Deadly Chemistry (Entangled Ignite)

by Teri Anne Stanley

She pushed at his chest, but he didn’t move. “See? You’re overpowering me. You do that all the time!”

  He stepped back then, stricken. “What are you talking about?”

  Could he be that obtuse? “You—you—you’re going to take over my world! You keep—rescuing me, like some stupid—hero guy—and I can’t let you do that!”

  “You said you liked it last night. I know you were a little buzzed, but when we left your house, you said—”

  “Don’t you get it?” She was yelling now. “I did like it! That’s the whole damned problem!”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m saying, it’s over. This thing between us, whatever it was, isn’t going to continue. It can’t. It doesn’t work. We don’t work.” She softened her tone, not sure whether she was addressing him or herself when she said, “I’m sorry.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then said, “Don’t be sorry. You’re probably right. We don’t work. Hell, I don’t ‘work’ with anyone. No surprise there.” He put his hands on his head, and tugged at his hair, then scrubbed his face with his hands. Without another word, he turned and walked away, shutting the bathroom door behind himself.

  She couldn’t decide if she was relieved or if her feelings were hurt that he didn’t stay and wrestle her independence demons into submission. So she ran, letting herself out and grabbing Dylan’s bicycle from its place against the garage wall.

  Dawn’s earliest glow was beginning to lighten the eastern sky as she pedaled across campus toward her own side of town, facing the realization that she had acted like a complete idiot. But damn. No one had ever twisted her up quite like that. Turned her upside down and inside out and made her question everything she’d thought she believed about herself and what her world was supposed to be.

  Her world was supposed to be centered around a research lab and the classes she taught. She was supposed to come home at night and feed her cat and watch cable TV and maybe every now and then, hook up with some nice, boring guy who would be too distracted by the newest images from the Hubble Telescope to sneak out late at night to buy condoms, or volunteer to foster a neurotic cat, or show up every damn time she needed him, and even sometimes when she didn’t want him.

  In spite of herself, she half expected to hear Mike’s truck rumbling along behind her and told herself that it was a good thing it wasn’t.

  She had to push thoughts of Mike out of her head. Focus on what was important in the here and now. Which meant finding out what had happened to her drugs. And who had killed her freaking cat. And she had to do it alone. Maybe if she could get to those pellets before Mike and the police, she could still save her own career—since that was all she had left now. But if Dylan was involved, maybe she could get him to confess, return her drugs, turn himself in…anything to minimize the possibility that Mike would have to be the one to drag the brother he was in charge of protecting into prison. She was so damned confused right now, she didn’t know what she wanted, or what she needed as far as Mike was concerned, but she did know that she wanted him to be happy—and for Mike to be happy, his family had to be safe.

  Fifteen minutes later, Lauren bumped over the curb and into her driveway. She rolled the bike around the side of the house. Unlocking the kitchen door, she stepped inside and went to look for her laptop.

  She sneezed when she entered her bedroom. Ugh. She didn’t have time to come down with a cold. Kneeling next to the bed, she leaned her head on the mattress as she reached underneath to where she stored her laptop, and sneezed again.

  Her hand met only air. Oh God, no.

  The notebooks she’d brought home from the lab and her laptop were missing. She rubbed her nose, crushed to realize that she was now certain that Dylan had been in her house, looking for her notes, because only his cologne seemed to trigger this much sneezing. She pulled out her phone and woke up the app that the IT security people had recently installed on her desktop at work and her portable device. The app that would tell her where her missing laptop had gone.

  As her chest squeezed tight, she knew she was also about to prove Mike’s biggest fears were accurate—that the younger brother he wanted to save was behind all the chaos and havoc. She just hoped she could find Dylan in time to save Mike from seeing it firsthand.

  …

  Mike started to follow Lauren home, to make sure she got there safely, but decided at the last moment to give her—and himself—some space. He knew she’d be okay at her house, that Crawford was sending a patrol past every thirty minutes or so.

