Deadly Chemistry (Entangled Ignite)

by Teri Anne Stanley

  “Is your family still close by?” Mike asked.

  Oh, goody. And here he came, meeting her in the demilitarized Zone of Small Talk. “Close enough. My dad’s on the faculty at Ohio State. I think maybe I should have gone a little farther than two and a half hours away,” she said.

  “I have a feeling that family finds us no matter how far we try to go.”

  Lauren laughed, liking this flirting thing in spite of herself. This was flirting, right? Ye gads. How was she supposed to know?

  “So is your dad a scientist, too?”

  It must be flirting, because why else would he be asking all this mundane get-to-know-you stuff?

  “Yep.”

  “That’s cool. You followed in his footsteps, huh?”

  “Well, more like picked up where my mom left off. She was a scientist, too, before she had me.”

  “And raising a baby human took the place of raising lab rats?”

  “Something like that.” Well, not exactly, but it wasn’t like she was going to share the story of her mom losing her career to motherhood with Mike The Hot Maintenance Guy. At least her mom had made her childhood fun. She smiled, thinking of the white mice she’d been allowed to keep when she was a kid. Watson and Crick.

  He smiled back at her. His eyes held hers for just a moment longer than was strictly necessary. She realized she was standing a little closer to him than strictly necessary, too, and that she had a strand of hair twisted around her index finger. She unwound it and tucked it behind her ear.

  He cleared his throat and stepped back. “Listen, I think your electrical circuits are fine. There’s got to be something a little deeper in the system going on here. I’ll get Jason to call the electrician the university has under contract.”

  “Okay. Well, thanks for stopping in. And for, you know, chasing Alex off.”

  “Thanks for telling me about your project. You must be a good teacher, because even a grunt like me understood most of that.” He picked up his toolbox. “We’ll figure out where your step two product is going, one way or another.”

  Something about the way he said that gave her pause. Since when had Tucker University started hiring maintenance men who doubled as research consultants?

  …

  Of course, Mike ran into Evan when he left Lauren’s lab. Almost literally.

  “Watch where you’re going, Michael!” Evan said, stepping aside. He smoothed an imaginary stray hair back in place.

  Mike took a deep breath and let it out slowly, refraining from biting the head off his anal-retentive brother. He was still reeling from the knowledge that he’d been stumbling around Tucker University for a week trying to find out where the hell Devil’s Dust was coming from and his own punky little brother was working with it every day. In fact, both of his brothers were in spitting distance of the drug. Although Evan couldn’t have been considered punky since…ever. He could be considered someone Mike had no desire to talk to right now, however.

  He wanted time to let his mind chew on the information he’d just taken in and digest it into something that made sense. How was it that the adorable scientist Lauren Kane was the one making the formula for Devil’s Dust? And more importantly, how was it that the drug was getting off the campus and onto the streets?

  “Where’s the inferno?” Evan asked, then when Mike glared at him, he amended that to, “Is something wrong?”

  “Did you know Dylan was working in a lab where dangerous drugs are being made?”

  Evan’s lips tightened. “Yes. And I’ve spoken with him about it. He assured me that he’s keeping his nose clean, and I believe him.”

  “Really?” Mike wondered if it was his own suspicious—okay, paranoid—nature that made Evan seem so naive.

  “Really.”

  “Does he have keys to everything? Can he come and go at all hours?”

  Evan blinked. “He can get into the building any time with his student ID, but he’d have to have a key to the lab. I think he only works when Lauren’s working.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  Evan opened his mouth, then closed it again, like he wanted to say something more.

  “What?”

  “Are you really in a position to judge?”

  Part of him—the proud, defensive part—wanted to make Evan understand that he wasn’t the fuck up that everyone believed him to be, but he didn’t see any point.

  Ironic. He could only ask someone to believe that he hadn’t been responsible for the fuck up that had cost him his job—and nearly gotten Dylan killed. Until he could prove who was making and distributing Devil’s Dust and bring them to justice, that is. And right there, smack dab in the middle of his brothers, was a lab making some kind of heroin alternative. His gut said Lauren was innocent, but his instincts had failed him in the past.

