Deadly Chemistry (Entangled Ignite)

by Teri Anne Stanley

  “Because he’s a…a big jerk. He was always telling you what to do and how to do it.”

  Things were suddenly much clearer. Why was it that she’d taken so many years to understand what her mother had done with her life? Why hadn’t she acted like a scientist and asked her mom rationally why she’d given up on being a scientist, instead staying in the preconceived Land of Assumptions? “Oh.”

  There was silence on the line for a moment while Lauren digested the conversation.

  “Lauren? Are you okay?”

  “Um, yeah. I think so.”

  “So who is this guy? What’s he like?”

  Rock and roll and fast cars. Thunder and lightning. Soft kisses and sweaty sex. “He…he’s definitely not a scientist.”

  Her mother laughed. “Good. You need someone who will help you remember there’s more to life than notebooks and formulas.”

  “Yeah…maybe.” At least until he notices that I’m really boring.

  “And when are we going to meet him?”

  “Don’t set an extra plate for Christmas dinner, Mom. I just met him.” And there were a few other obstacles. Like the one where Lauren had to get her algae back to save her career before he got it to save his.

  “Don’t forget the Professor’s birthday next week.”

  “I won’t, Mom.” And then another thought occurred to her. “Why do you call Dad that? Instead of Dale?”

  “Because your dad is a professor.”

  “But he’s also your husband. And my dad. Why do we call him by his job?” It had never bothered her before, but for some reason, this morning, that title rankled.

  “You call me Mom, and that’s my job,” her mother said.

  “But that’s…that’s your name to me. You’re more than your job.”

  “Oh, Lauren, you’re thinking too much. Go fix your lab, cure some diseases, and make a name for yourself.”

  But after they hung up, she wondered. Did her mom really think that all she had was her job as wife and mother? And that all her father had was his job as a professor? Her mother had encouraged her to pursue her plan to become a scientist, had helped with every science fair project and book report, never taking over, but always offering ideas and asking the right questions at the right time, but Lauren had always wondered…did her mother resent Lauren’s opportunity?

  She supposed at the moment, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was getting her own career back on track.

  She looked longingly at the couch, and the remote, which would easily suck her into her preferred Sunday routine of flipping from the Food Network to Hoarders: Buried Alive marathons and back again. Instead, she downed the last of her tea and went to get dressed. Her lab wasn’t going to reassemble itself.

  A half hour later, as she pulled into the parking lot at Tucker U, Lauren noticed Evan getting off of his bike in front of the Biological Sciences building. He wore the whole cycling-guy get-up—skin-tight shirt covered in racing logos, snug shorts with extra padding in the butt area, skinny little shoes.

  As she got out of her car, she watched him take off his helmet, and with one shake of his head, his hair laid right back in place. Bizarre. Even if she wore her own hair an inch long, she’d have to spend fifteen minutes in the bathroom trying to smush everything back in place after sweating with a helmet on. Although he didn’t look sweaty, either. He made the geeky-jock-professor thing look as effortless as his brother did the hot maintenance man/secret undercover guy.

  Evan saw her approach and smiled. He really was a nice man. Cute in his extreme dorkiness, but he didn’t do it for her. Not the way Mike did.

  “Good morning, Dr. Kane,” he said, pulling his ID badge from his backpack and running it through the scanner. He held the door for her, and she entered in front of him. The halls echoed with the absence of students.

  “Thanks, Evan. Did you already take your big ride for the week?”

  “Yes, I rode twenty-five miles this morning, and now I’m going to spend some time with the FUCR Frogs.”

  She grinned, her automatic response whenever Evan’s research animals were mentioned. He returned the smile, apparently finally accepting that the acronym for the species of tree frog he worked with was really…fucking…funny.

  “So are you just here to feed the little….uh…FUCRs, or will you be around all day?” She hadn’t given it much thought before leaving the house, but the labs were even more deserted on Sundays than on Saturdays, and she felt a little dash of heebie-jeebies creeping in, especially after her little run-in with those people on the street last night.

