Deadly Chemistry (Entangled Ignite)

by Teri Anne Stanley

  Crawford nodded.

  As soon as Lauren left the room, Mike approached Crawford and said, in a low voice, “I think you’ve got some sort of Devil’s Rangers connection here.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  Mike just looked at Crawford.

  The cop blinked, then said, “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? They think that Devil’s Dust is coming from here?”

  “Shhh…” Mike looked over his friend’s shoulder to the hallway.

  Crawford grinned big enough that Mike was afraid he was going to sprain a smile muscle. “I knew it. I knew you didn’t do what they said. They just said they suspended you so you could come here undercover.”

  Mike waited a moment, then watched Crawford’s face change as he realized the truth.

  “No. If you were undercover in an official capacity, I would have been notified.” Crawford dragged his hand over his mouth. “They really think you did what they said? You’re not guilty though, are you?”

  Mike just shrugged.

  “I didn’t believe it when your old partner—what was his name?”

  “Dan.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t believe it when old Dan told me you were dirty, and I don’t believe it now.” He slapped Mike on the shoulder. “The job offer’s still open. And you come see me when you can. I’ll do what I can to help.”

  Mike shook his head. It would be easier to stay below the radar if people like Dwayne believed he was guilty and didn’t try to help him. If he couldn’t be officially undercover, it was better that he just looked like a low-life ex-cop. That way, when he found the Devil’s Dust connection, he wouldn’t endanger anyone but himself.

  …

  After signing the insurance papers for Dr. Jerrold, Lauren returned to her lab to try to start the clean up. The police chief asked a few more questions and gave Lauren his card before leaving, telling her to call if she thought of anything else.

  All she could think of right now was trying to find out who had stolen her drug and getting it back before the Pemberton Society got wind of her loss. She was supposed to send them five freaking grams of the stuff by next week. She couldn’t let Pemberton know that she didn’t have the drug, or they’d pull the plug on her funding. She didn’t have enough time to grow more by next week. She had to find the stuff. Before the police did. Because if the police did find her product, it would go into some evidence locker somewhere until long after the window of the Pemberton opportunity—and Lauren’s career—was closed and sealed shut. She would sell a kidney before she called her mother and admitted she couldn’t make it in science.

  She wasn’t sure how she’d find out who the bad guys were, but she’d seen the way Mike’s eyes had narrowed when he read the graffiti on the wall, and there was something about the way he talked with Crawford… He knew something. And she was going to find out what it was and how it could help her. And maybe how to get her drug back.

  She absolutely had to find that stuff before the police did.

  And before anyone died. Dangerous new drug…addicts to the hospital… Please, God…don’t let it be her drug they were talking about on the news.

  After Crawford left, Mike stopped fiddling with settings on the centrifuge. He straightened and turned to lean against a clean section of counter. Crossing his arms, he glared at Lauren.

  “What?” She realized she’d crossed her arms, too, and stood with a hip cocked out. Defensive much? “Let’s have it.”

  “You lied.”

  “About what?”

  “What’s missing. Those pellet things you showed me yesterday. They’re all gone.”

  Damn.

  “Yeah. You wanna start talking?” He uncrossed his arms and moved toward Lauren.

  He smelled of fabric softener again, like the day before. What single guy used fabric softener?

  “Are you married?” Ugh. Did she really say that?

  That slowed him down, though. “What? No. I live with my brother. I told you that last night.” He took another step into her personal space. “Why did you lie?”

  Instead of feeling intimidated, she found herself uncrossing her arms and putting her hands behind her to hold on to the ledge. “How’s the cat doing?”

  “Howled all night. Dylan threatened to poison it.”

  “Dylan did? But he’s such an animal lover!”

  “Shows you how much of a head case that cat is.” He pinned her in place with that dark stare. “Why did you lie?”

  He was so close that she could feel his heat. How much closer was he going to get?

  When she took a deep breath, her breasts brushed his chest. Which caused her to take another deep breath. Not on purpose, of course.

  His eyes heated. She could smell coffee now. She licked her lips, and his nostrils flared. He bent his head closer.

  She needed to answer his question, but what should she say? If she didn’t answer, would he…what, kiss it out of her? He should work for the CIA. Or the FBI. As part of the Threaten to Kiss Information From Witnesses Unit.

  This couldn’t happen. She didn’t have room for a guy in her life under the best circumstances, and right now, she needed to find her drug. How was she going to do that if she had her lips stuck to his? Those gorgeous, sexy lips that probably had magnets in them. Magnets for desperate and dateless science geek girl lips. “I have to find the algae before the police do. I have to get it back so I can make enough step three to send to the drug company that I’m hoping will fund my study. My entire career hangs on getting this money. Without the algae…” Well, she guessed, the truth was always an option.

  He blinked and stepped back, saying nothing.

  She felt strangely sad that he hadn’t had to resort to more drastic measures to get her to talk. He was awfully interested in this situation. And why had Crawford seemed to want Mike there while he examined the crime scene? “Why do you care so much about this?”

  Mike retreated to the other side of the aisle and crossed his arms again. “Does my brother have a key to your lab? Can he get in here after hours?”

