The End of Never Read Online Free

pair of wings,” according to a source within the walls of the medical center. Other symptoms include increasingly volatile episodes of diarrhea, a fever, and a skin rash that culminates in leather-like scales on the upper layer of skin.
    Angela finished reading the blurb and shoved the paper aside with acute disdain for the reporter’s lack of scientific expertise. This will only frighten people needlessly , she thought to herself as a name suddenly popped into her head. Jim Woodward, the father of Alexandra’s best friend Taylor, was a highly successful plastic surgeon back home in Atlanta.
    As Angela retrieved her Blackberry from her handbag, she remembered a class she had survived as a humble undergraduate at Emory University. That class had pointed her down the road she now traveled as an epidemiologist for the CDC. Her first day in the class, “Rare Diseases of the Amazon Basin,” was with Dr. Hans Frederick VonHessen. She hid in the last seat of the last row of the auditorium. By the second time in this class, she took a seat in the front row and never looked back at her previous desire to major in film with a minor in English. At one point midway through the semester, Dr. VonHessen assigned an article about a plant in the Amazon whose ingestion made people break out in a scaly rash and develop marks upon their backs that resembled tattooed wings. The plant was named the Raiz do Dragao , the dragon root, Angela recalled from the cobwebs in her mind.
    Her Blackberry rested in her palm. Searching her contact list, she found Jim Woodward. I hope it’s not too early , she thought, looking at her watch. She did not know that the doctor was usually in his office by nine every morning to escape the nagging of his young, demanding second wife.
    â€œHello?” a deep voice with the distinct accent of the Texas plains answered promptly after two rings.
    â€œHowdy, stranger,” Angela greeted him. “I hope it’s not too early to call you.”
    â€œIt’s never too early for Angela Peyton to call me,” he said, cutting her apology off before she could finish. “To what do I owe the honor?”
    â€œJim, I’m in Miami,” Angela confessed.
    â€œNo kidding,” he said. “I’m down here, too. Where are you?”
    Angela glanced across the street and again at the Devil’s Tongue. “The CDC sent me here on short notice. There’s some sort of outbreak among women who have had plastic surgery recently.”
    â€œYou don’t say,” Jim Woodward drawled as he sipped stiff, black coffee from a Styrofoam cup in the lobby of his hotel. A blueberry Danish tempted him and he wrapped the secret treat in a napkin to enjoy later in the conference room upstairs. “I flew in early this morning. The flight had to wait until the storms passed over the airport in Atlanta last night.”
    Angela tensed, remembering that she had not received a call from her daughter. “I guess I just missed it then. My flight was at seven last night. What are you doing here, Jim? This is quite a coincidence.”
    A lock of sandy blond hair fell into the man’s face as he stepped outside the hotel lobby to the veranda surrounding the sparkling blue pool. Shoving the hair behind his ear, he whispered into the phone, “Don’t tell Krystal. I told her I had to fly down here for a foot fungus conference. But I’m really here to learn about new liposuction procedures.”
    â€œI won’t tell,” Angela whispered back into the phone sympathetically. She loathed Jim’s extremely high-maintenance wife.
    â€œOkay then,” Jim sighed. “So what’s going on with you, Angela? I haven’t seen you in a while.” He sat down on a plastic chair and picked at the blueberry Danish.
    â€œI need a favor,” Angela said. “The case I’m working on down here, it involves women who have had plastic surgery. I could just