  “I’ll be here for a couple of hours, but I’m hosting my brothers for our supposedly regular family dinner this evening, so I have a pork roast to prepare.”

  That brought Lauren’s thoughts to a screaming halt. “Family dinner? That’s nice.” Surprising, too, given that the guys didn’t seem to get along particularly well, but nice.

  “Just before our grandmother died, she made us swear to have dinner together at least once a month.” He turned the key in his door lock. “None of us will admit it—at least not to each other—but I think we’re all a little afraid she’ll come back and haunt us if we don’t make an effort to get along. She was a practicing Catholic, but she’s got roots that go way back into the snake-handling hills of Kentucky.” He wiggled his eyebrows and disappeared into his lab.

  Laughing, she unlocked her door, wishing that she’d had the opportunity to meet Grandma Gibson. It would have taken a heck of a woman to raise such strong-minded and different boys after their parents died.

  Lauren continued into her own lab and looked around. It was still a mess, but she’d managed to get enough done yesterday that she could start cooking up another batch of algae. She was tempted to forget the whole thing. There was no way she’d be able to get the Pemberton group to give her an extension. She might as well start packing up her lab coats.

  Instead, she found one of the big flasks she used as a growing chamber and rinsed it with distilled water, then took a vial of algae from the freezer and stuck it into her pocket before mixing up two liters of her homemade pond water. Then she found a blank notebook and recorded the date and vial number. It was official. She was a compulsive scientist. She’d probably take the stuff home and grow it in her garage if she couldn’t work in the lab.

  Huh. She was a scientist, through and through.

  Not like her mom. Her mom liked science. Maybe even loved it. But she wasn’t incomplete without it. If Lauren ran out of money, she’d find a way to keep going. If she got married and had sixteen kids and lived on the side of a mountain with no indoor plumbing, she’d find a way to keep going. If she got married…

  Oh hell, no. She didn’t have time to think about that right now.

  Holding the vial up to the window to make sure it was thawed, she unscrewed the cap with one hand and carefully transferred the contents to the flask. She shoved a sterilized cork with two long glass tubes into the top and plugged in the aerator. There. In a little while, she’d feed the algae, and maybe get home in time to catch a couple of episodes of Hoarders.

  She’d sort some more slides while she waited and try not to think about Mike Gibson’s lips. Or any other part of his that she was inclined to kiss. Or lick. Or…

  She snapped on the radio to distract herself.

  But gosh, she really, really liked him. It was weird. She’d started thinking about everything in terms of Mike. Evan was making a pork roast tonight. She wondered if Mike cooked anything that fancy, or if he was all hamburgers on the grill and a container of potato salad.

  Aaaaand there she went. Just because she’d realized she could probably still manage a career and a love life didn’t mean she could manage a love life with a guy like Mike Gibson. Or that, late-night condom runs aside, it was unlikely a guy like Mike Gibson would want that with her. He would want the big city and big adventures, bad-guy-chasing adrenaline highs and stiletto-wearing sex goddesses. Not bookish, cat-loving, snea
ker-wearing homebodies like Lauren. Though she might like to try out the sex goddess thing for a while.

  Wow. She was really getting ahead of herself. Not a safe place to be.

  The song on the radio ended, and a teaser for the news played. “Local police are warning that a dangerously addictive new drug called Devil’s Dust may come in a less purified—but more deadly—form. A smokable alternative is rumored to be hitting the streets, with devastating effects. An unnamed person was admitted to University Hospital with severe neurological symptoms after smoking what he told doctors was a new experimental drug. And it’s quite possibly being produced in a lab at a tri-state college. That story and more after these messages…”

  Lauren sat up. No. Surely whoever had her drug wasn’t smoking the algae. When she filtered the algae to dry it for storage, she’d mixed it with a poison that was bound to the cell walls. This caused the cells to release all of the drug so that when she made it into step two, she could rehydrate it and strain out the cell bodies and be left with only the drug. The poison stayed bound to the cell walls after the step two was released—but if someone was smoking the algae before it was rehydrated and rinsed, they would inhale the toxin.

