The list of pathogens grew as the morning wore on, bacteria and viruses and diseases that were deadly and transmissible, all mixed together unsecured in the Georgetown apartment. There were names Fletcher was familiar with, or at least could puzzle out: Clostridium botulinum, Salmonella enteritidis, diarrheagenic Escherichia coli, SARS coronavirus, HIV. And a few he couldn’t, specifically something Sam said was a generic hemorrhagic flavivirus—as if there was anything generic about hemorrhagic viruses—plus a mosquito-borne alphavirus called chikungunya, and something in a nasty pink solution with a handwritten label: Gransef. No one had heard of that one before.

Fletcher was livid. How his crime scene techs had missed the refrigerator of doom, as he’d mentally dubbed it, was lost on him. It had taken Sam all of ten minutes to find it. There was going to be a shitstorm back at headquarters. In the meantime, he needed to find out what the hell Thomas Cattafi was doing with all these pathogens in his hidden refrigerator, and why he and Amanda Souleyret had been attacked.

And what vial, if any, was missing from the lot. The vials were in a plastic carrier, and one slot was open. When Sam had pointed it out, his stomach dropped to his knees. That lone emptiness freaked him out more than anything.

The meeting at State had been pushed back to noon. Sam had the day off but asked a crime scene tech to relay a message to her TA, Stephanie, to handle anything that might come up during the afternoon. Though unable to return to work, her insatiable curiosity was keeping her mood buoyed. He could see she was starting to chafe at being left out, like him, as the HAZMAT team began retrieving the pathogens from Cattafi’s apartment, but she watched the proceedings with bright eyes.

She’d never last at Georgetown. He’d been surprised when she accepted the position in the first place, surprised she’d agreed to upend her life and move to D.C. If there was ever a woman who should have a badge, a lifeline into investigations, it was her. Her passion for the job was clear, and while he had no doubt she was passionate about teaching, too, he couldn’t imagine it could be nearly as fun as what they’d stumbled into this morning.

At least Baldwin had talked her into consulting for the FBI. She had a gift, and Fletcher was happy someone was going to be able to use it.

Towering clouds were gathering briskly over the Potomac. With heart-stopping suddenness, the sun disappeared. He could hear gentle rumbles of thunder in the distance. Watching the curtain rise on the show, he understood how the ancients looked at storms as a form of the gods arguing. He could do with a little divine interference himself.

He needed to get cleared so he could go over to George Washington University Hospital and see how Thomas Cattafi was faring. The folks at GW had been warned to treat him as a HAZMAT, though by now, with all the people who’d come into contact with him, if he’d fucked up and mishandled any of the pathogens in his apartment, they were all screwed. The same went for Souleyret’s body—the morgue had been cautioned to treat her autopsy with the utmost of care.

Always something, Fletcher thought.

A tech came with their phones, handed them off. They were still wrapped in plastic. “They’re ringing off the hook. Deal with it.”

Sam immediately grabbed hers and started listening to messages. Fletcher did the same—a call from Armstrong, chewing his ass out for getting exposed to this shit and tying up the investigation, and by the way, I hope you’re okay; Hart, on his way over; Jordan, his I think I can safely call her my girlfriend, wanting to know if he was free for lunch on Friday, when she arrived back in town; and oddly, his ex-wife, Felicia, who rarely reached out, asking if he could take Tad this weekend.

Nothing that helped the case.

When he finished, he saw Sam was on the phone, eyes averted. She glanced his way, then hung up. He leaned over to her. “Who are you talking to? No, let me guess. Xander.”

She gave him a crooked grin. “If you must know, that was Amado. He was going to post the woman in an hour. I asked if I could stop by and watch. He agreed to wait until we finish the meeting at the State Department first. It will take them a while to set up the precautions, anyway. They’ve done some preliminary blood work to see if anything stands out. So far, she’s showing clean.”

Fletcher sighed in relief. “Good. Hopefully she hadn’t gotten into anything. I’ll go with you. I want both our eyes on this.”

“It’s going to be an interesting one, that’s for sure. None of the vials were disturbed, but the refrigerator had been turned off. The C-bot—sorry, botulism—had begun breaking down. It wasn’t perfectly sealed, and that’s what the terrible smell was. The proteins began to decompose, just like flesh.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Is botulism a hazard?”

She shook her head. “It is a disease, not an airborne pathogen, which is the only reason we’re being isolated here instead of locked down in a containment unit. No, I don’t think there’s any real danger from any of these, so long as they’re treated properly. But it’s quite convenient that he had the wine fridge built into the bar. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never find it.”

“But maybe the killer did find it. There might be a vial missing. Hell, we’re going in circles. We need to find out what Souleyret was doing with Cattafi in the first place.”

“Yes, we do. I have word in to Baldwin. As soon as he lands in Denver, he’ll call. He told me he didn’t think her current assignment had anything to do with her death, but that was when we thought this was a domestic. Now that we’re dealing with a potential double murder, we have to approach it in a whole new light. Face it, Fletch. You’re stuck with me.”

He grinned at her. “What a perfectly horrible thought.”

Hart came by a few minutes later. Arms bulging, neck now sweating. He had a hand on the Glock at his waist, an impenetrable look spread across his face.

Fletcher put up his hands.

“Don’t shoot, Occifer. I ain’t drunk.”

“You’re demented, that’s what you are,” Hart replied. “And cleared. All the field tests are negative. You’re fine, you’re out of isolation. All the brain rot is from natural causes.” He turned to Sam with a smile. “Good to see you, Doc. This loon roped you into another case?”

“Hey, I’m your commander—you can’t call me a loon.”

Hart rolled his eyes. “Doc, I ever tell you about the time me and Fletch were down in Loudon County on a domestic? Turns out this guy’d been doing it with his goat, and the wife caught him going at it in the barn, lost it, grabbed the closest weapon and pumped him full of bird shot. Dude dies with his, ahem, boots on, so to speak. Now, Fletch here, he’s trying to figure out how we save this poor goat, so he—”

Sam was already giggling, and Fletcher reached out like he was going to smack Hart’s arm, but thought better of touching him. “Don’t you dare say another word, or I’ll bump you back to uniform. Tell me what’s happening at the hospital. How’s Cattafi?”

Hart flashed him a grin, then got serious. “Dude lost a lot of blood. He’s not giving too many signs of waking up anytime soon. His family’s on a flight in from Michigan. They’ll be in—” he checked his watch “—by one or two. There are big storms in Chicago and their plane was delayed. Your dead chick has a sister. We’re trying to locate her to do notification now. There’s not a lot of info floating around about either one of them, and the vic lived overseas. We’re trying to track it all down. I figure you’re gonna want to talk to the families when we round them up, at the very least.”

“Kind of you to save them for me.”

“Yeah, yeah. The sacrifices I make.”

“Cattafi’s parents wrecked?”