Variable Onset

by Layla Reyne

  “Barry and Trudy are important to people too. I’m trying to save them before this town loses someone else. They’ve been welcoming to us here, and we can help them.”

  “I’m not suggesting otherwise. We’re still here, aren’t we? Doing our job.”

  “Is that all this is? A job?” Carter took two steps forward, bringing them nose to nose. This close, Lincoln could feel his partner’s ragged breaths, could see the equally ragged emotions swirling in his tired green eyes. “Did I lie to Larry when I told him we weren’t just a cover?”

  Lincoln froze, on the cusp of the truth, fighting the dizziness of the same tilt-a-whirl he’d been slung around since arriving in Apex. Since Carter Warren introduced him as his husband. Carter wanted this to be real too. Of course he did. The kitchen night before last, the kisses since, indicated as much, as did all those moments Lincoln glimpsed the tender eagerness beneath Carter’s cocky grin. Lincoln wanted to tell him the truth, but that truth, at least for him, didn’t come without some qualifications, without cautions, and with both of them riding twin blades of exhaustion and anger, would Lincoln’s words destroy everything? He couldn’t risk that, couldn’t risk their possible future or the lives of Barry and Trudy. “Look, we both need some rest. We can take a few hours, a time-out.”

  Carter lifted a hand and cradled Lincoln’s cheek. His fingers shook, almost as much as his voice. “Eight years I’ve waited for a shot with you. A lifetime I’ve waited for a place where I might fit in. I like it here, L, and I like you.” He dropped his hand, and his eyes hardened, a wall going up and blocking Lincoln out, and fucking hell if that didn’t hurt far more than it should. “Forgive me for taking a shot at both.”

  He turned for the door, and Lincoln lunged, grabbing his wrist. “Carter, wait! I didn’t mean—” Carter shook off his hold, and Lincoln stepped back, holding up his hands. “We need to talk about this but not when we’re both so on edge.” Carter looked unconvinced. Lincoln kept talking. “I’ll go to the lab and work there for a bit. You stay here and look through the photos. See if anything jumps out at you.”

  “Why would I do that? I don’t understand what I’m looking at here.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “What you need is here, Agent Monroe. I’ll meet you at the lab at four for our check-in with Beverley and Kirk.”

  He stormed out and Lincoln stared after him, unmoving, his wind and legs knocked out by two words.

  Agent Monroe.

  Not Professor, not L, not babe. And that hurt worst of all. Brought an ache to Lincoln’s chest, a sting behind his eyes, and a shortening of his breath into panicked huffs. All signs that pointed to the truth. A truth that Lincoln should have spoken.

  That Carter hadn’t been wrong to tell Larry this wasn’t just a cover.

  * * *

  Four o’clock came and went with no sign of Carter. Lincoln pushed the meeting with Beverley and Ollie back an hour and texted Carter to meet him at the lab. As five o’clock approached, Lincoln paced the rows between lab benches. Still no sign of Carter. It didn’t look like he’d even been here. He checked the where-are-you text messages he’d spammed Carter with. Delivered but not yet Read.

  No matter what Lincoln thought of Carter, or what Carter mistakenly thought Lincoln thought of him, Lincoln did not think his partner lacked competency or professional discipline. Hell, it had been Lincoln who had been late at every turn on this case.

  Was he late now?

  Late to come around to Larry as the prime suspect? Carter’s field instincts had been on point every other instance.

  Late to realize this absence wasn’t just Carter sulking or blowing off steam? Because that was not Carter.

  Fuck. He opened the text messages again. Still no Read. And he knew his texts were coming and going just fine. He’d texted back and forth with Elena a half hour ago.

  Elena... W-W-E-D? But this wasn’t a technical malfunction. He needed to think like a field agent. Like Carter.

  W-W-C-D. What would Carter do?

  Lincoln’s first thought was to ask Ollie and Beverley for help, ask them to call in the cavalry. But the cavalry Lincoln needed was already here, agents and law enforcement who knew the area better than DC feds. Lincoln shrugged on his coat, grabbed his bag, and started for the stairs, scrolling through his contacts as he went.

