Chase Me (19 page)

“Oh, come on,” Lorin scoffed. “There are times when
I’d
like to throw a can at Nathan. And if Paige really meant to hurt him, she’d have thrown the pickax.” She paused. “She was protecting you.”

He fiddled with the snap on his pocket before looking at her again. “So, you’re not the least bit concerned about Paige?”

She sliced him a look. “I didn’t say that—”

“—and you’re comfortable leaving the dig right now, knowing that she’s hooking up with a strange vamp who leaves her a thralled, hormonal mess?”

“No. And speaking of hormonal messes, does fighting back a shift always leave you in such a pissy mood?”

Gabe choked back his anger. She couldn’t know how rare—how bittersweet—shifting was for him in the first place. “Lorin, this conversation proves my point. Professional lives and private lives don’t mix. We should be talking about who’s going to manage the dig while we’re gone, and here we are, fighting about”—he threw up his hands in disgust—“hormones and moods. Damn it, this is why people who work together should never—”

“Yes. Now we’re getting to the real issue.” Lorin sat ramrod straight on the rough picnic table bench. “Gabe, if our arrangement isn’t working for you, all you have to do is say so. We can call things off right here and now.”

Not working? It was working too goddamn well, and that was the problem. She made it sound as if halting their “arrangement”—gah, what an insulting word—wouldn’t be any skin off her nose.

And it probably wouldn’t be. She could have any lover she wanted.

“Enough said.” When she rose to her feet, Gabe stood too. Her face was blank, her voice icily polite. He suddenly felt like he was thousands of years old, like his bones would crumble to dust if he so much as moved. “I’ll talk to—”

“No. I’ll coordinate arrangements for our departure. Who knows whether you’ll even be making the return trip?”

In the heat of this miserable day, her words were like icicles dropping from a roof ledge. Not coming back wasn’t a prospect he’d considered. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. The very idea should make him jump for joy, but… it didn’t.

He was already mourning.

“It probably makes sense for us to both drive our own cars south,” she said. “I’ll want my own transportation once I get to The Cities.”

Gabe nodded. “Yeah.” He knew he couldn’t stomach a five-hour car ride with her now with this tensile-steel tension between them. “What do you want to do about Paige?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Her expression was carved in rock, like the nearby petroglyphs. Was she feeling anything, anything at all? She’d completely shut down. Why did he feel like he was attending his own wake? “You’ll be putting Mike in charge?”

For a moment, he didn’t think she’d respond. Finally, she said, “Yes.”

“How will Paige feel about that?”

“She’ll deal with it,” Lorin snapped. “I’ll make sure that the work rotation is solid before we go, and I’ll check in with them by phone while we’re gone. It’s not like we’re going on an Everest expedition, Gabe. We’ll be gone less than a week.” Her gaze bored into him like a drill bit. “It’s my problem, not yours.”

“Lorin!” Nathan called from the driver’s seat of her truck. “Your chariot awaits.”

“Be right there,” she called back. “I’ll talk to Mike and Paige now, and update everyone else after dinner tonight.”

The edges of his mouth tugged up reluctantly. “I think I heard you say you’re going to call a meeting.”

She didn’t smile back. “Are we done here?”

“Lorin…” Nathan called again.

She turned away without a word.

Gabe stared at her. Yeah, they were done, all right. Mission fucking accomplished.

***

“Nathan.” Lorin mentally counted to three. “If Ellenore wants to trade responsibilities with you, that’s okay with me. You two figure it out.” An eighteen-wheeler barreled by on her left, and her poor old truck shuddered in its wake. “I’m driving, Nathan. I’ve gotta go. Yeah. Yeah. Bye.” Disconnecting the call with an extra-hard punch of her thumb, she tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.

“Christ on a cracker.” Half the crew had called since she’d left the dig a little over two hours ago, either talking through minor problems she knew damn well they could solve for themselves, or saying they just wanted to keep her company as she drove.

She didn’t want company. She wanted to be alone. She desperately needed to be alone.

