Page 87 of Mastermind

“A new plague? Perhaps those health companies Weir was investing in were going to be the first ones with a cure? Heywood would stand to get even richer.”

“Heywood doesn’t need that to get rich,” says Theo. “Using them in some kind of stock scheme doesn’t make sense to me. However, I do think he used them for their labs.”

“We need to put together a team and go take those labs down right now,” I tell Gerald. “Before word makes it back to Heywood through the grapevine.”

“That’s on the table,” says Gerald.

“I hope so . . . Wait, what? Since when did you know about those labs?”

“We’ve been looking at a lot of facilities since you and Dr. Cray found the chimpanzee research lab. The ones you mentioned were among the list of suspect labs.”

“Who is ‘we’?” I ask.

Gerald lets out a sigh. “I was going to tell you. There’s another team out there looking into the Warlock. It’s an interagency task force.”

“Sounds like a leaky ship,” I say, frustrated at being outside the loop.

“These are good people. All information is contained within the group. We’ve had to compartmentalize because of the leaks.”

“Why wasn’t I part of this? It would have helped when I was dealing with IDR.”

“IDR has members on the task force. And your job was him,” Gerald says, pointing to Theo.

“Well, I found him. Why wasn’t I put on this team?” The thought of being left out is making me angrier by the moment.

“To be honest, Jessica? Not everyone trusts you. Some worry that your connection to Heywood makes you irrational.”

I’m about to show him how irrational I can be when I feel Theo’s hand on my arm. He’s more present than I realized and possibly as agitated as I feel. I take a breath to calm myself.

“What has this task force determined?” I ask as neutrally as possible.

“Nothing yet. But the best guess is Heywood is after something atypical,” says Gerald.

“Like what? Disneyland shut down for his own amusement? A trip to the space station?”

“Some think he may be trying to build a bioweapon and ransom it back to the United States,” says Gerald.

“Excuse me? How exactly does that work? Since when does the United States pay off bad guys not to do bad stuff?” I ask.

“I’d say the billions of dollars we’ve sent to the Middle East with no accounting says otherwise,” replies Gerald.

“But you’re talking about sovereign states. Countries and regimes. Not a person,” I protest.

“It all comes down to power. A bioweapon that can kill more people than a nuclear bomb is a lot of power.”

“This is madness! The government can’t be thinking about taking an offer like that seriously?”

“It hasn’t reached that level yet. And as far as it being an offer, we think if and when Heywood approaches us, it won’t appear to be extortion. He’ll probably present this as part of the intelligence that he stole from Chinese and Russian bioweapons research. He won’t say, ‘Give me what I want or I release this death virus.’ He’ll be offering to become a government informant.”

“Wasn’t he doing that already?”

“Probably. But even the CIA didn’t have the power to free him.”

“No. But they had the stupidity to make it easy for him to escape,” I reply.

“That’s being looked into as well. And I’ll tell you one more thing.” Gerald glances at Theo. “This doesn’t leave here. Understand? We may have an informant who knows more about what Heywood is up to. We’re going to find out what that is.”

I make a loud sigh. “Right. Like that doesn’t smell of a Heywood setup.”