Variable Onset

by Layla Reyne

  Carter’s face fell, a sort of disappointment there so at odds with the normally confident agent that Lincoln probably would have almost fallen off his stool again, if not for Carter’s legs bracing him in. And if not for Carter wiping away the expression the next instant. “Both avenues are more than we had this time yesterday,” he said.

  “Agreed.” Lincoln squeezed his knee. “Call Beverley.”

  The director picked up right away, conferenced in Oliver, and Lincoln and Carter filled them in on the details. There was agreement on narrowing their suspect search to longtime Apex U employees and Apex founding families, less so on narrowing it further based on the gray hair theory.

  “It’s tenuous, at best,” Beverley cautioned.

  “It’s one more possibility,” Oliver insisted. “We should at least look back at the past scenes, as they suggest.” He sounded both strung out and excited. Lincoln remembered him sounding the same during Dr. Fear’s last cycle. He also remembered the disappointment as he’d sipped fifty-dollar-a-glass scotch and told Lincoln he was done. Fuck, Lincoln did not want to hear his friend sound like that again—or worse, with Ruby’s life on the line—after this round with Dr. Fear. There was more at stake for him than ever.

  “Fine,” Beverley said. “Coordinate with forensics.”

  “L, Carter, I’ll keep you two posted. Bev, you’ll get them on the other lead?”

  “Got it, Age—Senator Kirk.”

  “You’ve got a lead there?” Carter asked.

  “One we need you to follow up on in Apex,” Beverley said. “We got the workup on Ruby’s car.” She and Chase had been run off the road and taken out of it. “Managed to isolate a paint sample from the car that hit them.”

  “The other car hit them?” Lincoln said. That was news. Evidence at the scene had indicated the attack car had cut them off in front and forced them to fishtail off the road.

  “Ruby’s back bumper scraped a wheel well. Probably didn’t even notice it. The paint is custom. Will email you the details. Need you to run it through local records there in Apex. See if any vehicles match.”

  “We’re on it,” Carter said, hanging up and swiveling off his stool.

  Lincoln missed the closeness immediately. But then Carter was behind him, correct coat open and waiting. “Think I’ll take my coat this time,” he said with a wink. “Two buildings over, I could survive without. But two miles back to the police station, not so much.”

  Lincoln stole a few more seconds in the warm oversized leather jacket before surrendering it with a pout. “We’re not walking, are we?”

  “It’s not that far.”

  “It is in the cold!” Lincoln squawked, as he slipped back into his coat.

  Carter’s eyes flickered to his feet. “You wore your boots today.”

  “Have you seen how many times I’ve almost tripped over them?” He closed his laptop, shoved it into his bag, and slung the strap over his shoulder. “Do we have after-hours access to the station?”

  Carter held up a key. “We’re set, and the car’s downstairs.”

  “That’s fucking teamwork,” Lincoln singsonged, as he followed a laughing Carter out of the lab.

  Chapter Eight

  “How’d the game go?”

  Ordinarily, Carter wouldn’t eavesdrop on Lincoln’s phone call with his daughter, but it was impossible not to overhear in the car. And it was impossible not to be drawn in by Lincoln’s enthusiasm as he spoke with Elena about her basketball tournament.

  “That’s excellent!” A big smile. “A double-double? For real?” Excitement to dejection. “I’m sorry I missed that.” Then hope bloomed once more, the corners of Lincoln’s mouth curving up and crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, shoot me the link. I’ll watch the highlights.”

  Carter had never been more enamored with Professor Monroe than he was in that moment. More than the first day of class when he’d walked into the lecture hall and seen the lanky blond in argyle. Nerds had always been his type, and Lincoln was an unparalleled specimen. More than the first time they’d verbally sparred, and Lincoln had glowed bright red with anger. Carter had tried every class thereafter to make his instructor blush again. More than all the times the past twenty-four hours Carter had managed to do just that, or the hours they’d spent working together at the library or lab. Appearances and reactions told Carter part of Lincoln’s story, working with him another, but the conversation between father and daughter told Carter about the most important part of him. The most attractive. Lincoln’s abject devotion to his daughter spoke to the sort of man he was—a good one, a good father—the sort so different from the ones Carter had encountered when he’d been a teen. What he would have given to have someone so devoted to his happiness and well-being. Carter’s stomach did the same swooping thing it had when he’d opened the front door to Lincoln last night. Potent shit indeed. He probably would have swooned if he wasn’t belted into the driver’s seat.

