Sinister Sanctuary

by Colleen Gleason

  Teddy wasn’t lying when she said she’d be happy to sign their books—there was nothing she liked better than to meet readers. Thus, the impromptu book signing turned into an energetic chat with the diners. Between Baxter and Mirabella, the beers kept coming, and the sense of joviality swelled. People pulled up chairs, Teddy answered questions and asked a few of her own, and got some feedback on her books (mostly welcome, some confusing, and some completely off the wall—but it was all in good fun, and very entertaining).

  By the time Teddy was ready to leave and the bar/diner was closing, she was shocked to discover it was after eleven thirty.

  Fifteen minutes later, exhausted, and pretty tipsy from several rounds of B-Cubed beer, Teddy climbed out of Leslie’s car. “Thanks for the ride,” she said, waving a little unsteadily as her cousin and his girlfriend drove off.

  Yawning, Teddy let herself in the front door of the cottage. She fumbled around for a light switch, didn’t immediately find one, and gave up looking, choosing to use the moonlight to find the door to the lighthouse suite.

  But she wasn’t so out of it that she didn’t notice the boxes on the kitchen and living room tables.

  Well, I guess the food’s been delivered. Jeepers. That looks like enough to feed an army. I’ll check it out in the morning. Hope they put the perishable stuff away because I’m not doing it now.

  Five minutes later, she was tucked beneath her covers and slipping into sleep.

  A loud noise had Teddy bolting upright in bed.

  Sun blazed through the window, and a squinty look at the bedside clock (her cell phone was too far away to reach) told her it was just after seven. Groggy and shocked out of a sound sleep, she stumbled out of bed.

  Whatever had awakened her sounded like a heavy thud—very nearby.

  Like, in the living room.

  She of the very active imagination looked around for a weapon—although why someone would break in in the morning rather than in the dead of night was beyond her—and her eyes lit on a pair of water skis propped in the corner. She didn’t even have the wherewithal to wonder what they were doing there.

  Another loud noise from beyond, followed by a muffled human exclamation, had Teddy grabbing one of the skis (it was either that, the hairdryer, or her laptop). Hefting the unwieldy weapon, she sneaked to the curve-topped door connecting the lighthouse to the main part of the cottage and opened it a crack.

  There was a man in her living room.

  Teddy ducked back. Her heart pounding, her palms slick, she drew in a deep breath, trying to calm herself. What the hell?

  Fortunately, he was facing the other way and hadn’t appeared to notice her.

  She peered back out and took a better look. All she could see was an arm and a broad, solid shoulder, plus the hint of a leg and hip as he moved around. Whoever he was, he had stuff—equipment—all over the place. All the boxes and things she’d seen last night and had assumed was food seemed to belong to him.

  “Who the hell are you?” She stalked out, ski clutched awkwardly in both hands.

  Unfortunately, the damn thing was too long, and she misjudged. The pointy end of the ski snagged in the bumpy Berber carpet, causing it to catch and her to stumble, slamming her head against the waxed wood. Nice going, Mack.

  The man whirled around, and they both froze, gaping at each other. “It’s you?” he said.

  “You! What the hell are you doing here? Did you follow me?” Teddy couldn’t have written a better story herself: the man who’d set up some sort of scientific lab in her summer rental was the nerdy scientist from the hot spring.

  But maybe he wasn’t a nerdy scientist after all.

  Maybe he was a serial killer. He had enough of a lab set up to torture her if he pleased. And they were too far from civilization for anyone to hear her scream… (Great tagline for her next book.)

  “You’re the writer?” he said, snapping off a plastic glove. And he didn’t sound at all pleased about it. “You didn’t mention that yesterday.”

  “I’m the writer,” she snarled, and realized her head was pounding, right above her nose. Maybe she shouldn’t have had that last beer Baxter ordered for her after all. “And I didn’t realize a chance meeting required me to tell you my occupa— Anyway, this is my cottage—where I’m supposed to have privacy and solitude so I can finish my damn book—and what in the hell is all this?”

