15th Affair (Women's Murder Club #15)(71)

Various alarms started sounding from the monitors and machines attached to a six-year-old boy in the bed next to the girl. Dr. Castro scanned the numbers, saw the boy was crashing too.

Throwing aside all caution, Castro yanked on sterile gloves and went to work, frantically adding a series of medicines to the IV.

“What the hell is it?” DeSales demanded.

“A virus I’ve seen only once before,” Castro said. “We called it Hydra. Goes after the major organs.”

“Transmission?”

“Not certain, but we think body fluids.”

“Mortality rate?”

“Roughly sixteen percent the last time it appeared,” Castro said. “But I think there have been mutations that made it deadlier. C’mon, Jorge, fight.”

But the boy continued to fail. The doctors tried everything that had helped in these cases before, but no matter what they did, Jorge and his sister kept slipping further from their control. Their kidneys shut down. Then their livers.

Eleven minutes after Castro entered the ICU, blood began to seep from the little girl’s eyes. Then Maria was racked by a series of violent convulsions that culminated in a massive heart attack.

She died.

Fourteen minutes later, in the same terrible way, little Jorge did too.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Our thanks to Captain Richard Conklin, BCI Commander, Stamford, Connecticut, PD, and Humphrey Germaniuk, Medical Examiner and Coroner, Trumbull County, Ohio, for generously sharing their time and expertise. We also wish to thank our excellent researchers, Ingrid Taylar, Renee Paradis, Lynn Colomello, and Pete Colomello, and give a high five to Mary Jordan, who keeps it all on track.