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“Supervisors.” He gave a nod of commiseration. “That’s why I like the night shift.” He lifted his chin toward the door to the gator room. “What’s in there? Rumor has it alligators were brought in, but the sounds aren’t like any gators I’ve ever heard. Creeps me out all night.”
“Details are, um, classified.” I offered him a helpless shrug. “Sorry. Nothing to worry about, though. I promise.”
“Says the tricksy eavesdropper,” Short Guy said, his voice colored with humor. He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Skedaddle, Ninja Girl. Out this way. The exit to the LZ-1 suite is down the hall to the left.”
I breathed a thanks as I passed. The corridor was deserted, but quiet voices drifted from somewhere. Following his directions, I escaped to our lab area then paused in the corridor, listening carefully for Sorsha or Kristi.
No sign of either one. If I was lucky, the two were off making someone else’s life miserable instead of mine.
I scurried back to the main lab room. Beardzilla and Hairy Tech worked, heads down, at the back table. Brian was doing his hourly sweep for listening devices as part of his normal security protocol. Dr. Nikas jerked his hand away from Kristi’s computer, looking guilty as hell.
“Oh. It’s only you, Angel,” he said quietly.
I moved in close and kept my voice low. “What are you doing?”
He slipped a thumb drive into his pocket. “Keeping tabs on Kristi’s work and progress. Everything in the lab is kept on the local computers—no cloud or outside server—to protect the zombie information. Her data is encrypted, but we can unravel it.”
“Smart. You don’t trust her.”
“Never again.” He looked a little sad at that, but then he straightened. “And I wanted her most recent activity safely acquired before I confront her over the gym death and her lack of communication.”
“Good plan,” I said. “Do you have results from the protein packet samples yet?”
“Jacques should have them later this morning, then I will meet with Kristi.”
“If you need someone to watch your back, or even just to supply loads of moral support, I’m here for you.”
He gave me a warm smile. “That hardly needs to be said.”
I flushed, warmed by his unwavering trust in me. “By the way, I overheard the FBI agent ask Kristi if she’d ever seen anything zombie-like before. Seemed like an odd question to ask a scientist. Made me a little uneasy.”
His brows drew together. “Troubling, indeed. We’ll see what comes of this visit.”
With any luck at all, Sorsha would leave after talking to Kristi. “On a related note, when I went to check on the gators, I noticed most of them have wounds.” I described the odd injuries. “What’s that all about?”
He frowned, perplexed. “We took small snips yesterday. Nothing at all like what you saw. I don’t know what need she would have for more and larger tissue samples. She did not confer with me before taking them.”
I glowered. “That’s because Kristi thinks she thinks she’s hot shit and in charge.”
Dr. Nikas sighed. “I’ll have a word with her about that as well.”
“You need to start making a list,” I said. “Like Santa, except it’s alllllll of Kristi’s naughtiness.”
He cleared his throat, quickly squelching the ever-so-brief flash of amusement in his eyes. “Jacques called a few minutes ago with a report on Nick’s condition. He’s stable,” Dr Nikas added quickly before I could freak out and imagine the worst. “There’s been no change, which in our current scenario is good. However, I believe we can dispose of the theory that you infected Nick via saliva.”
“You mean kissing? How do you know that wasn’t it?”
“Jacques found a mosquito bite on Nick’s left arm.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. Nick was friggin’ smothered in DEET.”
Dr. Nikas spread his hands. “Unfortunately, even the best repellent cannot offer perfect protection.”
“But he had on a long-sleeved shirt,” I said.
Sympathy filled his eyes. “He could have been bitten anytime in the last forty-eight hours.”
“Something’s not right. The cases in the morgue each had one mosquito bite. The majority of the shamblers in the gym only had one mosquito bite. Nick has one bite. What are the odds of that many people getting only one bite if there are mosquitoes around?”