  He needed to find out more about Lauren Kane.

  Maybe Evan knew something that would help. He seemed to have an opinion about Dylan’s work situation.

  “I was wondering—”

  “Chief Crawford asked about you,” Evan said.

  “Did he?” Great. “How is Dwayne?”

  “Disappointed that you haven’t contacted him since you moved back to Tucker,” Evan said.

  “I’m not sure—””

  “I know that you think he’s disappointed in you because of your troubles, but I believe he’s a fairly forgiving person,” Evan told him.

  Mike snorted. Crawford had better be forgiving, after all of the shit Dwayne had done in high school that Mike could use as blackmail material, were he so inclined. But he hadn’t contacted his old friend because he didn’t want to hear Crawford tell him he was tilting at windmills in his quest to find the source of Devil’s Dust.

  “As a matter of fact,” Evan continued, “he said he was disappointed that you didn’t come to him when you moved back to town. Apparently, the Tucker Police Department has an opening.”

  “I’m still technically employed by another department,” Mike said.

  It was Evan’s turn to snort. “‘Suspended indefinitely, without pay’, sounds a lot like fired to me. I don’t know why you’d want to go back there, even if you were able to prove your innocence. And if you could work for someone who trusts you, like Crawford…”

  Mike just shook his head. He wasn’t going to get into his desire for justice and redemption. “I’ll give Dwayne a call.” One of these days.

  “Don’t forget dinner this weekend,” Evan said. “You agreed to bring the starchy side dish.”

  “Potatoes. Yeah. I remember.”

  “Or pasta, or rice. It doesn’t have to be—”

  “Dylan wants Grandma’s cheesy potatoes.” Enough of the dinner discussion. He needed info on how Devil’s Dust was leaving campus, not a menu.

  “Okay, potatoes,” Evan said. “And yourself. No matter how much you might want to drop off food and run, Grandma wanted us to have a home cooked meal together. We all promised her.”

  “Grandma was out of her sweet mind with dementia when we made that promise,” Mike said. “She thought we were Great Uncle Samuel and Mom.”

  Evan raised his eyebrows.

  Mike pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay. I’ll be there. Sunday. Five thirty.”

  Evan nodded.

  “I wonder if you—”

  “There you are, Evan!” An old guy came around the corner, wearing a lab coat that fell all the way to the tops of his shiny saddle shoes.

  Evan shot Mike an apologetic look. “This will take a while,” he muttered, then turned to Mr. Frump. “Hello, Dr. Jerrold.”

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Mike said, putting aside finding out how Lauren Kane’s drug—if it was her drug—was getting out of her lab and into the noses and veins of drug addicts.

  “Have a good afternoon,” Evan said, and with that, he stepped around his brother and proceeded down the hall.

  Mike tilted his head until his neck cracked, and then repeated the move on the other side. It
was no use. He was going to have to hit the Advil. And he needed to connect with Dylan to ask him what he knew about Lauren’s algae and Devil’s Dust. At least he finally had a lead. Even if it was his own kid brother.

  …

  After a long day of responding to calls about keys that didn’t fit in locks, overflowing dorm toilets, and windows that wouldn’t open, Mike tossed his tool belt behind the seat of his old F-150 and climbed into the cab. He’d rather have been back working as a cop—even directing traffic if he couldn’t be a detective again. But this maintenance gig was coming in pretty handy right now.

  When he’d been fired, he’d already had a lead on where the Devil’s Dust was coming from—the university. He just needed a good excuse to be on campus. Pretending to be a student wouldn’t have worked—he’d have stood out like a sore thumb. So he’d called Jason, the maintenance supervisor, who had worked for Evan’s dad, Lloyd, back in the day. Lloyd taught Mike everything he knew about fixing stuff and had been more of a dad than Mike’s own sperm donor. Jason hired Mike, no questions asked.