  “Carl— Did you meet Carl?”

  “Who? Hell, it doesn’t matter. I’m calling the rental agent. No, I’m calling Harriet, for pity’s sake. She’s going to be having words with them about—”

  But he shook his head, talking above her rant. “It won’t help. They screwed up and rented the place to both of us, and there aren’t any other rooms available in Wicks Hollow. So we’re stuck sharing the place.” He looked at her, his eyes tracing the ski and then skimming over her tank top—under which she was braless, of course—then down her legs (bared by a pair of boxer shorts). “When he said there was a writer, I didn’t know it was you—I mean, that you were a woman. He said your name was Teddy. And come to think of it, he conveniently didn’t assign a pronoun.”

  “The name’s Teddy Mack. Wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you, but I can’t.” She set the ski to lean against the wall and crossed her arms over her breasts as reality sank in. “Are you serious—there’s nowhere else you can go? I have to finish a book! I’m already late, and I can’t write with all this going on! With you here.”

  Panic clutched her chest. She’d planned to wake up this morning, bright and early, have a cup of tea on the wraparound porch, and absorb the fresh air and sunshine as she looked out at Lake Michigan…and then pull out her laptop and dive right in to the story.

  But now everything was off. Mucked up. And her thoughts couldn’t be further from the edgy, cliff-hanging thrillers about sexy, sarcastic Sargent Blue, who saved the world at least once in every single book.

  What the hell am I going to do? Teddy felt the sting of tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. I’m so damn behind, so uninspired, so freaking burned out and scared…I just don’t think I can do this.

  And now this.

  My career is over.

  She realized with a start that the man—whose name she still didn’t know—had said something. “What? Sorry…I…was thinking.” She blinked and refocused. Get it together, Mack. You’re not giving up yet.

  “I guess that’s natural for a writer—uh, to be daydreaming. I offered you some coffee.”

  “No thanks. I have some tea. But it sure would be great to know your name.” So when I call Harriet to chew her butt over this, I have a name for my problem. No, her problem. She booked the place. She can fix it.

  “Oscar London.”

  “Seriously?”

  He grimaced and opened a small fridge (he’d brought his own fridge?). “My parents had no idea.”

  “No, I mean—it’s a great name. Really. I know names, believe me. It took me three weeks to come up with my main character’s name—he’s a sort of spy-slash-adventurer who’s also a librarian, but once I did, I knew it was perfect. And Oscar London…well, it’s great.” She took in his bright, golden-red hair, neatly buttoned white shirt, and British-like formality. No accent, other than a bit of East Coast. “It suits you.”

  “I’m delighted you approve.” There was a little more snarkiness in his voice than she’d expected.

  Hmm. Interesting. And compelling.

  “I have work to do, and so, apparently, do you. So…” He made a little waving gesture, as if to say, Off with you, you pesky creature.

  “I can’t write with you making all sorts of racket out here. And I can’t concentrate with you in my space.” The panic escaped and clawed at her chest again, its talons sharper than ever. “This isn’t going to work. One of us is going to have to leave. And it isn’t going to be me.” Teddy knew her voice had gone high and thready, and she despised herself for it. But her career was on the line.

  An
d Oscar London was ignoring her, the rat.

  He’d turned back to his project—whatever it was—and was putting a glass container in a device that looked like a small top-loading washer.

  “What’s that machine? And what are you doing, anyway? Are you really testing for E. coli?” Teddy realized she was desperate to do anything but sit in front of her laptop and stare at a blank white screen.

  “It’s a centrifuge.” He closed the door and pushed a button, then adjusted a dial. As the machine began to rumble quietly, he pivoted to a desktop computer, complete with monitor.

  Sheesh. What kind of geek traveled with all of this stuff?

  Still ignoring her, Oscar began tapping on the keyboard, using the hunt-and-peck method. Just watching him pick at the keys with two fingers—thunk, thunk, thunk-thunk, thunk—made her twitchy.