  O’Shea answered on the first ring. “Agent Monroe, what’s going on?”

  “We may have a situation. Can you and Jo meet me at my and Carter’s house?” He relayed the address of the rental, texted Ollie and Beverley that they would need to reschedule, then barreled out the back door of the lab building.

  He navigated the Wrangler through campus and town in less than ten minutes and pulled into the driveway in fifteen. Next to Carter’s Forester. Relief slammed into him, and hot on its heels, anger. Was Carter here? Safe and sound...and sulking?

  Or maybe Carter had fallen asleep? That Lincoln could understand. He’d been so on edge earlier, exhaustion and dead ends a cocktail that didn’t mix well, Carter’s temper flaring in a way that surprised Lincoln. And saddened him. And made a certain amount of sense, given Carter’s childhood. Lincoln should have handled things better too.

  Though as Lincoln entered through the front door and tripped over Carter’s shoes, he wasn’t feeling so magnanimous.

  “Carter!” he shouted. “Where the fuck are you?”

  Silence replied.

  “Wake up or come out from wherever you’re pouting!”

  Not exactly the definition of handling things better, but the string of hallway detritus that kept tripping Lincoln was not begetting kindness. Irritation mounting, Lincoln almost committed a fatal forensic error, catching himself at the last second over the threshold of the kitchen, where, with one look, Lincoln realized something had gone terribly wrong. Two coffee mugs were on the table, as if Carter had been having a chat with someone there. A chat that took a turn for the worse, and the coffeepot had shattered on the floor. In the ensuing fight that played in Lincoln’s imagination, someone—Carter?—had smeared blood on the end of the kitchen island. His head? A knife wound? Lincoln spun back toward the foyer, reassessing the items he’d waded through on his way in. Carter’s shoes, coat, and gloves he hadn’t had a chance to pick up. Someone had dragged him out of here without any of that stuff on. Into the cold. He looked back at the island. Injured.

  “Agent Monroe!” O’Shea called through the partially ajar front door.

  “In here,” he returned, though his gaze had drifted sideways, to the narrow strip of wall between the front door and light switches where a key rack hung. Carter’s keys were on the middle peg, and above it, taped to the wall was a folded-over note with Lincoln’s name written on the front in horribly familiar script.

  O’Shea appeared in the open doorway.

  “Wait!” Lincoln lifted a hand, fingers spread, in the universal sign for STOP. His eyes, however, remained locked on the note, even as phantom flames licked his skin. “Come around to the back door.”

  Jo’s face materialized over O’Shea’s shoulder. “Why?”

  “This is a crime scene.”

  Lincoln withdrew his phone and snapped pictures of the note and scene, then pocketed the device. He knelt and tugged a glove from the pocket of Carter’s discarded coat. Because Carter was a good agent. Always prepared. His right hand gloved, Lincoln carefully stepped through the foyer and peeled the note off the wall.

  It was a diagnosis, for Special Agent Carter Warren: Fear of never being good enough.

  Lincoln’s legs were gonna go. Possibly also his stomach. Surely his skin, burned right off by flames. He had to get out of the path of evidence. Stumbling, he lurched for the stairs and barely saved the note, held aloft, as he collapsed gracelessly on the lower steps. He lifted his other hand, covering his mouth and muffling the strangled cry that was on the verge of brea
king loose.

  Jo, gloved and cautious, appeared from around the office wall and made her way over to him. “Lincoln, what’s going on?”