  “Dylan?” Lauren tilted her head. Ah. She supposed that, if she had a brother, and he worked somewhere there had been such chaos, she’d be a little freaked out too, but… “No. I mean, yes, he has a key, but I don’t think he did this, and I can’t believe you do.”

  “I didn’t say I did. But someone did. What did you give that man at the animal shelter last night?”

  “Huh?” What the…? “Oh! Rick. It was rat food. Why do you want to know…” A lightbulb in her brain went on.

  The rat food pellets were in a bag just like the one she kept the algae in. Mike had been in the parking lot when she’d come out of the building last night. She’d dropped the bag and nearly fallen down the stairs when she saw him looking at her, and he must have recognized it. Had he followed her to the shelter to see what she was going to do with the pellets? But why? Realization hit, and hard. Oh, God. Well, that cleared up one mystery. He hadn’t followed her out there because he was interested in her in that way. He probably didn’t have magnets in his lips, either.

  “You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you?” She held up a hand when he opened his mouth to speak, so he snapped it shut. “Are you a cop?”

  He didn’t answer, just stared at her for a moment longer. He chewed his bottom lip, apparently having some sort of an internal debate.

  “Dr. Kane, do you—” Evan burst through the door. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize you were still here. I saw Crawford leaving, so I figured—”

  “Evan.” Mike nodded and picked up his tool bag and slung it over his shoulder. He looked at Lauren. “I’ve got to get a report back to my boss with a time estimate for the work in here. Call the maintenance department with a list. We’ll get started as soon as possible, and I’ll help you take care of this.”

  She had a feeling he was talking about more than her broken equipment. And she knew, quite clearly, he’d completely avoided answering h
er question. Did that mean he was a cop? But if he was, why was he here, on campus? Investigating what?

  After Mike walked out the door, Evan turned to Lauren and said, “You need to stay away from him.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Evan took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m a bit concerned that my brother is spending so much time here, at the scene of a crime.”

  “He came to find out what needs to be fixed.” Why was she defending Mike’s presence when she’d just been questioning it, herself? “He’s helping me.”

  “Of course.” He nodded, though clearly not agreeing with her. “And…I understand the effect that so much testosterone has on the female libido, and the ‘bad boy’ phenomenon probably amplifies that, but—although it seems disloyal of me to say so—Michael has had some issues—some trouble that I shouldn’t discuss with you—from the past.”

  Before he could continue, Lauren asked, “Did you need something specific, Evan?”

  “Oh. I wanted to know if you’re coming to the departmental seminar. It starts in”—he pulled back the cuff of his perfectly pressed oxford cloth shirt—“three minutes.”

  “I think I’ll skip it today. I doubt anyone will think badly of me.”

  “Well, I won’t, but you know that Dr. Jerrold does take faculty attendance, even if it’s not officially recorded.

  “Thanks Evan. I’ll take my chances.” She was pretty sure that she could get away with missing a meeting. Besides, in addition to trying to salvage her project and save her career, she had to worry about what kind of “issues” Evan was talking about. Well, no, she didn’t have to worry about that. She could just avoid Mike Gibson and get on with saving her own career. But she had a feeling that he was going to take up a good bit of space in her brain, whether she wanted him there or not. And besides, she had a feeling that he held a key to getting her algae back.

  Chapter Eight

  Lauren spent a few more hours fending off well-meaning co-workers who came by to offer their theories about the crime. It took every stiff-upper-lip gene imparted by her parents not to snap, but she didn’t lose her mind at anyone who leaned against a counter and offered advice.

  Aaaand then, her mother called. Lauren was hoping she wouldn’t have to tell her parents what happened until she knew more—and maybe had her algae back. No such luck. She’d learned long ago not to ignore a call from Karen Kane. The woman was nothing if not persistent.

  It only took Lauren fifteen minutes and half a box of tissues to get herself under control enough to get back to work after telling her mom that she’d had a liiiiiittle setback on the road to scientific glory.

  But she never did get a single beaker back on its proper shelf that afternoon.

  She probably would have made more progress, but she kept getting distracted with worries about how to find her missing drug. She did manage to clean her algae tank and get it up and running again. Fortunately, it didn’t require any sophisticated equipment—just a jug of nutrient-rich water and some UV light. Barring a working grow light, a sunny window would do, which was what she placed the tank under.

  Sunshine through a north-facing window wasn’t going to be enough to dig her out of her step one deficit, however. It took a week—under optimal conditions—to grow enough raw material to harvest the step one algae, dry it into pellets, and extract it into the potent, liquid step two substance, another few days to process it into step three—the chemical she hoped to use to launch herself into pharmaceutical history. And her meeting with the Pemberton society was in five days.

  And she’d tried to avoid thinking about this, but she was really beginning to be bugged about that news story she’d heard yesterday. What if that Devil’s Dust crap was her drug? She’d been noticing a shortage in her step two production. Could someone have possibly been siphoning off the drug as it dripped from the condenser, even before the lab was sacked and robbed?