  Lincoln wasn’t so immobile, swiveling in his seat as he looked out the front, side, and back windows. “It’s kind of like a snow globe here. Flurries and picture-perfect surroundings, especially the library.” A pause, then a spluttering protest. “I am not the Grinch in the snow!”

  Carter laughed out loud. “She knows you well.”

  Lincoln glared his direction. “Shut up.” Then redirected. “No, not you, sweetie, I was talking to my partner.” A pause. “That kind of defeats the purpose of undercover.” After another pause, Lincoln lowered the phone and sighed. “She wants a picture. Proof of life that I have a partner.”

  “I can smile pretty.”

  Lincoln muttered a “cocky,” and at the next stoplight, Carter shifted in his seat and flashed his flashiest smile for the camera. “Sent,” Lincoln said, bringing the phone back to his ear. But not for long. The reception on the other end was so loud—two hooting voices—that he jerked it away again. Far enough Carter could read the return text. Hot AF.

  Carter smirked. “Good to know I have the family’s blessing.”

  “All of you stop,” Lincoln chided around a poorly disguised chuckle. He went back and forth with Elena and his sister another minute, then began wrapping up the call as Carter turned into the parking lot. “Love you, and good luck tomorrow. Put Trina back on right quick.” Lincoln cringed and held the phone away again, shouting at it from afar. “Can you stop cackling for five fucking seconds?”

  Which only made her laugh louder. Carter too.

  Lincoln was not amused. “Don’t double-team me.”

  Carter raised a hand, then put it over his mouth to stifle his laughter. Didn’t work. Lincoln rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the phone. “Everything good there?” he asked, then listened and smiled. “Thanks, sis, I owe you one.” Her reply wiped the smile away, and Lincoln’s dramatic outrage face returned. “No, anything but that!” They shared another laugh, before Lincoln ended the call with a “Love you too.” He lowered the phone and closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the headrest. “Well, that was mortifying.”

  “It was charming.” More charming than Lincoln knew. So charming Carter considered leaning over the console and showing Lincoln just how under his spell he already was. He hightailed it out of the car instead and waited for Lincoln in the pool of light at the bottom of the station steps. Larry had left the porch lights on, and a spotlight nestled in the eaves cast a bright halo on the wreathed front door.

  “What’s the one thing you won’t do for your sister?” Carter asked, as he and Lincoln climbed the front steps.

  “Go to the Carolina-Duke game with her.”

  “A house divided?”

  “You could say that. She followed me out here from California but goofed and went to the other school down the road. You got family around?”

  An innocent enough question, a logical segue from his questions about
Lincoln’s sister, but family was a literal black hole for Carter. One he never knew how to answer—had never wanted to before—but with Lincoln, maybe... Except that overheard conversation in the car, as endearing as it had been, had also made the prospect of pity seem all the more likely, and that was the last thing Carter had ever wanted, from anyone but especially from Lincoln. He didn’t want it darkening the brightness he felt in the professor’s presence. He’d just have to find the truth himself. Maybe here in Apex, after the Dr. Fear case was solved.

  “Holy shit.” Lincoln’s strangled wail drew Carter back to the present, in which Lincoln had flipped on the lights inside the station and was eyeing the reception area with abject horror. “It’s like old man winter threw up all over the place.”

  Lit up at night, it did seem more than when Carter had been here earlier today. The lights strung through the garland and tinsel shone bright, as did each lighted snow globe, forming a collection of glass luminaries scattered around the station. But Carter didn’t think it was bad or overwhelming. It was warm and festive and homey, especially for a police station. He had to agree with Larry—much better than the library.

  “Are you sure you’re not the Grinch in the snow globe?” he teased.

