Chain Reaction Read online

  DEE

  DAVIS

  CHAIN

  REACTION

  * * *

  In memory of my grandfather,

  George R. Bailey

  * * *

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  * * *

  PROLOGUE

  Cedar Branch, Idaho

  August 6, 9:48 a.m.

  “HERE YOU GO.” Nancy Wilcox placed the paper bag in front of Mia Kearney, studying the younger woman with a maternal eye. “I put a Danish in there with the coffee. You don’t eat enough.”

  “Patrick’s pastries play havoc with my waistline,” Mia laughed, patting her stomach for effect. “One a week is the limit.”

  “Well, it’s only Monday,” Patrick called through the window between the café and the kitchen. Nancy shot an indulgent look at her husband. Still handsome at fifty-eight, he was happier than she’d ever seen him. Cedar Branch had done right by them.

  Which was saying a lot, considering she’d dragged her heels every inch of the way four years ago when Patrick had announced he’d had enough of corporate life and was buying a restaurant. And matters had only gotten worse when she’d realized said restaurant was out in the boondocks of southeastern Idaho.

  But in truth, Cuppa Joe had been the best thing that had ever happened to them.

  “Go on, take it, Mia,” Patrick said. “Nancy’s right, you need to eat.” His paternal tone made Nancy smile.

  It was Mia who’d sold them Cuppa Joe. Or rather, her grandfather’s lawyers had done so. Patrick and Nancy hadn’t actually met Mia until after they’d moved lock, stock and barrel to the tiny hamlet nestled at the foot of the mountains.

  Leo Kearney had been the biggest rancher in the area. And as such, he’d accumulated a large amount of property, most of it in Cedar Branch. In its day the town had rivaled any outpost on the northwestern frontier. Boasting two stockyards, sixteen saloons, five hotels and some of the best brothels in a four-state area, Cedar Branch had had it all.

  But nothing was forever, and when trucking replaced the railroads, Cedar Branch died, the Northern Pacific shutting down the rail line, the new interstate passing the town by. A post office, the café and a gas station were all that remained of the once booming main street. Added together with Buster’s Bar and Sly’s Feed Store, you had the sum total of what was left.

  Still, the fact that the town had seen its heyday didn’t seem to faze the locals. The ranchers and farmers in the area depended on Cedar Branch. It was their lifeline. And thanks to Patrick’s cooking, Cuppa Joe had become the heart of the community.

  Nancy pushed the bag toward the younger woman. “You know better than to argue with Patrick.”

  Mia still owned her grandfather’s house, which abutted the café. Referred to by most everyone as the Town House, the structure had seen better days, but Mia didn’t seem to care. The building, she swore, was perfect for her studio. And because it was literally only a few steps from the café, she took most of her meals there — when she remembered to eat.

  “All right,” she said, holding up her hands in mock surrender. “I’ll eat it. But you have to let me pay for it.”

  “No way,” Patrick hollered through the pass-through. “You’re practically family.”

  “What about me?” Joe Biagio asked, waving a hand at his fully loaded plate of bacon and eggs. “I eat here all the time.”

  Patrick laughed. “Yeah, but you didn’t sell us Cuppa Joe.”

  “I would have,” he grumbled, “but you didn’t give me the chance.”

  A third generation rancher, Joe, too, had property in town. Only it was so run-down the only way to use it would have been to tear down the existing structure and start from scratch. The café, however, had only needed a little elbow grease and TLC.

  “Ain’t no one going to buy that piece of crap, Joe,” Wilson McCullough quipped from the stool beside him. “Better to just bulldoze it.”

  “Well, someone ought to use it,” Joe grumbled.

  “Maybe you should give up ranching and move into town,” Wilson said, laughter coloring his voice. “You could open a knitting shop. I hear that’s popular with the ladies these days.”

  Joe Biagio was an outdoorsman to his core, and the idea of him doing anything that involved the word town resulted in chuckles from several of the other morning patrons.

  “How about a nursery, Joe?” Carson Greer goaded. “You were always good with kids.”

  “Hell,” Joe said, “I’ll just pay for the meal.”

  “Me, too,” Mia said, resolutely pulling out her wallet. “It’s not like I’m destitute.”

  In fact, just the opposite. To hear talk around town, Mia’s gallery in West Yellowstone was doing really well. And Nancy knew for a fact that she’d sold a couple of her own paintings recently. To be honest, Nancy wasn’t sure exactly what to make of Mia’s newer work. Called mixed media, her pieces often resembled a train wreck more than anything else, with bits of trash and bric-a-brac protruding from a wildly spray-painted and lacquered canvas. Patrick called it a combustion of art.

  Nancy just tried to be supportive, although in truth she preferred Mia’s earlier style. Portraits in charcoal, landscapes in watercolor. Traditional, yes, but still hauntingly original. At least as far as she was concerned. But then, heck, what did she know?

  “Fine. We’ll take your money.” Nancy smiled. “But I want you to eat the Danish, all right?”