  The sound of Dylan’s bike brakes squealing around the corner as she’d ridden away echoed in his brain. The house echoed with her absence. He didn’t know what he could have done differently, how he could have made her stay.

  Trying to make her stay was part of the problem, he understood that much. And why wouldn’t it be? She was a smart, successful professional, a woman who didn’t need a man to make her complete. And he was a washed up ex-cop with a desperate need to fix things that he couldn’t fix—not his brother, not his job, and not Lauren’s project. He rubbed the center of his chest. There was something in him that he couldn’t fix, either. Maybe it was his heart. The more he cared, the harder he tried…the more fucked up everything got.

  Even so, he was going to have to go after Dylan this morning. The fact that the kid hadn’t come home last night was the last nail in the coffin of Mike’s trust.

  He found his keys and fired up the truck. After driving around for a while, he found himself at Tucker U. Jason was outside of the Bio building, doing something next to the trash can where the possums lived. With a start, Mike realized it was Monday morning. People were coming and going as though everything in the world was normal.

  “Hey, I thought you were off today, since you worked on Saturday,” Jason said by way of greeting.

  Mike shrugged. “I was out and about. What are you doing?” He wasn’t about to admit that he was feeling sorry for himself and scared for his brother and wanted a connection to at least one person who didn’t find him lacking.

  “Uh, I thought maybe we could make this a little nicer. You know, because Parent’s Weekend is coming and everything.” Jason stepped aside and Mike could see that the man had planted a couple of rose bushes next to the can and added a little rock wall that effectively camouflaged the trash can and gave the critters some steps into their home.

  “Wow, dude, that’s nice.”

  Jason looked a little embarrassed. “You’re girlfriend’s gonna like it. You can tell her you did it.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Mike said. Whatever he and Lauren had between them—however briefly—was over. Once Mike busted Dylan and got the drugs off the street, she was going to be safe. She wouldn’t need his help anymore, and she would be moving on.

  “I think you might be wrong,” Jason said.

  “She doesn’t want me,” Mike said. “At any rate, she shouldn’t.”

  “Maybe you should let her decide that.”

  “What makes you so wise?”

  Jason laughed. “I’m not wise, but I know about women. Thirty years ago, Louella Tucker, daughter of the richest woman in town, decided she wanted me. I tried to chase her off, but she kept coming. And look at us now.”

  Mike snorted. “You’re the son-in-law of Miss Emmaline Tucker, and you work unclogging toilets and landscaping around trash cans.”

  “I don’t have to do this job. I like this. I had a desk at Kentucky Jelly for exactly three months. I developed asthma from wearing a neck tie.”

  Before Mike could ask anything else, Evan burst through the front door of the Bio building, racing toward the parking lot. When he saw Mike, he pulled up short. “Thank God you’re here. We have a problem.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lauren followed the directions to the address that her laptop’s GPS sent, wondering if she’d done the right thing by calling Evan to let him know where she was going. She didn’t want to involve anyone, but she k
new that if Dylan was in trouble, he’d need his family. And it might be selfish of her, but she didn’t want to be the one responsible for making Mike catch Dylan with the step two drug and step one algae. Because as soon as she’d started sneezing, it was clear that Dylan had been in her house. And if he’d been in her house and taken her laptop, he had all the notes he’d need to go into Devil’s Dust production on his own.

  When Evan heard where Lauren was going, his responses were even more clipped and formal than normal. She thought about what he’d told her about hiding in the closet when he was a kid. Surely he was over that by now?

  On the fifteen-minute drive into the country, Lauren’s brain itched. There was something she was missing about this whole thing. She thought about the chemical she used, the one that would release the step two drug more easily. It was toxic—it was removed during purification, but until that step, it was bound to the algae cells. This was why the people who had smoked it had gotten so sick. Dylan knew about the toxin. He wouldn’t have sold anyone the algae to smoke with that chemical on it, because even the greediest of drug dealers wouldn’t kill off his customers. Someone who didn’t know about the chemical had to be involved here. Was that what was bothering her?

