Deadly Chemistry (Entangled Ignite)

by Teri Anne Stanley

  …

  Mike looked in his rearview mirror to see if Lauren was still following him. After spending the afternoon together, trying to convince her that Velveeta was a miracle food, and that, even though it was kind of gummy, you could cut it with a knife, he wasn’t sure she hadn’t bailed on him. Who knew that someone so good with all those scientific instruments would be all thumbs in the kitchen? Mike was more than a little surprised that they hadn’t ended up at the Tucker Community Hospital Emergency Room for wound care.

  Instead, they’d spent a couple of hours laughing and talking and pretending that Lauren hadn’t been suspended from her job, though they’d both jumped every time either of their phones buzzed with incoming emails, none of which had any news about the Devil’s Dust or the smokable algae.

  There were now two careers on the skids because of the Devil’s Rangers. Mike prayed that he’d find something—anything—that proved that Dylan wasn’t involved. The only thing he held on to at the moment was that he didn’t have a living link between Dylan and the Rangers. Just circumstantial shit from the lab, which was pretty damned convincing.

  When he saw Lauren connect gazes with him through the rearview mirror and wave, he proceeded down the next street. Evan lived in a little subdivision half a mile outside of the old city limits. Mike wasn’t sure that Tucker had suburbs, but this area might qualify. The houses here were newer—1980s—than the 1930s and 40s vintage in town. Mike turned his truck onto Evan’s street just in time to see that same little black car from last night pull out of the driveway and speed past Lauren, who was parking a block up from Evan’s house. The driver stared right at him, recognition shocking both of them. Oh, hell no. If he wasn’t mistaken, that was Angela Romain. He thought about giving chase, but considering Dylan was standing, frozen, on Evan’s front stoop, he didn’t need to. He had his connection to the Devil’s Rangers.

  “Goddamn it.” He threw the truck into park and grabbed the pan of potatoes. He thought about tossing the whole mess at his brother’s head, but Lauren had caught up to him.

  “What. The. Fuck.” He stomped toward Dylan.

  The kid stood his ground and met Mike’s eyes. Lauren edged next to Mike, her presence the only thing keeping him from totally losing his shit. He already knew the answer, but he needed to know if Dylan would tell him the truth. “Who was that?”

  “Angela.”

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Angela.”

  “Yes,” Dylan said.

  “Angela Romain. Sister of Dino Romain, leader of the Devil’s Rangers. Your ex-girlfriend. The one you promised me you’d broken up with ages ago.”

  “Mike, it’s not—”

  “How can it not be?” Mike paced. The front door opened, and Evan stepped out. “After everything we went through. After everything you went through with those assholes—”

  “It’s not like that!” Dylan was practically quivering with frustration, but Mike didn’t give a shit.

  “The one thing you swore to that judge was that you’d stay away from anyone associated with the Devil’s Rangers!” He registered Evan standing in the doorway, arms crossed, and Lauren, looking between the three men. His mind raced. How had he so completely lost control of everything? His own life was one thing, but the family that he’d sworn to take care of was falling apart—had probably already shattered.

  Evan didn’t look as disturbed as Mike thought he should be, which raised his stress another couple of notches. He waved the pan of potatoes at the door, and a drop of oily cheese dripped from under the foil.

  Evan’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?” He came outside, looking for all the world like Mike was the crazy one, completely ignoring the splotch of food marring his perfect doormat. “Mike, come on inside. The neighbors—”

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on with Dylan?” Mike glared at him. How could he not know?

  “Come on, let’s all go inside,” Evan commanded, holding the door and jerking his head at Dylan. “You, too.”

  Something in his tone… Mike had never known Evan to have a take-charge attitude outside of the lab.

  Mike went inside. Rosemary and garlic perfumed the air, and something else…fresh, yeasty bread. A whiff of rationality slowed his heart rate—a little. Striding through the living room to the kitchen, he plunked the potatoes onto the counter next to the stove. Another drip. Lauren brushed past to grab a dishcloth from the edge of the sink and wiped up the mess as she scowled. He didn’t blame her for being unhappy. He’d promised her not two hours ago that he was going to help her, and he was proving right now that he’d already let everything slip out of his control.

