Midnight Fever (Men of Midnight #5)(27)

He'd gotten word that Hammer was expecting intel from inside the CDC that could blow Baker's cash cow apart. That was not going to happen. It was a well-oiled machine that had earned him upwards of fifty million dollars in one year, plus earned his inside guy five million. It was clean and perfect and Baker aimed on using the system for years to come.

No skinny-ass web journalist was going to mess up his life. No way. Baker was going to defend his perfect murder delivery system with everything at his disposal.

There were others who could commit murder on command, but no one who could do so with such little risk, without using a team and without murder even being suspected. Not to mention the fact that the murderer could be miles away. It was perfect, and he wasn't letting it go.

It would take years for someone to put the clues together and by that time, even exhuming the bodies wouldn't prove anything. The virus degraded within 24 hours. All anyone could ever have was a string of unconnected sudden deaths.

Baker could continue for decades, and he had every intention of doing so.

Mike Hammer had to go.

He watched the loop again. The drone's video camera was less than perfect, damn it. He was going to have one of his techs change the camera system. Though, luckily, the virus delivery system worked perfectly.

The drone had hovered high in the air at the end of the alleyway. A camera drone had followed Hammer's taxi from the airport to near Pioneer Square, where Hammer got off and walked for an hour and a half. Hammer clearly had some training, because he'd have shaken off any human tailing him. He went into buildings at the front, exited from the rear and backtracked several times. The drone had no problems, invisible above his head. It simply circled above the buildings until he exited, then continued following him. 

Finally, Hammer stopped in a back alley behind a big department store. The drone watched as he leaned over the lock of a door, picking it. He opened it slightly. That was supposed to be his exit route after meeting with the informant.

He had a flight back to Washington DC at 7 p.m., which of course he would never make.

Thank God Baker had gotten word and had been able to obtain Hammer's toothbrush, and have his inside man prepare a small batch of edited and bio-weaponized H1N1 keyed to Hammer's DNA. Splicing in Hammer's DNA to the weaponized virus meant that the virus could only affect Hammer himself and no one else. Of course, with his DNA now part of the virus, it would be lethal to Hammer and any members of his family, but he wasn't meeting with a brother or a sister. He was meeting with an informant.

If Baker had had the fucking informant's identity and his DNA, he'd have killed two birds with one stone. As it was, the informant would think Hammer had had a heart attack. You'd need medical training to understand the difference between a virulent H1N1 filling the lungs with fluid and a sudden heart attack or stroke.

Dead was dead.

Baker leaned over. Now. This was the part he'd watched ten times. He pressed a button and watched it again, in slow motion.

A woman appeared at the end of the alleyway. The drone was right overhead, so all Baker saw was a large-brimmed straw hat and slender legs in turquoise pants. The drone hovered, and as the woman advanced, more of her became visible. Wisps of reddish-gold hair, a spectacular figure, flat heels, trailing a small rolling suitcase. When she was about halfway down the alley, Hammer straightened and watched as she approached.

Baker had been surprised that it was a woman, though maybe he shouldn't have been. Was she a colleague of Priyanka Anand, that bitch? Anand had worked in a lab with ten men and two women. Baker had checked everyone in the lab. Neither of the two women fit. One was close to retirement, almost sixty years old. This woman walked with the spring of someone young and fit. The other woman in Anand's lab weighed 250 lbs. Definitely not this one.

So, no. No one from Anand's lab.

The drone started its approach. It was a quadcopter, so the footage was slightly jerky. Hammer's head suddenly rose, puzzled. The camera caught a perfect shot of his face, long, lined, frowning. It caught that moment when he realized it was a drone. It caught the moment when the viral spray was released. The spray caught the woman, too. Baker could see a high cheekbone, glistening.

Hammer put his hand on the woman's head, turning her away from the camera in the drone.

The rest was so familiar that Baker could count the beats. Hammer coughing, hands at his throat, dropping to his knees, back against the building's wall. The woman's back and hat concealed most of their movements, though Baker knew exactly what was happening.

Hammer was drowning in his own fluids.

It always surprised Baker how fast it went. A minute, two at the most, was enough.

Hammer's heels drummed against the filthy asphalt, frantically, then slowly. Then a hand fell palm up against his thigh and the legs were still.