  A shiver of foreboding went down her spine. What if she found someone else with Dylan and her computer? She looked at her phone, thinking that maybe she should call Mike, after all. But after the way she’d run out on him this morning, he had to believe she was hysterical. And maybe there would be nothing at this address. Nothing but an abandoned, stolen computer. She’d just take a look around, and if things seemed too dangerous, she’d call Crawford and let him deal with it. She had 911 on speed dial.

  The little red dot on the GPS was located just off State Route Fourteen, a rural road that ran between Tucker and Napier’s Bend, no longer a thoroughfare since the interstate had gone in, but there were farms and a few houses spaced between stretches of forest.

  She passed the turnoff once and had to backtrack to find the gravel drive leading to the old farmhouse on the side of the hill where the red dot seemed to be centered. She turned onto the drive and suddenly realized that she had no idea what she was doing. She’d left her house with some vague notion that she’d march out here and talk to Dylan like one rational adult to another, or at least like professor to student. She got along well with Dylan and thought he liked her. But she didn’t know this Dylan that she was coming to see. This Dylan, who had possibly lied to her, stolen her drugs, entered her house uninvited to steal her computer, maybe even killed her cat. She was worried about this Dylan.

  The farmhouse was dark and still. Lauren put her SUV in park and sat for a minute, just watching to see if anyone came to the window. Nothing stirred. Maybe there was no one there. Maybe her computer was just sitting inside on the kitchen table, and she could go in and pick it up and leave—pretend like nothing had happened. She’d go home, call Chief Crawford, and tell him after the fact.

  She craned her neck and could see the back end of a car just barely visible, pulled most of the way behind the house. With trepidation, Lauren got out of her car to get a better look. It looked like the black vehicle that she’d seen on her street the night that Mike had been at her house. The car with the Devil’s Rangers emblem that Dylan and his girlfriend rode in. Was it the same one that had been pulling out of her driveway after Kevin was murdered?

  Lauren dug her phone from her pocket and scrolled to the number she’d saved for Crawford. She thought about pushing “call” but hesitated. She’d come this far—she might as well knock on the door and try to speak to Dylan. He wouldn’t hurt her. He might not give her what she came for, but she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. Right?

  God, she felt like an idiot for continuing to hope that he was somehow, miraculously, not involved. When he’d been at Evan’s house, he—

  She realized what had been tickling her mind. Damnit! At Evan’s, Dylan hadn’t smelled like that god-awful cologne he’d had on in the lab the other day. The cologne that was in her house, making her sneeze. How did it get there, then?

  She jumped when a hand landed on her shoulder.

  …

  “Do you want me to drop you off at home?” Mike asked Evan. He didn’t want to take the time, adrenaline pushing him to drive as fast as he could to the address Lauren had given Evan. But the instinct to protect this brother was present, pulsing below the need to get to Lauren and Dylan before someone got hurt.

  “No, I’ll stay with you.”

  “Are you sure? I can go by myself. I’m just going to go out there and—”

  “And what, Mike? Take on the world all alone again?”

  “What are you going to do?” he shot back. Fuck.

  There was silence from the passenger seat.

  “I’m sorry. That was a low blow,” Mike said. “I—”

  “I can call 911 if things go bad.”

  A glance in Evan’s direction told Mike that he was resolved to come along. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Evan nodded.

  After wrestling with his ego for four and a half seconds, Mike called Crawford to give him a heads up. Thirty seconds later, after Crawford filled him in, he was glad he did.

  “What?” Evan asked once Mike had disconnected the call.

  “The property is registered to Alex Barker.”

  “Oh, hell,” Evan said.

  Oh hell was right. What the heck was Lauren’s ex-boyfriend doing with a remote piece of property where her stolen laptop now was?

  “Did Dylan work with Barker when he was at Tuck U?”

  “No. Alex Barker left the spring before you and Dylan returned to Tucker.”