  “You want to tell me what this is all about?” Evan asked.

  “Maybe you should start. Did you know that Dylan was still involved with the Rangers?”

  The look on Evan’s face would have been worth a lot of money if he were in Hollywood, because he was a great actor. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re letting him meet her here? Angela?”

  “What?” Evan looked at Dylan, who had the grace to appear chagrined.

  “It’s really not what it looks like,” Dylan said. “Angela’s been helping me—”

  “I know how she’s been helping you,” Mike interrupted. “Lauren caught her ‘helping you’ outside of her house last night, didn’t she? What were you doing? Waiting for Lauren to go to sleep so you could go steal more of her drugs?”

  “No, Mike, that’s not what we were doing. And if you’d just listen—”

  “I’m done listening. You’re going to call whoever you’ve been working with, and we’re going to go meet them and—”

  “We’re not going to do anything right now,” Evan said. “Nothing but sit down and eat dinner.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dylan said, staring at his brother. “I’m not staying here to pretend to be a nice, happy family.”

  For once, Mike agreed with Dylan. “You can keep the potatoes,” he told Evan. “I think Dylan and I need to go take care of some things.”

  “Mike, can I have a minute?” Lauren wrapped her hand around his arm and tugged.

  Because he knew he was about to blow and needed to count to ten, he backed away from Dylan and followed her down the hall. When they were around the corner, he said, “What?”

  Brown eyes filled with concern, she stroked her hand down his arm and said, “I think you might want to back off a little, give this some space.”

  He shook her off—mostly because her touch felt too good. “Not your problem.” Which was, he realized as soon as it was out of his mouth, the wrong thing to say, but he didn’t have the time to rephrase it nicely.

  “Seriously?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I got this.” He would have to find a way to take care of this for her. He’d failed to keep Dylan safe and out of trouble, but he did recognize that Lauren had a major stake in this situation.

  “Dylan, wait!” Evan called just as the front door slammed.

  “Stay here. I’ve got to talk to him.” Mike turned away from Lauren, but not before he saw the hurt cross her features.

  He opened the front door to follow Dylan into the fading light.

  Behind him he heard Lauren call out, “Damn it, Mike! Wait for me!”

  But he was already gone.

  …

  Lauren looked at Evan after the door slammed behind Mike. “He left me here!” She caught herself before she stomped her foot, but Jeez! She’d followed Mike home, indulged part of her fantasy that involved a hot guy in an apron—the cooking part—then had come over to his brother’s to have a family meal, only to watch him flip out at his baby brother and take off. Some date. That is, if you could call it an actual date if you’d been picked up in the frozen food section of the Food Giant.

  Evan sighed and lifted the corner of the foil covering the casserole dish. “Would you like to join me for dinner?”

  “What? Aren’t you going to go after them?”
Lauren was aghast. Her…uh…almost boyfriend? Sort-of lover? Her guy-who-spent-an-otherwise-shitty-day-making-her-laugh? Anyway, whoever, or whatever Mike was to her had just run out of the house, chasing after the brother he’d accused of drug dealing, and Evan was just going to sit down and eat like nothing had happened.

  “I’m sure Michael will handle himself with the appropriate restraint.” Evan led the way to the kitchen, dropping Mike’s casserole on the already-set dining room table on the way. He took two wine coolers from the refrigerator and unscrewed the lids, handing one to Lauren.

  She thought about the previous night, when Mike had shown up at her door looking for Dylan. “So…”

  He shrugged. “Dylan will probably call this Angela person, they’ll do whatever it is that young lovers do to pass the time.” Eye roll. “And Michael will calm down and get to the bottom of the dilemma.”

  An ugly feeling stole over Lauren. She took a long slug of wine cooler. “You act like this happens a lot. If Mike is so volatile, why does Dylan live with him?”

  Evan leaned back against the counter, tipping his own bottle, staring off into the distance. “Michael is not volatile. He reacts to danger. He’s…a rescuer, a fixer.”

