The Judas Strain - James Rollins [169]
Lisa agreed. “She is the key, but she’s not the cure…not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
Painter heard her sigh from halfway around the world.
“We’re missing something. Something tied to a region in Cambodia.”
Painter straightened again. “Are you talking about Angkor?”
A long pause followed. “Yes.” He heard the surprise in her voice. “How did you—?”
Painter told her all about the Guild’s search along the historical trail and where it ended.
“And Gray is already there?” Lisa asked, sounding suddenly frantic. He heard her mumble, as if quoting someone. “They must not go there.” Her voice grew firmer. “Painter, is there any way to call Gray off?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice had begun to cut in and out. Her phone was losing power. “The bacteria are doing something to Susan’s brain. Energizing it in some manner, using sunlight. She has this strong urge to get to Angkor.”
Painter recognized what she was implying. “Like the crabs.”
“What?”
Painter related what he knew about the Christmas Island crabs.
Lisa understood immediately. “Susan must have been rewired in the same way. A chemically induced migratory impulse.”
“If that’s so, then maybe she’s mistaken about the necessity to go there. It might just be a blind drive. There’s no reason to risk going there yourselves. Not until things quiet down. Let Gray play out his game.”
Lisa was not convinced. “I think you’re right about an underlying biological drive. And in a lower life-form, like a crab, it might be nothing more than blind instinct. Crabs, like all arthropods, have only rudimentary—”
She stopped talking. Painter feared he’d lost the connection. But sometimes Lisa did that when she had a sudden insight. She would just switch off, using her full faculties to pursue some angle of thought.
“Lisa?”
It took another moment for her to respond.
“Susan could be right,” she mumbled—then louder, firmer: “I have to get her there.”
Painter spoke rapidly, knowing that they were about to lose the connection. He heard the resolve in Lisa’s voice and feared he would not have time to dissuade her. If she was going to Angkor, he wanted her somewhere out of harm’s way.
“Then land at the large lake near the ruins,” he said. “Tonle Sap Lake. There’s a floating village there. Find a phone, contact me again, but stay hidden there. I have a campaign being organized in the area.”
He barely made out her next words, something about doing her best.
Painter attempted one last exchange. “Lisa, what did you figure out?”
Her words cut in and out. “Not sure…liver flukes…virus must—”
Then the call fully died away. Painter called out a few more times, but he failed to raise her again.
A knock at his door drew his eyes up.
Kat rushed in, eyes sparkling, cheeks bright. “I heard! About Dr. Cummings! Is it true?”
Painter stared up at Kat. He read the question in Kat’s expression, in her whole body, a yearning to know. Lisa had told him. First thing. She had spoken in a rush, needing to unburden herself. Afterward, Painter had compartmentalized it away.
But confronted by Kat, by her hope, by her love, the truth struck him hard.
He stood and stepped around the table.
Kat saw it in his face.
She backed away from him, as if she could escape what was coming.
“Oh, no…” She grabbed a chair arm, but it failed to hold her. She went down to a knee, then collapsed to the other, covering her face with her hands. “No…”
Painter joined her on the floor.
He had no words to offer her, only his arms.
It wasn’t enough.
He pulled her against him, wondering how many more would die before this was over.
8:55 P.M.
THEY WERE RUNNING out of places to retreat.
Harriet waited for her husband at the foot of the stairs that led up to the top floor. She stood in the stairwell doorway. Jack had gone out to leave more false trails for the hunting dogs. She had already stripped her husband’s shirt and helped him hide pieces of it across the lower two floors: tossed into boarded-up offices, shoved into piles of refuse, hung from the metal drawer