  “You never learned to type properly?” She edged closer, looking at the screen, and conveniently ignoring how much she hated it when someone looked over her shoulder while she was working.

  “No.”

  The screen was filled with a form he was completing: numbers, date, time, location, etc. Nothing worth being distracted over. “So the centrifuge spins the, what, the samples around?”

  He turned. “You sure are talkative for someone who has a book to write.”

  Teddy exhaled a long breath. “Yeah. Well, I’ve been having a little writer’s block.” She watched as he measured out a sample of water from a container like the one she’d filled yesterday—maybe the same one—using a pipette to transfer it carefully into a test tube. She sighed wistfully and slumped against the wall, arms crossed over her middle. “Microbiologists don’t get writer’s block. You just know what you have to do, and you do it. You follow the procedures and voila! Done.”

  “Yep. It’s that easy. So if you’re going to stand there instead of work, how about getting me another cup of coffee? Black, please.”

  “Might as well.” When she came back from the tiny kitchen, which—she had to give him credit for—was neat as a pin, with his clean breakfast dishes lined up in the drainer, he’d stripped off the gloves. His fiery hair was standing nearly on end, obviously rumpled from a hand jamming through it, presumably post-glove-removal.

  “So you’ve got writer’s block.” He took the cup and sipped. His eyes, a rich mix of green and brown, settled on her. “What kind of story are you working on?”

  Teddy wandered over, looking in the boxes of equipment. Tubes, small bottles, larger bottles, petri dishes, labels, and syringes of all sizes. “You brought your own refrigerator with you?”

  “Yes.” He sounded extremely patient. “I have to make sure the samples are kept at a precise temperature, and the only way to do that is to use my own equipment—equipment that I know is accurate. I check the temp first thing in the morning, and several times through the day.”

  “Have fridge, will travel. Huh. That’s one dangerous-looking microscope you have there.” She walked over to the complicated instrument branded Horix and peered through the eyepieces. She saw nothing but black.

  “It’s a digital microscope. The image appears on that computer monitor. But, of course, the light has to be turned on, and there has to be something on a slide.” He snapped on another pair of gloves. “And it’s worth over two K, so please be careful.”

  “Fascinating.” He gave her a jaundiced look, and she said, “No, seriously. This is the kind of thing I find utterly interesting. You never know when I’ll learn something that will show up in a book— Hey. Wait.” A spike of excitement rushed through her. “Maybe you can help me!”

  He muttered something that sounded like “Oh, brilliant,” but she wasn’t certain. Either way, Teddy didn’t care. If there was one thing she’d learned about being a writer, it was that ideas—and plot solutions—could come from anyone at any time. She just had to be open to them.

  “So I have my character in a real fix. I need to have him—”

  “Let me guess. Save the world.” Even though he was facing the other direction, smearing something on a glass slide, she swore he rolled his eyes.

  “Hey. It sells.”

  “So does sex. Or so they say. Why doesn’t someone ever write a book about the world not getting saved? Just to see what happens—you know, the aftermath and all? What would it be like fifty years after the earth was destroyed, you know? Say if California fell into the ocean, and half the Vegas Strip ended up under the Pacific?”

  “Wow. You sure are an optimistic kind of guy.” Teddy edged closer. “Are you always like this?”

  “My former fiancée is getting married in ten days. Sorry I’m not in a great mood.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s a bummer. I’m really sorry. Is she getting married here in Wicks Hollow?”

  “No. Hell no. Do you think I’d stick around if she were? I left Princeton yesterday morning—I teach there—and came directly here. It was a long drive.”

  Princeton, huh? She was more than mildly impressed. “So you came here, equipment and all, to test the water from a hot spring in Michigan?” He grunted an ambiguous reply, and she said, “So, can I help?”

  “I thought you were supposed to be writing.” But he gestured to a box of latex gloves. “I suppose I could use an assistant. Just don’t touch anything with your bare skin, and don’t sneeze or cough or otherwise spread germs.”