  That was what she’d thought before they’d gotten here. It was the vibe she’d gotten from him, at least until fifteen minutes ago. She was glad she hadn’t been totally off base. But… “You warned me away from him earlier.”

  He put his drink on the counter, rubbed his face, then said, “Mike isn’t someone I could see with an academician, such as yourself. I suppose I was trying to look out for you. But perhaps it’s best I stay out of your personal life. Although…I can see how you might be awfully good for him.”

  “Oh,” she said, not sure what to say. “Um…”

  He waved away her discomfort. “Let’s eat. Dylan’s safe with Michael. He’d take a bullet for anyone he cares about.” He grabbed the pork roast and put the meat on the table next to the cheesy potatoes.

  “And you wouldn’t?”

  Evan returned to the kitchen and reached into a drawer, pulling out a serving spoon. “I can’t say that I have ever had—or am likely to have—the opportunity. But Mike is the brother with physical courage, while I’m the rational one. When our grandmother died, she left me as executor of her estate and Mike as legal guardian of Dylan until he reached eighteen. She was a wise woman.”

  Lauren took the spoon from Evan and followed him back into the formal dining room. She sat, then poked the spoon into the steaming casserole of potatoes while he carved the pork roast.

  “Why do you think that?” Lauren wondered why she was so focused on this issue when her own life was falling apart. Maybe because it was easier than to think about the fact that the thread supporting her career had frayed beyond repair, and it was just waiting for the breeze that would send it plummeting into obscurity.

  Evan sat down and served each of them a fragrant slice of meat. “When we were kids, Mike was the one who took the blows for both of us when Dylan’s father found fault. I was the one who hid in the closet. On the other hand, I was the one who came up with the explanations for the teachers and Grandmother about how Michael had fallen out of a tree or tripped over a skateboard.”

  “Oh,” Lauren said, feeling like she should say something more profound but unable to find words. Evan simply waved his fork at the potatoes and said, “Eat your dinner.”

  Her stomach growled. Might as well. After all, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do…like find her missing drugs and save her career.

  Chapter Sixteen

  After sharing what had to be the most delicious—albeit artery-blocking—cheesy potatoes and pork roast, and a rather awkward dinner conversation with Evan, Lauren stopped at the convenience store a few blocks from her house to pick up a bottle of white wine and some chocolate. She’d left her previous grocery purchases in Mike’s house. She felt like a cliché. Depressed and stressed, she’d go home and overeat and over-drink and worry about Mike, driving around somewhere on a mission to find his brother, bring down a drug cartel, get his job back, leap over a couple of tall buildings in a single bound…

  Unfortunately, she was afraid that his quest for redemption was going to come with the price of his brother’s freedom. It was looking more and more like Dylan was involved in the destruction of Lauren’s lab and the theft of her drug. How could he not be? She’d been defending the kid, but the coincidences were starting to mount.

  She tried calling Dylan a couple of times herself, on her way out of Evan’s neighborhood, hoping that—what? That she could ask him where his girlfriend’s gangster brother’s hideout was so she could show up, sneak in, steal back her algae pellets and the purified Devil’s Dust—er, step two—so no one else got hurt, and oh yeah, maybe she could still make enough of the step three drug in time for her meeting with the Pemberton Group? And Dylan would just go, “You’re right, Dr. Kane. Here, let me text you the address to Dino the Gangster Dude’s hideout.”

  Her gut still pleaded for Dylan to be innocent, but her gut was also telling her to grab hold of Mike Gibson with both hands—and thighs—and keep him with her forever—and she knew that was a bad idea.

  Thanking the clerk, she pocketed her change and thought of Mike, in here last night, buying condoms. He’d been buying condoms to come back to her house and use them.

  She doubted that would ever happen now. Was it wrong that she was thinking about how much she wanted to get naked with Mike instead of worrying about how useless she was when it came to saving her career? The neighbors were all inside when Lauren turned onto her quiet little street. Nothing moved but the headlights of a car—a black car—that was pulling out of her driveway. As it disappeared around the corner at the other end of the street, the bass sound of rap music faded into the twilight. Dread crept over her shoulder and wrapped around her heart with icy fingers.