  Lincoln shoved his shoulder as he moved past him, lifting the counter flip and cringing at its protest. “Where is everyone?”

  Carter lowered the counter back down behind them. “Larry said a remote switchboard handles calls after five. Emergencies get routed to his cell. Better for us.” He directed Lincoln across the bullpen and toward the records room. “No one except us snooping around.” He punched in the code and opened the door. “Here we go.”

  Lincoln resurrected his outrage face. “It’s all paper?”

  Carter slid the messenger bag off Lincoln’s shoulder before he dropped it. “They have a staff of ten.”

  “Did you see all the decorations out there? Those ten people could have been digitizing records instead of—” He flung his hand toward the bullpen.

  “You weren’t bitching at the library.”

  “It’s a library,” Lincoln said. “It hurts my soul that so much of it is digital now, but I get it. You don’t want to lose that stuff. The amount of archival material that has been lost to storms and other disasters is a tragedy. That said, those bits that are still paper, they don’t need to be accessed as quickly as, say, police records.”

  Carter leaned close. “I don’t think much checking of records goes on here either.”

  Lincoln turned his head, bringing them nose to nose. “You’re probably right.”

  Carter was so tempted to dip his chin, to claim the lips that were right there for the taking. Lips that were moving again. Making words Carter should pay attention to.

  “You get a lay of this land yet?” Lincoln asked.

  “Yes.” He pointed over Lincoln’s right shoulder. “Mr. Hates-Paper can use the computer over there to search vehicle registrations. I’ll look through the paper accident reports.”

  “You’re a saint.”

  “You want to bow to me?”

  “Fucking hell.” Fifteen shades of red and an eye roll. Score. Lincoln spun and almost teetered over.

  Carter grabbed him by the back of his coat, steadied him, then leaned in, whispering in his ear, “It’s fine. I prefer to be the one on my knees.”

  Lincoln lurched forward, out of his grasp with a croaked “Must work,” but not before the fleeting heat from his ear scorched a path over Carter’s cheek.

  Charming AF.

  * * *

  Lincoln popped the side of the CPU a second time. “What the fuck, dude?”

  “What did I do now?” Carter called from somewhere in the records stacks behind him.

  “Not you,” Lincoln said. “This dinosaur of a computer.”

  “Maybe you should stop hitting it.”

  Lincoln halted his hand a half inch from the imminent third pop. He glanced over his shoulder as Carter emerged from the stacks, a banker’s box in each hand. He hefted them onto the table, and Lincoln spun back around, determined not to fixate on Carter’s bulging biceps in his snug Henley.

  “It’s stuck, again,” he said, mentally cursing the spinning beach ball on-screen. “And it had just loaded the search segment on the vehicles before it went all fuzzy.” The results were right there, grayed out behind a command box that wouldn’t finish loading. He drummed his fingers on the desk. “W-W-E-D?”

  “Did you just misspell weed?”

  “Weed would probably help right now, but no. W-W-E-D. What would Elena do? My daughter, she’s a computer whiz.”

  “Okay, then.” Carter came to stand next to him. “W-W-E-D?”

  “Well, I already tried to quit the program and that didn’t work. So...” He eyed the power key at the top of the keyboard. “Restart the computer.”

  “Hold a sec.” Carter withdrew his phone and, kneeling next to Lincoln, snapped a few pictures of the screen. “Not sure it’s legible but maybe in conjunction with the paper records, we can sort it.”

  Lincoln restarted the computer. “Hopefully this does the trick anyway.” He spun half around, keeping one eye on the computer, the other on Carter, who retreated to the table of boxes. “What’d you pull?”

  “Accident records from the past twelve months. Let’s see if Zia’s accident in Apex, or any other here, involved a car with matching paint. If you find something there—” he gestured at the computer “—it’ll make this go quicker.”

  Lincoln checked the rebooting computer. “Almost there.”

  And then suddenly they were the opposite of almost there, the computer screen and every light around them flickering out.

  “Well done, L.” Carter clapped. “You killed the power.”