  The day had been long and relatively boring, but at least he’d found out where Devil’s Dust was most likely being created. What he hadn’t been able to do was get ahold of Dylan, no matter that he’d tried every which way to Sunday to find him today. Damned kid. The delinquent knew it made Mike bat-shit crazy when he couldn’t find him.

  He stuck his key in the ignition and prayed the old truck would start. It growled to life, and after coughing a few times, settled into a steady rumble. Too bad Dylan’s mechanic dad had been too busy shooting up heroin and beating his stepsons to show them how to do a tune-up on a vehicle.

  As the truck warmed up, he stared through the bug-splattered windshield at the biology building, simultaneously hoping for a sight of the sexy scientist and chiding himself for it. Then, as though Mike had mentally summoned her, Lauren came through the building’s front door, carrying a plastic grocery bag. She skipped down the steps and looked toward the parking lot, right where Mike was parked. The moment she locked gazes with him, she hesitated and lost her footing, flailing awkwardly for a moment. Mike grabbed the door handle, planning to scoop her up if she fell, but she regained her balance. A black plastic bag, like the one she’d shown him a few hours ago, had fallen out of the plastic grocery bag and landed on the bottom step. After quickly glancing around, she picked it up, wrapped the remnants of the grocery bag around it, and tucked it under her arm. She stepped up her pace and hurried toward her car.

  What the hell? Was she taking the drug with her? So much for being sure she was innocent. Looked like he’d be taking a little drive before going home tonight. The cute scientist needed a little following.

  Chapter Four

  In the parking lot of the Tucker Animal Welfare Society where she volunteered, Lauren squinted against the late afternoon sunlight as she handed a bag of fortified rat pellets to her elderly friend, Rick. When he’d called her earlier in the day and mentioned he was about out of food, she’d agreed to meet him here with a load of yummies for Nibbles. It bugged her to no end that she had to steal trash so that the aging guy’s aging rat could eat well. The animals in the biology building lived better than most humans, and their chow was top of the line. When new shipments of food were brought in, the almost-empty bags were tossed out, meaning loads of perfectly good food was thrown away. So every now and then, Lauren scooped up a bag and brought it to the shelter for Rick’s rat. On a strict budget, the senior had enough trouble buying healthy food for himself, never mind his pet.

  Yeah, it was just a rat, and yeah, rats could survive on almost anything, but Nibbles was special to the old guy, and Lauren was a soft touch.

  The old man thanked her for her trouble and got into his car.

  It was really no trouble, since she had to come out here to medicate Miss Posey, the decrepit cat who was probably yowling away inside the cinder-brick sanctuary. And coming out here to feed Miss Posey had been a good excuse to send Alex’s last phone call to voicemail.

  She felt kind of bad about that, but she’d just seen him and hadn’t been in the mood to be friendly. And sure enough, his message was an offer to stop by and show her how he thought she should scan all of her hand written notes into digital form with an app he’d found on one of his email loops. Even though she could use the help, he was just trying to find an excuse to spend time with her, and she needed to cut that cord. They had been coworkers for so long—she never should have stepped over the line with him and gotten intimate.

  Rick tooted the horn and turned to wave at her, then pulled out of the parking lot, right into the path of a big pickup truck that was pulling in. Crap. She hated turning away prospective owners, but it wasn’t an adoption night. The shelter was closed. Who was this?

  The truck’s movement changed the angle of the sunlight that had been reflecting off of the windshield, and Lauren saw the driver.

  What the heck? Was that Mike Gibson?

  He noticed her at the same time she saw him, and even though she gave him a friendly grin, the look he put on his face was priceless—if one tried to put value on expressions of dismay.

  Well, she hadn’t expected to see him, either. Besides, she already knew she needed to stay away from him, so the fact that he didn’t appear thrilled to see her should have been a good thing. Except her feelings had taken a little nosedive when he didn’t smile back. She seriously needed to get a grip.

  …

  Shit! The truck resisted when Mike yanked the steering wheel. He managed to miss the dusty Honda by a hair and land the F-150 inches from the edge of a drainage ditch. The truck stalled, however, as the other car putted away. He cranked the starter, but he’d nicknamed the beast Old Faithful out of irony, not because the name fit. Damn it. He turned to watch the vehicle gain momentum as it headed down the road. There went the package of algae pellets, he’d bet his tool belt on it.

