Chase Me (20 page)

Moving carefully and deliberately, the blank held between two fingers, she wedged her hand deep into the crevices of the control panel, working by touch. Bumps: screws, slots, circuits. So many of them, and all so small—

There. There it was.

Not giving herself time to question her instincts, she quickly popped a chip and replaced it with the blank.

She held her breath.

Nothing from Beddoe.

Slowly exhaling, she extracted her hand, tucking the purloined chip under her wristband next to the smoker.

If the
Arkapaedis
’s beacon blipped again, Beddoe would never know about it.

Her boss would be pleased.

“Lorin! Hello!” Willem Lund stepped out from behind the U-shaped desk defending Elliott Sebastiani’s inner sanctum and hugged her.

“What? Am I late?” Lorin asked as she returned his embrace.

Willem stepped back, looking her up and down. “No, you’re right on time. I’m just happy to see you looking so…” He paused, as if searching for the right word.

“Clean?” Lorin looked down at her well-used denim jacket, khaki pants, and boots.

“Healthy and whole, thank the universe. That last Council meeting was… brutal. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Thank you.” She gestured to Elliott Sebastiani’s closed office door. “Is he ready for us? And where’s Gabe?” Probably already in the office. Her temper spiked as she looked at the closed door. Who knew what Gabe was telling Elliott about their work so far? Damn it, she should have gotten here early.

“Gabe’s running late, so he’s all yours. Go on in.”

Declining Willem’s offer of coffee, Lorin tapped on the door with her knuckles, opening it when Elliott called, “Come.”

Elliott rose from his mahogany desk and walked toward her with his arms extended. “Lorin,” he said with a smile. “You look well.” Elliott kissed her on each cheek, and then enfolded her in a hug.

Why did everyone expect her to be at death’s door? Apparently she’d drastically underestimated the impact of her fuckup back here at home base.

“It’s good to be back,” she replied, “though I wasn’t too happy to see the mound of paperwork on my desk when I swung by there a couple of minutes ago.” Her office was a chaotic mess, but somehow Elliott’s work area always looked more like an elegant salon than the power center of one of the most successful privately held companies in the world. His desk was tidy, an expanse where no dust mote would dare land, and nary a piece of paper strayed from ruthless alignment. One of the vintage fountain pens he collected lay across an open leather-bound notebook, and on his sleek monitor, pictures of his extraordinary family scrolled by: His children grouped around their long-deceased mother, Dasha, who held a newborn Antonia. A casual headshot of Elliott and Claudette Fontaine embracing at their bonding ceremony, celebrating the romantic relationship they’d finally allowed themselves to have after years of platonic friendship. And there were the Sebastiani siblings and the Fontaine sisters together, with a laughing Claudette at the center of the action, a bottle of wine in her hand.

There was a tug in Lorin’s chest as she looked at the third picture.
The
changes
since
then.
Annika Fontaine, snapped in mid-laugh, was no longer with them, leaving a horrible void. Lukas stared at Scarlett with a broody expression that would be painful to look at if you didn’t know how happily it had ended.

As Elliott escorted her to the furniture grouping, Lorin looked back to the door, still slightly ajar. “I thought Gabe was joining us?”

“Gabe has an appointment that’s running late.”

Gabe hadn’t mentioned that he had an appointment.

“I wanted to speak with you privately anyway.”

Ah, hell, here it comes.
Lorin sat up straighter in the slouchy leather chair. If she was going to be chewed out, she’d take it on the chin.

“How are things going?”

Elliott’s gentle question took the wind out of her sails and yet at the same time set all her internal alerts shrieking. She knew what he was really asking: How were she and Gabe getting along? “Fine.” She locked eyes with him. “All the tests came back clear, right?”

Exasperation flitted across his hawk-like face, there then gone. “Yes, you’re fine, as far as we know. As a scientist, you’re aware we can’t test for things we don’t have tests for.” He leaned back in his own chair, watching her with eyes that, depending on the task at hand, could glow warmly, or slice with the blowtorch of his intelligence. “How many times over the years have you or a member of the crew run a metal detector over the very spot where you found the command box? Dozens? And yet it was there.” Elliott spread his hands. “We don’t know what we don’t know—and if that box is what we think it could be, what we don’t know is, unfortunately, a lot.” Elliott’s multiline phone chirped, barely audible, but he ignored it. “You were extremely fortunate that there was nothing biohazardous in that box, Lorin.”

“It opened by accident, Elliott,” she said defensively. “Worst-case scenario, I was breathing thousand-year-old air.”

“It would have been fascinating to test its atmospheric composition.”

But
that
opportunity
is
forever
lost.
Though Elliott was too polite to say it, she easily read it on his face. “Where’s the box now?”

“Wyland is transporting it from archives as we speak. I really want Gabe’s take on that metal.”

“It does seem to have some unusual properties. The color is extraordinary, and the dirt flowed off of it like—”

The heavy door opened, and Gabe strode in. “Sorry I’m late.”