  “Me?” Lincoln rocketed out of his chair. “It’s all those fucking lights out there.”

  “You are so the Grinch.” Carter’s smirking face appeared in a cone of light cast by his phone flashlight. “And Larry mentioned earlier the breaker box needed replacing.”

  “See, it’s not my fa—”

  Glass shattered, the direction of the lobby.

  “What the fuck was that?” Lincoln started toward the door.

  Carter grabbed him by the biceps. “Wait, I don’t—”

  A different sound cut off Carter’s words, one that made Lincoln’s heart crash against his ribs.

  The distinctive crack, strike, and sizzle of a flare.

  Lincoln recalled flares from Academy and from the handful of roadside crime scenes he’d visited. He fucking hated them. Hated the creepy magenta glow, the constant hissing, the smell of nitrate and chemicals burning down.

  Burning... Something was burning.

  Panic rose, fast and furious.

  Who the fuck was out there?

  What the fuck was burning?

  How the fuck were they—

  Carter cut him off, a hand over his mouth. “Shh,” he whispered into Lincoln’s ear, and Lincoln realized he’d been rambling his fears aloud. Carter lowered his hand and circled Lincoln’s front with his arm, pulling him back against his chest. “I left my weapon in the car’s glovebox. Do you have yours in your bag?”

  “House,” he wheezed between failed breaths. His weapon was still in its case, locked in the office safe where Carter had put it last night.

  “Need you to breathe, L.”

  Lincoln shook his head. He didn’t want to. Didn’t want to inhale the fumes from the flare. Didn’t want to smell the world burning around him. Didn’t want to experience that reality.

  “I will get you out of here,” Carter coaxed, “but you need to stay with me and you need to stay calm.” He loosened his arm and rotated Lincoln around to face him.

  Eyes adjusting to the dark, Lincoln sought out Carter’s face, the task made terrifyingly easier as t
he light of the flare grew brighter, the person carrying the flare drawing closer.

  Carter lifted a hand and cupped his cheek, his thumb skating over the scruff Lincoln hadn’t had time to shave that morning. “This is nothing compared to the week Elena was born.”

  The reminder snapped Lincoln’s world sharply back into focus. Elena. He couldn’t leave her. He had to get out of here. He blinked away the cresting fear and sucked in a giant gulp of air. Hand behind his neck, Carter drew him forward, anticipating Lincoln’s smoke-induced cough and muffling it against his shoulder.

  “Someone is coming this way,” he said against Lincoln’s temple, then muffled a cough. He cleared his throat and started again. “I don’t know what they’re going to do with the flare, so when that door opens the rest of the way, I need you to give me enough light with the phone to disarm them. Can you do that?”

  The fire alarm finally went off, startling Lincoln, and restarting his fear, blood racing and pounding in his ears, a counter beat to the wailing sirens.

  Carter squeezed his neck. “Come on, Professor, stay with me.”

  Face buried in Carter’s shoulder, Lincoln ignored the smoke and focused on the man instead. Two Ivory-scented inhales later, Lincoln lifted his head. “Give me the phone.”

  Carter handed him the device. “Maintain cover, if we can.”

  Lincoln nodded, snatched his bag off the table, and hustled next to Carter by the wall behind the partially ajar door. Just in time as the door was kicked the rest of the way open and the flare hurled through, over the desks and into the stacks. Lincoln ignored the streak of red and the burst of light that erupted behind them, keeping his focus on his partner instead, lighting Carter’s path as he used the door to ram their assailant, delivering a swift hit before swinging out and directly engaging the attacker.

  A man, that much Lincoln could tell. As the reddish-orange glow behind them grew brighter—Lincoln ignored why—he continued to light the area ahead, doing as Carter directed while cataloguing more details about their attacker. Close-cropped dark hair, dark eyes, Caucasian, mid-to-late thirties. Shorter than both him and Carter. Not as bulky as Carter but definitely bigger than Lincoln. The stranger fought back, not immediately caving to Carter’s offensive. He had some fighting experience, or self-defense maybe, but it didn’t take more than a minute for Carter to get the upper hand.