  “Got it,” Teddy said with enthusiasm, then realized she was still wearing her sleep clothes. She’d better change before the poor guy noticed she wasn’t wearing a bra and put the wrong chemical into the wrong tube and blew up the place.

  Oscar didn’t really need an assistant, but it was obvious the writer wasn’t going to leave him alone. And at least her incessant questions and poking around kept him distracted from what was happening back in Princeton.

  Whenever Teddy pressed him about why he was testing the hot-springs water (did he really think the bad E. coli lived there?), he launched into a long-winded explanation about major cations and anions, and how the turbidity could be problematic if it was too high, and whether the total iron level complied with the expected presence of tardigrades and phages in the body of water, among other things, until her eyes glazed over.

  He figured inflicting boredom was one way to rid himself of a pest.

  And thank goodness she’d excused herself for a minute and changed into something less…distracting. He was a scientist, of course, but he was also a man, and, well, she had a lot of curves. In all the right places.

  “I get the impression you don’t read very many action-adventure novels,” she said, handing him a petri dish he’d requested. “Oh, there’s an idea.” Her blue eyes suddenly went wide, sparkling with interest. “The villains could be growing some random bad stuff—”

  “Random bad stuff?” He lifted a brow. She was entertaining, he had to give her that, with a conversation that bounced from topic to topic. He found himself admitting her presence was less intrusive than he’d expected—though not the least bit welcome. And she smelled good too—minty (she must have taken the opportunity to brush her teeth during her change of clothes) and also something soft and floral.

  “Well, we’ll have to figure out what it exactly is,” she said.

  “We?”

  “But it’s something bad…and the bad guys have been growing it in a slew of petri dishes. They’re going to release it into the New York City water system—no, wait, they’re going to put it in the water pitchers at the United Nations! You know how they always have water for all the attendees at a meeting like that—you see those pitchers at their seats?”

  “Right. Someone’s going to grow some… What did you call it? Oh, right, ‘random bad stuff’ in a bunch of petri dishes…and poison the water at the United Nations…and why are they doing this, exactly?”

  She drew in a long, deep breath, then expelled it forcefully. “I don’t know. I haven’t the foggiest idea. That’s why I’m stuck. I’ve got my hero in New York City, and he’s got to save a bunc
h of people—”

  “Besides, I hate to tell you this—even if they grew a variety of specimens of the RBS—”

  “RBS? Oh, I get it.” She grinned, and her eyes lit up again. But this time, her whole face changed as she gave a low, husky laugh—and right then she went from being irritatingly entertaining and mildly attractive to a woman who totally pushed his hormone buttons. Crap.

  “RBS. Random bad stuff.” She was still chuckling.

  He found his voice. “Right. So. Even if they were growing a variety of these specimens, first of all, there’s no way to transport them safely—”

  “Sure there is. We’d figure it out.”

  He couldn’t quite get with the “we” stuff, but Oscar let her continue. It was kind of fun and stimulating to have a brainstorming session with someone who wasn’t restricted by science, but only by her own creativity. Which seemed pretty damned bountiful, if not practical.

  “They could transport the petri dishes in a cooler, for example,” she said. “And bring it in with the caterers for the UN. It’ll be a big meeting, with all the important world leaders there.”

  “That could work, if it could get past security—which is a big if—but the bigger problem is the minute the RBS is released from the petri dishes, it’ll be exposed and most likely die. You can’t grow microbes in a carefully controlled environment like petri dishes and then release it to the wild, so to speak. The chances of it surviving are extremely low.”

  Teddy grumbled, and her lower lip protruded in a definite pout. “Well, there is a chance, isn’t there?” she asked, as if science could be bent to her wishes.

  “A very slim one. Can you grab me that pencil?”

  She reached for it too quickly, bumping a beaker, which knocked the pencil into rolling off the table. She, of course, had to bend over and pick it up…which gave him an uninterrupted view directly down the front of her tank top. Low-cut bra, a hint of pink nipples, and a deep valley.