  Mia nodded solemnly, her seeming acquiescence negated by the mischievous curve of her grin. Nancy handed over the sack and shook her head. “I’ll call you around dinnertime if I haven’t seen you before.”

  “If I’ve hit my groove, I’m not stopping, Nancy,” she said, pushing off of the counter stool. “This piece is commissioned, which means I have to finish it on time.”

  Mia’s latest work involved etching, and she’d taken to working in the old house’s basement, trying to duplicate some kind of ancient technique. In plain truth, it made Nancy nervous as hell. All those chemicals and solvents. It was a wonder Mia hadn’t addled her brains. But it wasn’t Nancy’s place to protest.

  “You just be careful down there,” she said, handing her a napkin. “Patrick and I worry about you.”

  “And I love you for it.” Mia smiled over her shoulder, heading out the back door toward her studio.

  “That girl needs a husband,” Nancy said, reaching out to pick up an order of pancakes.

  “That young lady,” Patrick corrected, eyes twinkling, “needs a little less mothering, if you ask me. You’re going to drive her crazy with your nagging.”

  “Me?” Nancy scoffed, setting the pancakes in front of Carson. “You’re the one who bakes apricot Danishes even out of season just because she loves them. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were sweet on the girl.”

  “I’ve only got eyes for one woman, Nancy Wilcox, and she’s st
anding right in front of me.” Her husband reached through the opening to cup her cheek.

  “Aw, come on,” Joe said, ever the confirmed bachelor. “Give us a break, it isn’t even ten o’clock yet.”

  “I think it’s sweet,” Betty Freeman said, holding out her cup for more coffee.

  “You would.” Joe tucked into his eggs, blatantly ignoring the wistful look on Betty’s face.

  The two of them had been an item a few years back, Joe escaping by the breadth of his John Deere cap. Betty still kept the torch burning, but Nancy figured it was a lost cause.

  Outside, a loud noise broke through the shimmering August heat, the reverberation rattling the glass in the front window. Betty frowned at the clear blue sky outside. “Was that thunder?”

  “Don’t think so. Look at the sky.” Joe said, swiveling the stool so that he could see out the window.

  “Could be a car backfiring,” Wilson suggested.

  “Nah.” Joe shook his head. “Too loud for a car.”

  “Maybe one of the tractor trailers from over on the highway?”

  Since the interstate was almost twelve miles away, that didn’t make much sense. Nancy looked over at Patrick, trying to figure out why the sound bothered her so much.

  “Could have been an explosion,” Patrick said.

  “Here?” Betty’s eyes widened as an idea took hold.

  “I don’t see any smoke or anything.” Carson had crossed over to look out the window. “Could it be the tree-huggers?”

  There was some kind of ecological facility located close to Cedar Branch. It was all very hush-hush. Electrified fences and scientific types coming and going. They’d been told it was something to do with nuclear plant fallout. Some twenty years back, the area had been home to a nuclear plant. But the political tide had turned and the plant was long gone.

  Residents had sent thankful prayers heavenward and gone on about their business. But apparently there were still worries.

  “Don’t think they’re likely to be doing anything that’d cause an explosion. Probably was something up on the highway, like Wilson said.”

  “Didn’t come from the right direction for it to be the highway,” Joe said, turning back to his eggs. “Can’t be anything too important or we’d be able to see it.”

  “The sky looks a little hazy,” Carson observed to no one in particular. But he was right. The air outside had taken on a misty cast, even though the sun was still shining. Almost as if there were tiny raindrops filling the air.

  Nancy blinked, and the illusion disappeared. Obviously her imagination working overtime.

  Patrick had come out of the kitchen to join the others at the window. “Well, something’s going on.” He pointed up the street to a white Buick that had stopped in the middle of the road, its driver leaning drunkenly against the open door.

  “There’s another one,” Betty said, pointing in the opposite direction.

  Nancy followed her line of sight. Sure enough, a blue pickup was sprawled across both lanes of traffic, the driver on his knees on the pavement outside the truck.

  “It feel hot in here to you?” Betty asked, the front of her dress soaked in perspiration, her cheeks bright red as she struggled to draw in a breath.

  “Not just hot,” Carson choked out, his face also burning with color. “On fire. I’m on fire.”

  Nancy felt her own throat tighten, as if something was obstructing her airway. She tried to pull in a breath, but nothing seemed to be reaching her lungs. The raindrops were back, dancing across her vision like a gray curtain. Panicked, she reached out for Patrick, but he wasn’t there.

  Forcing herself to focus, she turned in a circle, trying to find her husband, and almost tripped over him lying at her feet. “Call for help,” she managed to say, as she dropped to her knees beside him. He was gasping for breath, his skin ashen, his lips turning blue.

  Behind her she heard someone drop the phone, the clatter of the receiver punctuated by the clanging of one of the metal counter stools hitting the floor. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Joe beside the fallen stool on his hands and knees, fighting for breath, trying to reach the telephone.

  “Patrick, can you hear me?” Nancy gasped, returning her attention to her husband. “Open your eyes, sweetheart.” She fought against a wave of nausea and dizziness, her lungs feeling as if a vacuum were sucking out all of the air she was fighting so hard to pull in. Her heart was pounding, the muscles in her chest contracting so fiercely she thought they might explode.

