“Your email address, Dr. Lu. Spell it for Siri, please.”
She frowned. He had a message app open with the microphone turned on.
“You want my email address?”
“I’ll text it to my boss. He’ll email you the data. They sent it to me, but I can’t email and drive.”
“Abduction is a felony. It carries the death penalty.”
“No, it doesn’t. And Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1846. One of the few good things about this state.”
Great. Her abductor had a wry sense of humor.
“Life in prison sucks, too,” she said. “Most people say it’s worse.”
“Nah. Death is always worse.” His gaze met hers in the rearview mirror. “At least it is for me. I can survive just about anything.”
She believed it. Something about the flatness in his expression had her believing he’d seen a lot worse things than she could even imagine. And while she was processing that, he set his phone down.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Dr. Lu. I swear. But we’re not exactly normal people here, so we didn’t know how to get you this information. People are dying. We’re trying to help.”
“So you abduct the nearest doctor?”
He huffed out his breath. “I went to the CDC. I was looking for Dr. Hayes.”
“He bailed. To DC.”
He snorted. “Figures. So yeah, I grabbed you. You were awake and right there. But only to make you believe and to give you the data. Now will you please spell your email address for Siri?”
God, he seemed so reasonable. But why the hell hadn’t he just asked for her email address at the hospital? “You didn’t have to throw me into your car for my email address.”
“You have to see the truth before you believe the data. Please?” He tilted the phone at her. And damn it, it wasn’t like she could kick out his car window and leap out. She’d tried. And that’s when she realized why.
“Bulletproof windows?”
“Yes.”
Hell. Who ran around Detroit with bulletproof windows? Gangsters, drug lords, anyone who lived near 8 Mile assuming they could afford it. She swallowed. Just whom was she dealing with?
“We’re trying to help, Dr. Lu.”
She nodded and pitched her voice to his phone, spelling out her email address so that it appeared in full on the screen.
“Thank you,” he said as he hit send. “They’ll send you all the data they’ve got.”
She blew out a breath. “Okay. So take me back?—”
“Well, here’s the thing. You’re not going to believe any of it until you see for yourself. Like really see.”
She sighed, reluctantly starting to believe his tale. Obviously, he was involved in crime of some sort. He’d zip tied her with professional speed and had bulletproof windows. And since the CDC had already figured out that whatever was causing the Detroit Flu was most likely man-made, it stood to reason that a criminal element might have information they didn’t.
“Data is data,” she said. “We don’t have to see anything but the numbers. If it’s repeatable then we don’t care where it came from.”
She watched his mouth tighten. He didn’t say anything, just waited her out. In fact, it was the exact expression she used when her aunts started talking to her about how to catch a husband. She pressed her lips together, assumed a fake expression of interest, and waited until they finished with their nonsense.
“Do you even know how real science works? If it’s a real lead, you just have to send it to us. We’ll look at it.”
“Because you always open files from strange email addresses.”
