike put one hand on her head, pushing her face down, and the other on her shoulder, rushing them to an iron service door set in the wall. He ran them toward it, taking his hand off her head-she'd gotten the message loud and clear, staring straight at the ground-reaching out for the handle. The buzzing grew louder and Mike gave her a big shove against the wall, so hard she bounced.
The drone dove down. Kay turned away, back to Mike. She heard a click and felt moisture in the air, a fine mist coming down. Swiveling her head away from the drone to peer up at the cloudless sky she saw nowhere the moisture could have come from.
The drone lifted, hovered for just a second, and then flew away, straight along to the end of the alleyway, where it lifted farther up to the rooftop and disappeared. The buzzing sound was gone and there was total silence in the alley.
"It's gone, Mike," she whispered, rubbing her shoulder. In his attempt to shield her, hurling her against the wall, he'd hurt her. "We're safe. Where do we-"
Mike collapsed. One second he was upright, the next he was sitting against the wall, legs at an unnatural angle. He'd been holding on to her arm and almost brought her down with him.
"Mike?"
Kay couldn't make sense of what was happening. Mike had been standing next to her and now he was collapsed on the ground. She kneeled, tried to pull him up. But he couldn't stand.
He was wheezing, red-faced, one hand clutching his throat. His back arched like he'd received an electric shock and his heels started drumming on the pavement. It was some kind of seizure. Kay bent his head back, looking for obstructions, getting ready for CPR.