  “Can’t breathe,” Patrick whispered, his blue eyes fluttering open. “What’s happening?”

  Nancy opened her mouth to respond, but couldn’t find the power to get the words out. She shook her head, her body starting to feel like jelly, the mist in front of her eyes thickening with each passing second.

  Another thud behind her signaled someone else down. She twisted her head, forcing her vision to clear. Betty. Betty was on the floor by the window, Carson facedown just beyond her. Neither of them moving.

  A couple in the back were passed out across the table. Nancy could see them, still holding their forks.

  “Patrick?” she whispered, curling up beside her husband, the cold tile floor comforting against her burning skin.

  Slowly he turned his head, his hand tightening on hers, his eyes cloudy. “I love you, Nancy.” His voice cracked with the words, and his fingers loosened.

  “Patrick?” she called again, even though she knew he was gone. She struggled for a breath, knowing it was pointless. Her last cognizant thought was that at least she wouldn’t have to live without Patrick.

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  Security and Containment Facility, Southeastern Idaho August 8, 7:39 a.m.

  “WHAT THE HELL AM I doing here?” Mia Kearney paced around the hospital room, talking to herself, the monitor behind her beeping in agitation as she moved too far away, stretching the leads that connected it to her body.

  Despite all the testing and probing, as best she could tell there was nothing wrong with her. Nothing, at least, that she could identify. She hadn’t seen anyone except medical personnel since she’d woken up a couple days ago. At least she figured it was about two days. There wasn’t a clock, and no one would give her straight answers. Only that there had been a nuclear accident of some kind, the resulting radiation affecting the people of Cedar Branch.

  She’d asked to see someone else. To talk to Nancy or Patrick, even Joe. But so far they’d insisted she was better off in isolation.

  Her mother had always hated the idea of all the nuclear reactors in Idaho, predicting dire consequences if the plants weren’t closed. Well, time had proven her mother right — if not in Idaho per se, then with incidents like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. All of which meant that most of the reactors in Idaho were gone. There was still a test facility, but it was miles from Cedar Branch.

  Which left Mia with a load of unanswered questions. Maybe a silo? The remains of cold war posturing were scattered throughout the Northwest, but she’d always been told the nearest live missiles were in Montana. Seemed a little far away to cause a local accident. Maybe it was an attack of some kind? But why would terrorists focus on Cedar Branch? There weren’t more than fifty people in the whole county, and only a handful in town at any point in time.

  Not that Idaho was devoid of crazies. There were extremist groups all over the state. People who believed that violence was the only way to solve problems. But as far as she knew none of them lived nearby. And even if they did, Cedar Branch wasn’t the kind of place one chose as a target.

  New York or L.A., or even Boise, would be a better place to garner the kind of attention terrorists wanted. It just didn’t make any kind of sense. And to top it all off, Mia didn’t feel the least bit sick.

  She’d racked her brain trying to remember the symptoms of radiation poisoning, but hadn’t come up with anything concrete. Still, she was pretty damn certain that by now she’d be a lot sicker if she had i
n fact been exposed. All of which begged the question she’d voiced earlier.

  What the hell was she doing here?

  She’d stopped taking the sedatives they were giving her, pretending to ingest them and then flushing them down the toilet. She just acted dazed whenever hospital personnel were in the room. But it was getting harder to be cooperative, everything inside her signaling that something was very wrong.

  And it didn’t help that her memory seemed to have gone wonky. The last clear thing she remembered before waking up here was buying coffee from Nancy. They’d talked about Danishes and eating and free meals. And then she’d gone to her studio and, after a couple of bites of food, had begun to work. Just thinking about her latest project ratcheted up her agitation.

  The piece had been commissioned by a collector in Sante Fe. He’d seen some of her work at the gallery and requested a piece for his wife. It wasn’t an exhibition in SoHo, but it was a step in the right direction. And opportunities like that didn’t come along every day. All the more reason to get out of here and back to her own life. She’d tried leaving once, but hadn’t made it three feet down the hall before an orderly with arms like steel girders had intercepted her and escorted her back to her room.

  From then on the door had been kept locked. As if she were a threat or something.

  And to make it all the more confusing, the brief glimpse she’d had of the hallway hadn’t looked like any hospital she’d ever seen.

  Crossing her arms, she fought to contain a shiver. Now she knew what Alice had felt like at the bottom of the rabbit hole. Only Mia didn’t have a little bottle to help her get out the door.

  As if on cue, said door swung open, sending her scrambling for the bed.

  “You’re up.” The man in the doorway was a stranger — and unlike the rest of the staff attending her, not dressed in scrubs. It was almost absurd, the relief she felt at the sight of someone so seemingly normal.

  “I was just testing my legs.” She sat down on the bed, her feet swinging above the floor making her feel all of about two. Resisting the urge to stand up again, she tucked her legs underneath her instead, careful to keep the blue cotton gown strategically covering all the requisite places.