  “Then why would Dylan have access to his property?”

  “I didn’t say Dylan didn’t know him. Barker has returned several times over the past year or so, ostensibly to retrieve data he left on campus.”

  “Ostensibly.” Mike loved it when Evan threw big words around.

  “I believe he was actually attempting to rekindle the…uh…relationship he had with Dr. Kane.”

  Mike shook his head. He still had a hard time believing Lauren had been involved with that jerk.

  “If it’s any consolation,” Evan continued, “Lauren seemed barely interested in him when they dated the first time. They had been co-workers in graduate school, and their families are friends. I suspect their…conjugation was based more on convenience than affection, at least on Lauren’s part.”

  Mike’s phone rang again. He answered it and listened to Crawford with a cold block of dread growing in his gut.

  “What is it?” Evan asked when he’d hung up.

  “Alex got fired from UC a few months ago, then made threats of retaliation against the dean, but the charges were dropped in exchange for a promise to stay off campus forever. And the son of a bitch has a record for stalking.”

  “Why did we not know this? He worked at Tucker for a year and a half.” Evan pointed. “Turn right at the end of the street and then left on Tucker-Union road.”

  “Do they do criminal background checks on everyone?”

  “No, I guess not. Just faculty.”

  “And he wasn’t faculty?”

  “Not officially. He was a post-doctoral fellow. But still. I think I’ll bring this up at the next all-campus faculty meeting.”

  “You do that.”

  “You know, condescension doesn’t suit you,” Evan said tightly.

  Mike sighed. Everything was so fucked up. He didn’t need this. So he would put it to rest. “You’re right. I’m an asshole.”

  “Yes. You are. But only to me, and I can take it.”

  “You shouldn’t have to.” Wow. It felt surprisingly liberating to say that.

  “I understand why you don’t respect me. I just wish…” Evan turned his head to stare through the window.

  Mike glanced his way and noted the way that Evan’s chin had the same dip thing that his had and that their noses both hooked a little to the right. Dylan
had the same nose. Mike guessed they all had the same eye color, too. But other than height, there the resemblances ended. “What do you wish?”

  Evan was quiet for a while. “That I’d been a little braver when we were kids. Taken a share of the abuse Dylan’s sperm donor laid on you. Then you wouldn’t have reason to hate me.”

  Mike rubbed his head. “I don’t hate you. I didn’t hate you then. I just—”

  “I know.” Evan cleared his throat. “You know, maybe we should save this true confession business for another time.” He gave a short laugh. “Or not. At any rate, you need to slow down. I think we’re getting close.”

  “Okay,” Mike said. “Whenever you’re ready, though—”

  “Uh-huh,” Evan said. “Here. Turn here.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Lauren woke with a chemical taste in the back of her throat and a throbbing in her head that felt like someone was beating on the side of her skull. No, it was really someone beating on the side of the cabinet she was resting against.

  She looked up and registered who it was trying to wake her. Oh, God. How had she not suspected? “Alex.”

  Her ex-lover was standing over her and grinning, just as pleased as punch with himself. “Well, there you are. How’s your head?”

  She was sprawled on the floor of a…lab? In a basement? There were cabinets and counters, shelves of reagent bottles, clean beakers and flasks, graduated cylinders and funnels. A few ancient pieces of lab equipment, an electronic scale, a centrifuge, a hot plate.

  “What are you doing? What is all this?”

  “What do you think it is?” He pulled an armless computer chair toward himself and straddled it.

  “I don’t know. Are you—is this your lab?”

  He tilted his head, considering. “Duh.” He was dressed in his expensively distressed jeans and a long sleeved button-up shirt, but it was wrinkled and sweat stains marred the underarms.

  “Are you…are you the one who’s been stealing my drugs? What’s going on?” She was still foggy from whatever he’d pressed over her face out in the yard, but her sympathetic nervous system was starting to engage, clearing her head and preparing her to react to the danger she was in.