No Immunity

discovered.
    Now the lake was miles to the left, with nothing but turnoff signs to say it was there at all. And on the road, nothing else. Not so much as taillights. McGuire’d never admit it, but he didn’t like empty roads. A nice red set of J taillights ahead would have comforted him. A couple sets, on vehicles maybe weaving in and out, would have gone a long way to telling him he wasn’t headed off the edge of the earth. Way in the distance behind he could see white dots. Made him uneasy.
    “I’m a city guy,” McGuire muttered to himself for the sixth or seventh time since he’d lost sight of the bright lights of the Strip in his rearview. “I get hired ‘cause I know who’s into who, and where ‘who’ is hanging. It goes down in Vegas, I know about it. But here...” The Weasel glared out at the offending darkness as if it were a line of hoods in black cravats and bulletproof vests.
    There was a sound coming from the engine, or maybe the front axle. Metal grating on metal. It hadn’t been there before, not till he got out on this road with no gas station for another hundred miles, unless he wanted to turn off and drive miles of unlit, winding, two-lane roads and hope one of the marinas would have something besides a self-serve pump. Was it getting worse? He couldn’t tell. If he got stuck out here...
    It could have been there before, he told himself, knowing he was grabbing at straws. He hadn’t taken the ‘Cuda out of town in a couple years. Hadn’t hit—he glanced at the speedometer that was stuck at fifty—hadn’t gone above fifty in years.
    If he’d known about this trip into the desert when Adcock called, he’d have turned him down flat no matter— He laughed aloud. For ten grand he’d have walked across the atomic testing grounds. He wouldn’t have believed the feds about no one downwind being in danger, he wasn’t that blinded by cash, he’d just have figured that with his lifestyle he was lots more likely to see the end of ten grand than thirty years, or however long it took for those cancers to get you.
    He slowed for the turnoff for 93, felt the ‘Cuda pull against the turn, then ease into the straightaway. McGuire pushed pedal to floor, leaned back against the seat, and rested his hands loosely on the wheel. Nothing was going to change between here and the Doll’s House. Nothing except an hour of time.

    The metallic clanging in Louisa Larson’s car was not in the engine. Her foot was nowhere near the floor. Her toes tapped on the gas pedal, giving the BMW a sputtering ride probably not unlike the miserable old rattletrap she was trying to stay behind. They said people grew to resemble their dogs and take on the personality of their vehicles. If there was ever a guy meant for a sleazy rust bag of a car...
    Perspiration was so thick on her hands, the steering kept slipping. The rattling noise wasn’t so loud, she knew that, but it was driving her crazy. She could have passed the thug—she knew his destination—but she didn’t want to alert him. Tailing a car on an empty road should have been as complicated as prescribing ibuprofen for temporary pain relief. But this... Every time she came over a rise, she had to yank her foot off the gas. Once, she was almost in the guy’s trunk, back when there was other traffic on the road. She was losing it. Damn Grady Hummacher, did everything the man touched turn to poison? Okay, so the boys didn’t have the best of lives in Panama, but before Grady, they hadn’t been kidnapped, infected, and likely to be murdered before the virus could kill them.
    She could still feel the little thug’s hands on her throat, and the knife slicing down her face. Automatically her hand went to the wound—rough, blood-caked—and she felt the panic and fury anew. Her back was slimy, her sweater wadded against her skin. Last year she had a growing medical practice, a spot on two NMA committees, and useful connections in the Association, in government; she was on her way. And now? Here she was speeding up a deserted highway after a vicious gangster. She had to get to those boys before he did. The thug figured they’d be at the Doll’s House. Maybe. But that wasn’t the only possibility, it was merely the most benign.
    The rattling hammered on her head as if it were not coming from the glove compartment but inside her skull.
    She had driven this road often enough while finishing off her scholarship commitment to know how long, how frustrating,