  “He’s got him.” He held the note out to her, his hand shaking much like Carter’s had earlier in the library. She took the note from him, cursing, and as Lincoln clasped his hands in front of him, sunlight streamed in through the glass transom above the door, reflecting off the braided silver of his ring and momentarily blinding him. And opening his eyes, all the way. One of a pair that Carter had picked out, for them. This was very real. He stared up at Jo and Mark and let the threatening tears fall. “Dr. Fear has my husband.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rapid-fire keystrokes and mumbled voices penetrated the fog that had settled over Lincoln since last night, that had grown heavier as hopelessness had ballooned by the hour. After calling in to Beverley and Kirk and finding Carter’s phone stashed in Lincoln’s guitar case of all places, they’d left the house for ERT to process—a crime scene now—and retreated to their temporary command at the hospital. Lincoln hadn’t wanted to be there, hadn’t wanted to be at the library or lab either. By two in the morning, his snapping and pacing had led Jo to threaten him with handcuffs if he “didn’t sit his scrawny ass down in a chair and sleep for an hour.” Judging by the crusties he was fighting to open his eyes, he’d been out for more than just one. He shifted in the chair, vaguely aware of the other agents moving around him, more aware of the one who was missing. He forced his eyelids open, blinking rapidly to clear the fog. Jo stood across the room next to O’Shea, who was breathing down the neck of some poor agent behind a computer.

  “What time is it?” he asked, and half a dozen pairs of eyes swung to him.

  “Almost six,” O’Shea answered.

  Jo picked something up off the desk—coffee, thank fuck—and brought it over to him. The bitter taste sent fresh misery tumbling through him, missing Carter’s perfectly brewed coffee from home, missing the biscuits and muffins that Carter brought him with Ginger’s bitter coffee.

  “Any news?” he asked.

  “ERT finished up around three.”

  “Anything? Gray hairs? DNA on the mug?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing on the mug. Just dark brown for the hair.”

  “Probably Carter’s. Fuck.” He gulped another swallow and slumped in the chair. He wanted to rocket out of it, but if he did that, he’d start pacing afresh, and Jo would threaten to handcuff him again.

  “We’re testing to be sure,” she said.

  “And the phone?”

  “Cyber’s about to crack it.” She tilted her head toward where O’Shea now knelt beside Agent Reyes at the computer. “Or maybe she already did.” Jo stretched out a hand for Lincoln. “Upsy-daisy.”

  He slid his hand into hers and let her haul him up, back to the world of the living. “Did you bring in Larry?”

  Beverley had made that call; Lincoln had agreed. Larry was their prime suspect. An agent’s life—Carter’s life—was on the line, as well as Barry’s and Trudy’s. Lincoln would do anything to get them all back alive.

  “We can’t find him.”

  “Which means Carter was right.” He’d disappeared hours after confronting Larry. That couldn’t be ignored, couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “I can see it all, the way you laid out the evidence, but I’m not sure I buy it.”

  “The way Carter laid it out to me.” Carter had put it together, and Lincoln hadn’t listened. As much as Carter had been trying to find evidence to prove his case, Lincoln had been unconsciously looking for evidence to disprove him. “And you said he fit the profile.”

  “The evidence, plus Carter’s disappearance, and yes, the profile, tell a compelling story, but I also know Larry.” She paused a couple feet from her husband. “I’ve known him my entire life, and whatever differences we may have, I just can’t see him as the killer, no matter how hard I try.”

  “The Golden State Killer and BTK lived in their communities for years, undetected.”

  “Do you think it’s Larry?”

  “Carter put it all out there for Larry, and Larry took the bait.”

  Jo raised a brow. “That’s not an answer.”

  Because something in the back of Lincoln’s brain still tickled. He had no doubt Larry was involved—the blind eye to the missing persons cases plus taking Carter’s bait were irrefutable. But other puzzle pieces didn’t fit—the pictures of Larry in town during Dr. Fear’s cycles, the sunny disposition in all his photos, the warm welcome they’d received in town, including from Barry and Larry.

  “We unlocked?” Jo asked, refocusing Lincoln’s attention.

  “Just now,” O’Shea confirmed.

  “He’s got two files labeled Apex,” Reyes said. “This one’s tagged 1988.”

  “Not it,” Lincoln said. “That’s private.” He suspected he knew what that one was, and it was none of the FBI’s business. “Go to the 2020 one.”

  Reyes clicked on the folder and a directory of files appeared. “Doesn’t look like anything since the night before last,” she said. “His last report was dated and uploaded to the FBI server after he interrogated Baxter.”