Was Gabe’s phone ringing off the hook? Was he as crabby about it as she was? Probably not. She wouldn’t recognize his ear if it didn’t have a phone clapped to it.

On the other hand, the endless phone conversations had kept her mind off how twitchy her body was getting, now that Gabe had ended their… whatever the hell their relationship was. First Rafe had called things off, and now Gabe.

Why couldn’t she be attracted to women? Men were nothing but trouble.

She turned off her mind, turned the radio to the ’80s station, and sang away the miles, the volume loud enough so she couldn’t hear the phone ringing if she wanted to. When Jon Bon Jovi started wailing about shots to the heart and who’s to blame, she snapped off the music with a curse—just in time to hear a clunk. Metal dragged against asphalt with an ungodly scraping noise. She looked in her rearview mirror.

She was spitting sparks.

Crap. Tailpipe? Muffler? Up ahead, like an oasis in the desert, she saw a green road sign: “Hinckley: One Mile.”
Excellent.
She’d stop at Tobies, do some emergency repairs, and then have a cinnamon roll to reward a job well done.

Okay, two cinnamon rolls.

Wincing, she muscled the truck up the exit ramp and turned into the parking lot. The last six months had been a steady succession of emergency repairs. It was probably time to permanently park her old truck up at the dig and buy a new one, and she was more than a little depressed at the prospect. She’d bought the truck used back when she was a teenager, and half a lifetime of memories lay in every spill soiling the carpet, and every crack in the dash. The windshield had been broken and replaced countless times, and she’d taken her first lover on the roomy bench seat. A couple of Buttercup’s doggy nose prints still smudged the back window, carefully framed by black electrical tape so she wouldn’t wipe them off by mistake.

Princess Buttercup, her beloved, snaggletoothed bulldog, had gone to the Great Doggy Beyond over five years ago. Maybe it was time to get another dog.

Lorin wove her way through the busy parking lot, past the cars, trucks, vans, and people, to the relative quiet of the nearly empty overflow lot. Now that she’d stopped, she couldn’t ignore the deep ache pulsing low in her abdomen. Examining the tree-rimmed lot with a critical eye, she considered running a few laps to bleed off some of the buildup.

Not that it would help much.
Damn
you, Gabe.

Stepping out of the truck, she stretched, then walked to the back of the truck and peered under the back quarter panel. Sure enough, the tailpipe was dragging, the back clamp rusted clean off. “I’ve got to have baling wire in here somewhere,” she muttered as she walked to the passenger side of the truck. Twine or electrical tape would do. Hell, she’d MacGyver something with spit and rubber bands as long as it meant not calling Gabe, who couldn’t be more than ten minutes ahead of her. Being that he’d barely said a word to her as their paths crossed loading their vehicles this morning, that trip would be pretty damn fun.

Not.

Her phone rang again as she rooted around in the toolbox tucked behind the passenger seat, and she snatched it up with a growl. If this was an indication of what the next five days were going to be like, she was going to—

She blinked at the display, but the numbers didn’t budge. Her mother? Lorin had received a text from her the day before yesterday, letting her know that she’d arrived in La Paz, but she hadn’t expected an actual phone call for, well, weeks yet. Unless something was wrong. “Mom? Are you okay?”

“Hello to you, too, dear.” Amusement colored her mother’s voice. “Yes, I’m fine.”

Lorin plugged her open ear with a forefinger to block out a nearby semi’s diesel whine. “Where are you?”

“I’m not precisely sure, dear. Let me ask the captain.”

Captain? Her mother must be in the air, calling from one of the Sebastiani Gulfstreams.

“We’re just north of Austin,” Alka finally said. “We ran into a permit problem, so rather than cooling my heels at the hotel for a week or two, I decided I’d rather fly home and watch you and Gabriel work.”

Great. Just great.
Now her mother would have a front row seat to observe the wreckage of her working relationship with Gabe.

“When do you start? I saw that you’ll be working in the basement lab.”

“Tomorrow morning. I’m driving south from the site right now. I stopped at Tobies for some quick repairs and a cinnamon roll.”

