No Immunity

end of his football days. The man was so quick to learn her tastes, to take over the affaires de maison , she had assumed he was a pro instituting his new quarterback’s regime. What she had forgotten was that great offensive linemen work on instinct. The lineman makes his move first. He clamps hands on the defensive guy’s jersey regardless of the holding penalty, he leg-whips ignoring the fifteen yards it might cost. For him the rules are mere impediments. Linemen who never deviated from the playbook were second string. Tchernak had been elected to the Pro Bowl.
    Kiernan did love breaking the rules, as long as the rules in question weren’t hers.
    “So, tell me more about this vital phone call you just got.” Tchernak loomed—six feet four inches—over the table.
    It was irrational to resist talking about it, as if it made the danger less, but she ached to put off the specter of disease for another few hours. She cut a piece of quail and chewed, savoring the sweet meat as much as possible under her cook’s demanding stare. “Great! Quail was an inspired choice. And your glaze!”
    Tchernak shrugged away the diversion as if he had forgotten he had made the dish.
    “Jeff Tremaine was in med school with me,” Kiernan admitted.
    “And that’s enough to make you drop everything?”
    “He’s never asked a favor before.”
    “So of course you can’t wait to see what the big deal is.”
    “Got it.”
    “You can’t just—”
    “It’s my agency, Tchernak; I go where I choose!” Ignoring his hurt expression, she forked another piece of meat, then gave up and let the fork slide to the plate. “Jeff’s talking hemorrhagic fever, like the epidemics that swept through Africa and South America . He’s probably panicking over nothing; it wouldn’t be the first baseless conclusion he’s jumped to. But if he’s right, if he’s got anything like Lassa fever up there, it’s a crisis. It would spread from town to town, and if it hit Las Vegas , even if it’s a virus we knew how to treat, there wouldn’t be enough of the drug in the world to treat all the people who’d get sick.”
    “You mean this is like the Ebola epidemics?”
    “There are a whole range of arenaviruses—Lassa fever, Junin, Argentine or Bolivian hemorrhagic fever. This could be any of them—deadly stuff, passed from rodents to humans through scratches, bites, and abrasions, or, and this is the scary part, Tchernak, sometimes through the air.”
    “You mean a cough on a bus—”
    “Exactly. With airborne contagion no one is immune. But I don’t know what Jeff Tremaine’s got up there in rural Nevada . It could be a new arenavirus, one of the RNA viruses we’ve never heard of, or something entirely different. Or Jeff Tremaine could have gone off the deep end. I’ll get a flight first light and catch the midnight special back.”
    Tchernak pulled out his chair and sat. “Okay, one day. I’ll hold down the office in your absence.”
    She felt the sides of her neck tighten protectively. Leaving Tchernak in charge of her hard-gained agency was like leaving Ezra to guard the quail. Even with the best of intentions he might decide a leg or two wouldn’t be missed. “Okay, but follow the instructions I—
    The phone rang and she leaped for it. “Hello?”
    “Is this Kiernan O’Shaughnessy? O’Shaughnessy Investigations?”
    The call was not her business line; it came through on her unlisted number. “And you are?”
    “Reston Adcock, Adcock Oil Explorations. Remember me?”
    There was no point in asking how he got this number; the arrogance in his voice said it all. She certainly hadn’t given it to him. She remembered that, and him.
    Tchernak was chewing very slowly, ear cocked in her direction, meat hanging from the fork he held absently at half mast.
    “Here’s my problem. A guy who does some work for me, Grady Hummacher, he’s gone missing. He was supposed to be here this morning at ten. He’s not the type to forget. I’ve called his place all day, even had my girl check the hospitals.”
    “And did your girl call the jails about this Grady Hummacher?”
    Of course Adcock missed her sarcasm. “Yeah, them too. Grady can be a hotdog, but he’s no fool. Not the type to drink and speed.”
    She pictured Reston Adcock: big, his skin burned a permanent tan from years in the oil fields, muscles just beginning to sag, hair just beginning to gray at the temples, blue eyes squinting, as if looking for whatever angle he