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“What is it?”

“I found so”

“Can it wait? They’re holding a chopper for us to take us to the airport in Nice”

“Hold on a sec” Eric climbed over the rail and aardly descended the ladder while clutching a laptop computer He noticed Donatella for the first tiave her a first, let alone a second, glance Obviously, he was distracted by whatever news he had

Juan nodded to her and she eased forward on the throttles He went aft to let Linc chat her up while he pushed aside their luggage so he and Eric could sit They had to raise their voices over the rush of the wind and the throb of the powerful motor

“What do you have?” Juan asked

Eric opened his co for any unusual incidents that may have occurred on ships where the Responsivists were holding their Sea Retreats”

“Did you find anything?”

“Did I? Oh yeah Do you remember recently how there have been reports of viral outbreaks on cruise ships, usually a gastrointestinal norovirus?”

“Seems there have been a lot more in the past couple of years,” Juan remarked

“It’s not a coincidence At first, I was checking passenger manifests from the cruise companies” Juan didn’t need to ask how Eric obtained such confidential information “I cross-referenced those to Responsivista pattern, I switched my focus to cruise liners struck by unusual illnesses That’s when I hit pay dirt Of the seventeen outbreaks I’ve looked into in the past two years, sixteen of them occurred when Responsivists were on board The seventeenth wasn’t a norovirus and was traced back to E coli found on lettuce grown on one specific far

ia, and Alabama”

“I’ll be damned”

“It gets worse Mind you, there’s no pattern to cruise lines or ports of call But there is one definite pattern we could see During the first incident, only a handful of passengers were sickened, and most of the syet to the seventeenth, which happened two er and creas infected The cruise line had to chopper in a et the ship back to port”

Juan leaned back in the soft leather seat, feeling the engine’s vibration trying to loosen the knotted muscles in his back In the cockpit, Linc towered over their driver, and he could tell she was delighting in his coh the air He suddenly leaned forward again “They’re perfecting disbursal methods”