  “Are you okay?” Lauren appeared, her hand on his window frame, peering in at him.

  “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “Well, then, hi, Mike!”

  “Hi, Lauren,” he said, after a beat. “What are you doing here?” What else was he gonna say? Hi, where is that bag of dried drug stuff you showed me earlier today?

  “Um…I volunteer here a couple of times a week. What brings you out this way tonight?” She rambled a little, as though she were nervous. Because she was doing something wrong? Or was it him who made her nervous? “Are you interested in adopting a pet? We’re closed, but I’ve got to do something inside anyway, if you’d like to come in and look around.”

  He glanced at the building behind her. Huh. It was an animal shelter. “Um…” He scratched his chin, a day’s worth of stubble rasping under his fingers. He’d lost the guy in the Honda, who might—or might not—have the drugs in his car, but he might as well find out what Lauren was up to here. He scrambled to come up with an answer. “I…uh…yeah. I was thinking about looking into getting a dog—something Dylan could take care of, learn some responsibility, but if you’re closed, I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble! Let’s see who we have that might suit you.” Her sunny smile was so guileless that Mike was strangely ashamed that he was only pretending to want a dog. He opened his mouth, then shut it again, and opened the truck door. He looked toward the road one more time, then turned back to her, smiled, and said, “Fine. Let’s take a look.”

  Lauren unlocked the big metal door and headed inside. He followed her in, only to be greeted by a cacophony of meows, woofs, and an occasional…bray? It took him a moment to readjust to the sudden wave of sound, and he looked around for Lauren. Aaaand there she was, bending over in those pants again to lift a cat into her arms.

  He looked away—he should be mentally measuring the building for clandestine drug manufacturing space. “Does this building have a basement?”

  “Huh?”

  Subtle, Sherlock. He thought fast. Difficult when his brain was vacatio
ning in his pants. “On the way over here, I was listening to a news story about tornados.”

  She seemed to accept this, started to speak, but he cut her off.

  “I guess a cinder block building doesn’t need a storm cellar. Just a big internal storage room or something.” Yes, he was still the master of redirection.

  “Well, we don’t have one of those, either, but then we aren’t in Kansas, right? Or a trailer park anywhere.”

  “Good point.”

  “What made you decide to adopt a pet today?” she asked, emphasis on today.

  He needed a dog like he needed—well, he didn’t need a dog. Or a cat. Or a bird. Not even a fish, for that matter. “I heard this place was here, and I wasn’t doing anything else, so—”

  Her face lit up. “You’ve heard of us? That’s so cool. We’re kind of new, so it’s great to know that the community’s taking notice.” She put the gray tiger cat on the floor, and it sauntered to a chair and jumped onto the seat.

  “As a volunteer, what do you do here?” he asked. He wondered what she would say. He guessed “making drug deals” wasn’t going to be her answer.

  She went to a cabinet behind the counter of the little office and took out a prescription bottle. “I’m the drug pusher,” she said.

  The look on his face must have given away his thoughts, because she grinned.

  “Kidding! We have an old cat who’s just getting over pneumonia, and she needs antibiotics. And an antidepressant, because she’s…well, anyway, you’ll meet her soon enough. The day person, Carol, dosed Posy before she left at lunch time, but I promised I’d take the night shift.”

  “So you work here nights, even after you’re done doing mysterious science stuff?”

  She laughed, a pure, sweet sound, and something zinged through him.

  “I’m never done doing science stuff,” she admitted, “although, I sneak away now and then. But this isn’t work.” She picked up a package of cat treats and gestured toward another door. “We’ll just go through here.”

  The room they entered had a wall of cages housing a variety of sleeping, meowing, and hissing cats—and one rabbit. The bottommost cage on the right side was draped with a towel. Lauren knelt down next to it and said, “Miss Posy, time for your medicine.”