  She mentally reviewed the production steps. After she grew algae in the flasks, she strained it out, mixed in the toxic chemical that would cause it to release the drug later, and dried it into pellets, which she kept until she had enough to process. Then, she mixed the pellets with extraction solution and put them in another set of flasks with a condenser. The step two drug dripped out of the condenser. For every liter of extraction, she should get ten milliliters of step two. And she did. She got the ten milliliters, anyway. But not as much concentrated step two as she had the first several times she’d run the experiment. Could someone be taking step two and replacing it with extraction solution?

  Who would know how to do that? Maybe someone who had heard one of her seminars, when she’d presented her data. But as she thought about the members of the Biology Department, she couldn’t imagine a single one of them taking her drug. Who would even know how to sell it to bad guys?

  She had to find out who had her drug and get it back. But how?

  Put an ad in the paper? Drug dealers probably didn’t read the paper. For that matter, regular people didn’t read the paper anymore. Craigslist? Make a plea on the news, like parents who’d lost a child? Tacky, at best. Hire a posse of mercenaries?

  At this last thought, Lauren started to giggle. She envisioned herself wearing camo, striding back and forth in front of a group of former Navy SEALs, giving them a speech about the dangers of drugs and the necessity of developing safe alternatives.

  The one thing she couldn’t do was tell the police that she had to get her drug back. If they knew she was going to try to get to the stuff before they got their hands on it, they wouldn’t tell her anything about the progress of the investigation. Heck, they’d probably suspect her. But Mike had some sort of connection to Chief Crawford.

  And what about Mike? Should she avoid him, like Evan suggested? Lauren was bummed about that. Way more than she should have been after knowing the man all of what? Thirty-some hours? Her instincts said that she should get closer to him, find out what he knew—but she thought perhaps that was her girly parts’ influence on her instincts and not her rational brain.

  At six thirty, Lauren finally gave up trying to work. She’d forgotten to eat lunch, and was getting a whale of a headache. She needed to get home and feed her cat, then call Crawford and find out if he’d made any progress. Because he would totally appreciate that. She should also try to sleep, because if she couldn’t figure out where her missing drug had ended up, she’d be forced to stay in the lab all weekend, trying to resurrect at least something of her research. She might go down in flames if she couldn’t secure the Pemberton grant, but she wouldn’t go down without fighting.

  As she walked to her car in the slanting evening sunshine, the trash can where the possum family lived caught her attention. There was a sign taped to the can.

  Do Not Disturb. This trash can is someone’s home.

  There was also a little barrier of cinder blocks and caution tape in place, presumably to slow anyone who might not stop to read the sign before tossing in something that might cause traumatic brain injury to little, innocent possum babies.

  Mike.

  In her mind’s eye, she could see him out here, building a little safety zone, and her girly parts sent another zing to her instincts, telling her to trust him.

  But then there was all that stuff Evan had said.

  Would someone with the mysterious issues that Evan mentioned spend time to ensure the protection of a family of scavengers? And adopt a special needs cat? And would he make Lauren’s heart beat harder just from being in the same room? Of course, even Dr. Evil had that little hairless thing he seemed to care for.

  “They seem to be doing pretty well.”

  Lauren jumped at the sound of Mike’s voice.

  “How did you sneak up on me?”

  “Sorry,” he said, putting a hand on her arm to steady her. Where he touched her, her skin tingled. “You seemed to be deep in thought.”

  “Uh…” She wondered if he could tell that she’d been thinking of him. The way her cheeks
burned, he probably suspected as much. After all, he was pretty good at suspecting things, and at asking questions.

  Screw it. She had to know. “Are you a cop? Or were you? Why did Evan say you’ve been in trouble? And why are you still here? Shouldn’t you have been off work hours ago?” And, yes, she was rambling now, throwing questions at him faster than he could answer, but it was all out now, and she had no choice but to see how he responded.

  Mike sighed, letting go of her arm. He ran a hand through his hair. Finally, he said, “I was a member of an interstate police task force, and…there was a…misunderstanding, and now I’m a maintenance man. And I’m still on campus, because I had some…extra stuff to do today.”

  She wondered what that might be. Former police guy working as a maintenance man where a probably drug-related crime had been committed?

  He looked away, then back at her. “And, uh, I was waiting for you.”

  “What do they say you did? That got you fired?” She was going to ignore the “waiting for you” part of that statement, because she couldn’t process that right now.

  “It’s complicated.” He shook his head, then smiled, wryly. “And I was ‘suspended indefinitely’, not fired.”

  Lauren crossed her arms and regarded him. “Of course it’s complicated. But I’m pretty quick on the draw. Try me.”

  For a split second, his glance dropped—to her lips? His pocket chimed with an incoming text sound, and he took his phone out and glanced at it before shoving it back. “Look, I’d better run. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  He’d waited there, after a long day, just to make sure she was okay? His eyes searched hers. Looking for…what? To see if she was going to hand off drugs disguised as rat food to a friend or for something more…personal? Whatever it was he was looking for, she felt like she could give it to him, and it would be safe. Suddenly, the events of the day swamped her, and she sagged, shoulders slumping.

  “Damn,” he said, took a step forward, and pulled her into his arms.