  “Search the other apps for items from yesterday,” Lincoln said. “Pictures, audio, emails, search history. He questioned the prime suspect. Maybe he recorded it, took pictures while he was there, or looked something up.”

  Reyes opened the photo app. “Bingo. We’ve got a handful of pictures from yesterday. Mid-morning. Looks like a bathroom.” An array of pictures filled the screen.

  “That’s the bathroom in the chancellor’s mansion,” Jo said. “I used it the other day when I met with Larry there. Plumbing in his separate unit wasn’t working.”

  Lincoln zeroed in on the last picture, the one in the bottom right hand corner. A pill bottle. He reached over Reyes’s shoulder and tapped the screen. “Blow this one up.”

  Reyes moved the picture to the middle and zoomed in. “It’s a prescription for adalimumab for Ryan McCullough.”

  “It’s his house,” O’Shea said. “Makes sense.”

  Lincoln wasn’t hung up on whose it was so much as what it was. “Why does that drug sound familiar?”

  “You watch TV at all?” Jo asked.

  “What does—” At her arched brow, demanding a simple yes or no answer, he answered, “Yes.”

  “It’s the generic name for Humira. The commercials for it are everywhere.”

  The minute she said it, Lincoln saw it in his head, heard the list of conditions it was prescribed for, including Crohn’s disease.

  He wobbled where he stood, hands gripping the back of Reyes’s chair to stay upright. The puzzle pieces rearranged and finally—finally—snapped into place. A complete picture.

  “Lincoln?” Jo said, voice worried, hand around his biceps.

  “You were right,” he said. “And so was I, and so was Carter.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  He just needed the final confirmation. He turned to O’Shea. “That hair sample from the house, do we have the preliminary screen back yet?”

  “Just got it!” Drake said, barreling through the door. “It’s dyed.”

  “Not Carter’s then, and definitely not mine.” He scanned down the panel, looking for the founder variant and the frameshift variant.

  They were both there—the gray hair and the increased susceptibility for Crohn’s disease.

  Fucking hell. The person who knew who they were from the very beginning. The person who rejected who he was, who covered up his gray hair and covered up his need to escape, until those times when the latter was too much too bear.

  “We need to get back to the library,” Lincoln said.

  “Why?” Jo asked.

  Because he needed to look again for a certain dark-haired man in the photos with
Jeff Baxter. With Larry. The man who found out what Baxter was doing in those meth houses, went in to stop him, and when an altercation ensued, called his best friend for help.

  A slight shift in their frame of reference and it all made sense. “Larry’s not Dr. Fear. It’s his best friend, Chancellor McCullough, and I have the evidence to prove it.”

  * * *

  Lincoln barreled around the corner into the library elevator lobby and just missed colliding with Jeremiah.

  “Whoa, where’s the fire?” Jeremiah said, stumbling backward. “Jo? Mark? What are y’all doing here?”

  Lincoln flung out a hand, grabbed Jeremiah by a suspender, and punched the elevator call button. The elevator doors opened, and Lincoln dragged him inside. “They’re on the case with us.”

  “Kline knows?” O’Shea asked, as he ushered Jo into the cab.

  “Some of it,” Lincoln said, hitting the down button. “I needed help going through the archives. Jeremiah knows them better than anyone.”

  Jeremiah’s eyes grew wider. “Thank you, I think. But what’s going on?”

  “You have Crohn’s.”

  His jaw dropped—surprise—slammed shut—anger—then dropped again—outrage. “That’s personal!” he shrieked.

  “We took a sample of your hair.”

  “You did what?” he shrieked louder. “I didn’t give permission—”

  Lincoln grasped his shoulders, forcing down his flailing arms. “I’m sorry, Jeremiah, but Carter is missing. Dr. Fear has him.”

  All the fight, all the color, drained from the younger man’s face. “And me having Crohn’s has something to do with it?”

  “Dr. Fear also has Crohn’s.”

  Paler still, but as the elevator doors slid open, steel infused his spine and he marched out of the cab, toward the archives. “What do you need to know? What do I need to find?”