  Hadn’t Mike asked her if the drug could be smoked? She’d hoped until now that he’d been wrong, that they’d find out this was a wild goose chase. The goose had just turned and pulled a gun.

  “Dr. Kane.”

  Lauren looked up. Evan stood in the doorway, his face pale and rigid. “What is it?” Could he have heard the same news she had? She was glad to see him, though. Maybe she could talk this through with him, get him to help her figure out how this was all some weird misunderstanding.

  Her momentary relief at his appearance fled the second he stepped into the lab, followed by her department head, Dr. Jerrold. What on earth was he doing in the building on a Sunday? She saw a uniformed campus security officer standing in the hall behind them.

  Dr. Jerrold’s normally round, smiling face was gray and serious. “Lauren, we need to have a word with you.”

  “Of course.” Lauren nodded. She shot another glance at Evan, but he wouldn’t meet her eye. “Evan, why are you here?”

  Evan cleared his throat. “Witness.”

  A wave of fear spread through Lauren’s body.

  Dr. Jerrold said, “I’ve been in a teleconference with the chairman of the Pemberton Group.”

  “On a Sunday?” Her stomach churned. Whatever was coming, it was going to be bad.

  “Apparently, this drug that’s going around—this Devil’s Dust—” He cleared his throat, then continued. “Someone on the Pemberton board is also on staff at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, and they’ve spoken with the authorities. Seems they’d heard the drug is coming from Tucker University.”

  Lauren flashed on the email from Pemberton that she’d ignored last night. What if it hadn’t been a reminder notice? What if they had been looking for an explanation from her about her drug hitting the streets?

  “I don’t know if you saw the morning news—”

  She waved a hand, interrupting Dr. Jerrold. “I just heard something on the radio—”

  “There was a photograph of this substance that people are smoking. Lauren, it’s your algae pellets.”

  She collapsed onto the stool. Her mind spun. How could this be real?

  Evan stepped toward her. “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head, then took a deep breath. “I didn’t have anything to do with this,” she said.

  Dr. Jerrold smiled sadly. “I hope not. But Lauren, we have to take your lab keys and escort you from the building. Until further notice, the contents of your lab and all electronic information are off limits to you and any employee or student associated with your project.”

  “What? Why?”

  “As you know, the Pemberton Group funds not only your research project, but that of several other faculty members at Tuck U. Pemberton is threatening to pull all of their support immediately unless we disassociate you from the department, pending investigation of your involvement with the Devil’s Dust issue.”

  “So, am I fired?”

  Dr. Jerrold shook his head. “Not if you’re innocent. But until we have proof that you’re not involved, you’ll have to leave the Tucker University campus immediately.”

  Well, crap on a cracker. She was so screwed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mike checked his phone on the way into the grocery store. He had just enough time to get the stuff he needed to make cheesy potatoes for dinner at Evan’s. He hoped that Dylan was actually going to show up to eat them. The kid hadn’t come home last night but had texted that he was staying with a friend and would see Mike at Evan’s later.

  His choices for a shopping cart were between the one that looked like it had been drooled on—or worse—by every toddler in Tucker, and the one with a wonky front, right wheel. He chose the one with the wobbly wheel, because the tub of disinfecting wipes by the door of Food Giant was empty. Besides, fighting with a recalcitrant shopping cart gave him something substantial to wrestle. Something besides his own frustration.

  It had been a long day of leaving voicemails, being on hold, and being ignored.

  Mike had wanted to blow up Dylan’s phone, insisting on a meeting to get to the bottom of Dylan’s involvement in the Devil’s Dust situation, but Mike had wanted to get some more information from the task force in Cincinnati before he levied any more accusations at Dylan. The problem with that plan was that some of Lauren’s dried algae pellets had hit the street overnight—and sent a couple of people to the hospital, and the investigators were up to their eyebrows in dead-ends. He’d finally spoken with his old partner, Dan, who’d reluctantly shared that no one knew where the two kids who were in the hospital had gotten the stuff, and they weren’t talking. They might not be talking ever again.

