flabby thighs and the kickboxing class she’d been taking off and on for the last two years. If only she’d attended more frequently! Dropping back into what she hoped was a strong fighting stance, she waited.
The man gave her a look as if she was crazy and raised the gun. She lashed out with a crescent kick aimed at his weapon arm and hit him, hard.
His arm jerked out of position and a bullet ricocheted off the wall six inches from her. Dust got in her eyes and nose.
She sneezed and her eyes watered, but she didn’t stop. Pivoting around, she lashed out with a spinning hook kick to the head. He brought his hands up to block her, grabbing her ankle, then brought his elbow down hard on the back of her leg. Pain shot through her. She jerked her foot free and fell back.
Breathing hard, she pushed to her feet and put her weight on her injured leg. It was tender but would hold her. He rushed her and this time she used a side kick, putting all her power behind it. She hit him hard in the gut and heard him grunt on the impact. He doubled over. Jane brought both of her hands together and hit him as hard as she could on the back of his neck with her fists.
He fell to the floor. Jane kicked him one more time in the side. She hurried past him and fumbled to open her hotel door. Finally she jerked it open and rushed in, then slammed the door shut behind her. She locked it and threw the night-security chain.
She went immediately to the phone and called the front desk. Taking a deep breath she tried to lessen the panic which had been sweeping over her. She was safe now. Or as safe as she could be for the moment.
“There’s a man with a gun in the hallway trying to break into my room. He shot at me,” she said when they answered.
“We’ll send someone up immediately.”
Panic swelled in her throat. Pawing through her suitcase, she pulled out the hunting knife her grandfather had given her and stood ready.
Her blood pounded so loudly she couldn’t hear anything else. She stayed to the side of the door in the small bathroom, knowing a bullet could easily penetrate the hotel door.
She scanned the interior of the room and realized that everything was safe and untouched. Someone knocked on the door. “Hotel security, ma’am.”
She moved cautiously toward the door and looked through the peephole. The man standing there was dressed in the hotel’s colors and had its emblem on his left breast pocket. And a name tag on the right that said Pedro. She saw no sign of the man who’d threatened her with the gun.
She opened the door.
“Thanks for coming.”
“No problem. We take the security of our guests very seriously. Tell me what happened. By the time I got here he was gone.”
“He was at my door when I got off the elevator. I thought he’d mistaken my room for his, but when I spoke to him he turned, and I saw he had a gun.”
She wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw some doubt in the security officer’s eyes. She thought the story sounded strange, as well.
“Then what happened?”
I screamed, she thought. But there was no way she was saying that out loud. “He shot at me.”
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No. But the bullet hit over here,” Jane said. God, she couldn’t believe someone had shot at her. A trembling started deep inside her. The scientist in her recognized her body’s natural reaction to the incident now that the danger had passed. But she wasn’t ready to let that show yet.
Her leg throbbed and she wanted to sit down and put some ice on it. But she’d do that later when she was alone. She showed him where it had grazed the wall. He examined the area before radioing someone else. Her Spanish wasn’t up to his rapid-fire delivery so she had no idea who he’d called.
“We’ll keep an eye on this floor. I’ll continue to investigate this area.”
The elevator pinged five minutes later and another man stepped off. “Hola, Señorita Miller. I am Jorge, the duty manager, and I am here to make sure you feel comfortable staying at our hotel. We’ve called the police.”
Jorge swept her out of the hallway and into her room. He stayed there while Jane took the opportunity to wash her face and get the dust from the ricochet from her eyes. She tied her thick red hair back in a ponytail. A glance in the mirror showed she looked every one of her thirty-three years, plus a few more.
She closed her eyes but still saw that gun pointed at her. She opened them and straightened up her toiletries. She took comfort as she always did in the familiar. She started organizing her stuff. But her hands were trembling, and her makeup spilled from its bag all over the countertop.
She started gathering the items and stopped when she touched the brightly colored compact that Sophia, her college roommate, had given her for her thirtieth birthday. A picture from Pinky and The Brain covered the lid. It was silly and frivolous. Sophia had said it was to remind Jane that life wasn’t as serious as she liked to make it.
Thirty minutes later after talking to police and assuring the manager she wouldn’t hold the hotel responsible, she was ensconced in a suite on the concierge level with a guard out front.
Propping her legs in front of her on the long, low coffee table, she adjusted the ice pack and closed her eyes. She had a tension headache building, and she wasn’t sure she’d made the right choice in coming here.
She’d feel a lot safer once she was out of the city and in the jungle, where she knew what dangers to expect.
The new room was nice but Jane couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she saw her father’s face. The one from childhood that had always been lined with disappointment. She sat bolt upright in bed fighting the fear that she was too late to help anyone.
She climbed out of bed and turned on the lamp. Working had always been her solace. She took comfort in it now. Powering up her laptop, she checked for messages from Angie, who was doing some comprehensive research on where the virus may have started. Jane had warned Angie that she wasn’t working in her official capacity. Angie, who’d worked with Jane for six years, had said she didn’t care.
She’d asked Angie to run a check in South America on cases involving the symptoms that her father had described. Diseases didn’t have boundaries, and from her own investigation she’d discovered that the Yura didn’t stay just in Peru. They also roamed into Brazil. That made the potential areas for the disease to spread even larger.
She had an e-mail from Angie that read:
There has been no sort of epidemic outbreak in any South American country that mirrors the symptoms you are talking about. I did find a missionary from Bolivia who contracted something similar, bleeding and hemorrhaging. He died in a skirmish with prococa planters. His body was burned. I’m following up and waiting for the interviews that were conducted in that region on this case.
Damn. This didn’t sound good.
Jane sent back a reply thanking Angie for her work and asking her to check into the land clearing that was going on to make way for the first Peruvian National Highway. That was virgin territory and a virus could have been incubating there for years. The highway would run from Cuzco to the Amazon basin. Right now the only way to get there was by air or badly rutted roads.
She shut down her computer and repacked it in her backpack, then stood and stretched. A glance at her watch showed her it was almost five and time to meet Mac in the lobby. She changed quickly into clothes that would wear well in the jungle. Khaki pants and a T-shirt covered with a long-sleeved button-down shirt. She also had a hat her father had left behind when she was a kid, and all her of her supplies.
Her phone rang. “Dr. Miller.”
“It’s Mac. The front desk won’t give me your room number,” he said, his voice husky and low as if he wasn’t awake yet.
“I