“That old truck,” Alka said fretfully. “Lorin, when are you going to get a new car? I worry about you driving on those remote northern Minnesota roads, broken down—”

“—and fully able to fix the problem myself?” Lorin deadpanned. “Mom, I’m fine. Don’t worry. Gabe is less than ten minutes ahead of me, and I’ve got the phone.”

“Which you rarely use. Why aren’t you and Gabriel riding together? What a waste of gas.”

“It was a… business continuity decision.” Lorin strove for a lighthearted tone. “Put the two of us in a car together for almost five hours and only one of us is going to come out alive. You know it’s gonna be me.”

Alka’s disappointed sigh was audible. “I really hoped you’d be getting along better with Gabriel by now.”

Lorin fought back a wild laugh as she remembered Gabe pinning her to the grass with his tough, rangy body, feasting on her breasts like they were his last meal. “Don’t make such a big deal out of Gabe and me driving home separately, Mom,” she said. “We each wanted our own transportation back home, that’s all. And after I fix this tailpipe, I’ll be right back on the road.”

“I’ll let you go, then,” Alka said with a sigh. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the lab. Strictly in an observer capacity, of course.” She paused. “Lorin, I’m so, so proud of you.”

Lorin’s eyes stung. Tomorrow was soon enough to shatter her mother’s illusions. “Thanks, Mom. See you tomorrow.”

She hung up, tossed the phone on the passenger seat again, and pulled on her sweatshirt so she wouldn’t scuff her back on the asphalt. Snatching the baling wire, tin snips, and a pair of pliers out of the toolbox, she walked to the tailgate. After repairs, she’d clean up in the restaurant’s bathroom, get some cinnamon rolls, and—

Gabe.

Gabe was walking out of the restaurant juggling a tall cup of coffee and a white pastry bag with one hand, holding a phone to his ear with the other. Whoever he was talking to made him grin like a fool; she could see his white teeth flash from here. He wore familiar-looking khaki pants, but he’d paired them with soft leather loafers instead of steel-toed boots. His pale green oxford shirt, unbuttoned at the neck and casually rolled up at the sleeves, made her crave mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Gabe threw back his head and laughed, the late morning sun glinting off those absurdly hot glasses. He looked relaxed. Happy. Edible, damn it. She wanted to drag him down to the nearest flat surface.

Who was he talking to? Who amused him so much? Not that it was any of her business. Not anymore.

Turning her back on him, she shimmied under the truck, pushing against the asphalt with the heels of her hiking boots, and unspooled a length of wire. Gabe probably had big plans for tonight now that he was returning to civilization. She should make some plans too. Going back to town opened up all sorts of options—for both of them. She could hit Underbelly with Andi Woolf and dance until dawn. With a single phone call, a shower, and a change of clothes, she could score a seat at Chadden’s downtown restaurant, be fed by the tempestuous chef himself, share his decadent bed—and work off this jones she had for a tight-assed, half-blind, calamine-covered werewolf with a vengeance.

“There.” With one last twist of the wrist, the tailpipe was solidly in place—not that it was actually connected to the muffler anymore. Scrabbling out from under the truck, she brushed tiny rocks off her shorts and bare legs. She returned her tools to the toolbox and eyed the phone.

Then picked it up and dialed.

***

“Can you see the source?” Beddoe asked from the command chair.

“Yes, Sirrah.” Xantha Ta’al wiped her streaming eyes and coughed on acrid smoke. Lying on her stomach, her head and shoulders wedged under the science console, she found the tiny smoker she’d purposely dropped into the cabinet at the beginning of her shift. Pinching it off, she slid it under the wristband of her duty suit. “An overheating circuit, Captain. Shall I repair?”

“Please proceed.”

“Certainly, Sirrah.” Xantha took a shallow, careful breath to control her rocketing heart. Reaching behind her, she retrieved her ServiPak, then selected a tool she didn’t need and the blank chip she most emphatically did. She blinked as she waited for more smoke to clear.