  And now he’d managed to arrive right in the middle of the Sunday afternoon grocery shopping happy hour. Who knew everyone in Tucker did their shopping at the same time?

  His breath caught and his hands tightened on the handle of the cart when he noticed Lauren Kane. She didn’t notice him, which was good, because he stopped in his tracks and just…looked at her. An elderly man elbowed him out of the way, with a smirk and a “She’s a purty one,” as he went by.

  Lauren was intent on snagging something from the ice cream cooler, balancing a rather large bottle of pink wine, an economy-size bag of salt and vinegar potato chips, Oreo cookies, and a box of Pizza Rolls. Wearing baggy faded jeans and an Ohio State Buckeyes hoodie, she tried to use her shoulder to brush a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. Before he knew what he was doing, Mike moved forward and took the bottle and the Pizza Rolls from her before she dropped them. And so he wouldn’t be tempted to stroke that hair out of her face. “I’ll share my cart with you if you tell me why you’re going on a suicide junk food feeding frenzy,” he said.

  After such a crappy day so far, it was both stunning and refreshing to see her here, doing something as mundane as grocery shopping, because Lauren wasn’t the least bit mundane. She was energy and light and…he was in so, so deep.

  She turned to look at him, and he saw that she also held a large, red apple under her chin. “I have an apple.” She put the wine next to his bag of frozen hash browns. “And I don’t have anything resembling cheese that doesn’t need to be refrigerated.” She pointedly put the cookies next to his block of Velveeta.

  “My grandmother lived to be eighty-four and she ate Velveeta every day,” Mike said, taking the potato chips from her so she could get the tub of salted caramel ice cream she’d been chasing when he found her.

  Lauren started to speak, then snapped her mouth shut.

  Mike laughed. He was glad to see her. “Yeah, she probably could have made it another twenty years, but she went out happy and full of her favorite tater casserole.”

  “That’s nice,” Lauren said, her expression soft. “You must miss her.”

 
Mike felt a little tightening in his throat. He coughed.

  The ice cream landed next to the economy-size tubs of butter and sour cream he needed for his casserole. “Thanks,” she said, shaking out her fingers. “I was getting a hand cramp.” She didn’t meet his eyes, pretending to look for something between the frozen peas and brussels sprouts.

  “So…What’s going on?” He hoped she wasn’t uncomfortable seeing him after what had transpired between them last night. He hoped she might be a little glad to see him, too.

  “Did you see the news today?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I was gonna call, but…” He was gonna call, but hadn’t known what to say. Hey, I see that another piece of your research project is out there making people sick? No, he hadn’t planned to call her until he had something to tell her, like that he’d found the connection and made sure they were behind bars.

  She fiddled with the strap of her purse. “Some kids are in the hospital from smoking those step one pellets. That’s even worse than the purified step two because of that toxin I mixed in.”

  The pain in her eyes was a knife to his gut. “I know. I’m sorry.” Goddamn it.

  She looked at him then. “What am I supposed do? This is my fault. If I hadn’t been so anxious to get more step two from the algae, I wouldn’t have mixed in the cell membrane disruptor—”

  He cut her off by pulling her into his arms right there in the middle of the Food Giant on Sunday afternoon. He held her, trying to show her with the strength of his body that he wouldn’t let her fall apart. After a second, he pushed her away a little so he could see her face. “We’re going to get these assholes. I promise.” He hoped. “But first, you’re going to come to my house and help me make Grandma’s cheesy taters.”

  “For dinner with Evan and Dylan?”

  “Hey—how did you—”

  She gave him a watery smile. “I saw Evan at the lab this morning. I hear there’s going to be pork roast, too.”

  For a moment, all he could do was stare into her eyes, then it hit him. He’d invited a woman home to dinner. His stomach clenched. Oh God, what had he done?