  When Lauren pulled into her driveway, she noticed a cat-colored mound on her porch. Was that Kevin? She got out of her car and locked it, tucking the bag of wine and chocolate under her arm.

  “Kevin?” The mass of fur didn’t move. Surprising, since Kevin didn’t like loud cars. He normally hid under the bushes. He must be pissed at her. He ignored her sometimes, if she’d left him outside for too long without his dinner. But this was different. He wasn’t acknowledging her…he wasn’t even…” Oh my God.” He wasn’t breathing. Someone had—

  She turned away and vomited over the porch railing.

  After she’d emptied her stomach and her head stopped spinning, she backed off of the porch, careful not to look directly at Kevin’s lifeless body. She avoided stepping on him and pulled her phone from her pocket. She punched in 911.

  “Someone murdered my cat on my front porch,” she told the operator after identifying herself and giving her address.

  “Ma’am, I’m afraid that’s not an emergency. I can refer you to animal control, if you’d like.”

  What? Her cat was dead! “But those guys in the loud car… They…”

  “Did someone threaten you?”

  “There was a car in my driveway. A loud car.” That sounded lame. But… “I’m scared,” she admitted. “I think they were looking for me. And poor Kevin—my cat—he’s dead.”

  The operator said something to someone in the background. “Ma’am, there’s a patrol car in the neighborhood. We can ask him to stop by. Are you inside the house?”

  “No, I just got home. I was going to have dinner with my boy—with some friends, and—” She was rambling. “I should go in through the back door.”

  “No, ma’am. Please, just stay outside on the sidewalk until the officer gets there.”

  “Okay,” Lauren said. That made sense. Don’t go inside. She knew that. Her knees were shaking, and she needed— “Can you ask them to bring me some gum?”

  “Huh?”

  “I threw up and my mouth is gross.”

  Before she sat down on the grassy patch dividing th
e sidewalk from the street, Lauren unscrewed the cap of the bottle of wine. She swished a mouthful around and spit it into the grass, then took a big slug and swallowed before sitting down to wait for the officers. Maybe she could get a decent buzz on before she had to tell the police that the brother of the man she was falling in love with had something to do with her murdered cat and had maybe stolen a bunch of deadly drugs.

  …

  When Mike got the call from Crawford, he’d just pulled back into his own driveway. Heart racing, he backed out and turned toward Lauren’s side of town. Crawford had been in the station when Lauren had reported that her cat had apparently been killed by some thugs in a black car. Considering the drug thefts and the threatening message left on her lab wall, the police were treating this as slightly more than an act of animal cruelty.

  The police were already at her house, he reminded himself when he was tempted to break traffic laws. She was safe. He had time.

  No, he didn’t have time. He needed to be with her. He didn’t know what the hell was going on. His little brother, the brother he’d sworn to protect, was involved with a drug ring, and there didn’t seem to be anything Mike could do to stop Dylan from complete self-destruction. He’d run away from Mike after leaving Evan’s house, disappearing into the evening gloom between some houses. The only thing Mike could figure was that he’d had Angela come pick him up somewhere, and they were off commiserating about what an asshole Mike was.

  One thing he was sure of, which gave him a reason to keep going, was that Lauren Kane was good, and honest, and for some crazy reason, she liked him. Or she had, before he’d made an ass of himself in front of her and left her at Evan’s house.

  He squealed to the curb and barely got the keys out of the ignition before he jumped out and slammed the door. Lauren, Crawford, and a uniformed cop looked up at him as he pounded past the patrol car parked in front of her little bungalow.

  Lauren sat on the grass with a blanket draped around her shoulders. She turned a pale face and big eyes on him. He thought she relaxed a little as he walked toward her. He knew he felt better, seeing her there, safe and reasonably calm. She cradled a half-empty wine bottle to her chest and spoke around an enormous wad of gum. “Hi. What are you doing here?”