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He knew Ash wasn’t asking about that.
He refocused. “She got out of the vehicle. Put her jacket on. She walked toward the building and stumbled, kind of wobbled a little.” He swallowed, the lump in his throat growing larger. He’d thought she was crying about what he’d said. He’d watched her, wanting to go to her and beg for her forgiveness.
“Come on, Hawke. Almost there.”
“Sorry…sorry.” He rubbed his face, focused. “She turned and looked at me. She had this really confused expression on her face. She wasn’t pale or anything. Didn’t look like she was in pain. She just seemed surprised, maybe shocked. And then she went down.”
“So nothing out of the ordinary until she stumbled and collapsed.” Ash leaned back in his chair. “If she’d been injected with something, she would’ve felt it.”
“Yeah, and no one got close enough to—”
His mind went back to the flight attendant. She had adjusted Olivia’s jacket, saying it was about to fall on the floor. Could she have tampered with it?
“Her jacket.” Hawke rose to his feet.
“What?”
“A flight attendant handled Olivia’s jacket. We need to find her clothes.”
Ash was already on his phone. Hawke heard him give orders for Olivia’s clothes to be found and treated as a possible chemical or biological hazard. The fury he felt at this possibility was drowned out by the knowledge that Olivia might not survive this. Evil people did not expose others to a weapon like this and expect them to survive.
They had to find out what it was!
The door to Olivia’s room opened, and two nurses wheeled her bed out.
“Where are you taking her?”
“Radiology,” one of the nurses answered.
A series of loud buzzes sounded over the intercom, and a calm male voice announced, “Possible contamination. Lockdown initiated. All employees and visitors must adhere to protocol level four.”
All of that was background noise to Hawke. His eyes were on Olivia, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully through the possible catastrophe. But she wasn’t sleeping. And no one knew if she would ever wake again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Hawke stood at Olivia’s bedside, looking down at her still body. It had been two days since her collapse. Two of the most heart-wrenching, agonizingly painful days of his life. He’d take a hundred more explosions and a thousand more scars if only she would wake up.
They knew a lot more now than they had, but they still knew so little. They’d found the residue of an unknown substance inside one of the sleeves of Olivia’s jacket. The flight attendant must have inserted a small patch of a genetically altered drug that had been absorbed by Olivia’s skin, causing deep unconsciousness. Three elements had been identified so far, none of which on their own would cause this kind of reaction. However, another, unidentified chemical had been detected. Scientists and lab techs were working night and day to name the unknown chemical. So far, they’d gotten nowhere.
The flight attendant was nowhere to be found. The airline didn’t even have a record of her employment. How the hell she’d gotten on the plane and posed as an airline employee was anyone’s guess. Security cameras showed her in the Yuma, Arizona and Missoula, Montana airports. No one had been with her and so far, no facial recognition program had been able to identify her. It was like she was some kind of evil apparition only there to serve one purpose. That purpose had apparently been to harm Livvy.
Bottom line: Someone, somewhere had created a dangerous new drug, and they had targeted the woman he loved beyond anything or anyone in the world.
All available OZ operatives were working around the clock as well. While Ash connected with every contact he had throughout the world who might even remotely have knowledge of this drug, Serena, Gideon, Eve, and Liam were poring over the intel that Iris Gates had given them. Somewhere in the morass of information had to be something that could help them.
What the doctor had just told him had added new urgency to her condition and multiplied his own agony.
Douglas Steiner, Olivia’s main doctor, was both a neurologist and infectious disease specialist. He had multiple alphabets after his name and had studied biological and chemical warfare extensively. He was their best hope, but what he’d told Hawke moments ago had given him no hope at all.
Dr. Steiner’s dark brown eyes behind thick glasses had been compassionate but resolute. “She’s slowly dying, the chemical is working on her body like poison. Her heartbeat is slowing. She’s headed toward bradycardia.”
“How much slower?”
“According to her medical records, her normal rate is sixty-one. When she arrived, she was at fifty-five. Still in the normal range. Over the last day or so, it’s slowed significantly. She’s at forty-five right now.”
“What happens if it gets too slow?”
“Her brain won’t get the oxygen it needs to function, or she could have a stroke.”