Lorin hadn’t seen Gabe since yesterday, in Tobies’ parking lot. Dressed in a pair of tailored black suit pants, a bronze oxford unbuttoned at the neck, and carrying the matching jacket, his metamorphosis back to “city Gabe” was pretty much complete. His hair had a subtle, lustrous sheen that bespoke hair product of some type, and as he approached and sat in the chair next to hers, a hint of delicious, civilized scent wafted her way. She looked down at her own rumpled khakis and denim jacket—a definite step up for her—and sighed.

The men seemed to be having a nonverbal conversation of some type: a questioning eyebrow from Elliott, followed by a fatalistic shrug from Gabe.

Lorin waved her hand, breaking their sight line. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Gabe reached into the side pocket of his computer bag, extracted a file folder, and flipped it open. “I’d like to quickly review the latest work plan before we go down to the lab.”

Elliott Sebastiani’s nostrils were working overtime—and his attention was entirely focused on Gabe.

Nothing was up? Bullshit.

What the hell was going on?

***

“What a clusterfuck,” Lorin muttered, nudging past Lukas so she could better survey the activity below. “Who are all these people?”

Standing on the open gantry overlooking the subterranean lab space, she watched far too many people swarm as industriously as ants at a picnic, carrying the last pieces of equipment from other labs to their temporary quarters. Bailey Brown lay on her stomach under the table running the length of the east wall. Gabe, stepping over her legs, gave instructions to people she vaguely recognized as working in geology and metallurgy. His minions hung on his every word, anxious to do his bidding, scuttling pieces of equipment down one of the many hallways branching off the main room to other areas of the subterranean lab. Julianna Benton was simply everywhere, pointing, directing, coordinating—and trying to smooth the very ruffled feathers of Dr. Anna Mae Whitman, the crabby genius of a woman who managed Sebastiani Labs’ lab facilities with her tiny iron fist. Dr. Whitman was being relocated to temporary quarters and wasn’t at all happy about it.

Her mother was having a quiet but animated conversation with Elliott on the other side of the control room, her signature jade and bone bracelet clacking with each gesture she made.

The subtle sound ground on Lorin’s last remaining nerve.

All told, over a dozen people bustled in the lab below, and though the workers were too well-trained to ask unnecessary questions, the presence of Elliott Sebastiani and a good chunk of the Underworld Council was a huge tip-off that something big was going down.

“So much for confidentiality,” she groused.

“They’ll be leaving soon and won’t have access to the lab after they leave,” Lukas replied, looking at her far too closely. His nostrils were twitching up a storm.

Damn his incubus hide. “Will you back off?” She felt ornery enough to take him on today, and damn the consequences.

“Lover’s spat?” Lukas asked, amusement lacing his voice.

“We are not lovers,” she snapped.

Gabe’s head jerked up to the gantry, and then he glanced away again.

“Yeah, right. The pheromones pumping off the two of you are off the charts, and you’re about to twitch out of your skin.” Lukas tucked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans, rocking back on his booted heels. “Drag him off somewhere and do something about it.”

“We are not sleeping together,” Lorin bit out.
Anymore.
“I’m fine.” His raised eyebrow flat-out called her a liar. “Shut up,” she said. “I’ll be fine—”
Shit.
As soon as the words slipped out of her mouth, she wanted to snatch them back.

“Lorin—”

Ignoring him, she plucked her phone out of her jacket pocket and peered conscientiously at the screen. The thing wasn’t even turned on, but he didn’t have to know that. “Lukas, we have a lot of work to do here today. Let’s just get on with it.”

Down on the floor, Gabe pulled off his glasses and tiredly rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

Lukas stepped closer to Lorin. “Is this how the two of you communicate?”

Lorin refused to think about some of the ways she and Gabe had communicated, and quite successfully too. “Would you quit”—she pushed at his big shoulder—“sniffing me!”

“Hard to avoid; you’re reeking the place up something fierce.”

Even though she knew Lukas was speaking figuratively—as an incubus, Lukas inhaled emotional energy for sustenance and could discern emotional nuances by smell and taste alone—her cheeks flamed with heat. What were her emotions telling Lukas? Maybe she should ask him, because Freyja knew
she
was coming up empty.

Jack approached. “Coffee, Lorin?” Before she quite realized what was happening, he’d drawn her away from Lukas and toward the refreshment table, where plates of fruit and glistening pastry surrounded an industrial-sized coffeemaker. “How are things going?”

Lorin choked back a hysterical laugh. She was in the doghouse with Elliott and Wyland because she hadn’t followed procedure opening the box in the first place. Her mother was here, observing every move she made. She was more worried about Paige than she’d let on to either Mike or Gabe.

Gabe.
She was even more pissed off at him today than she’d been yesterday. She’d met Chadden at his restaurant last night, with every intention of using his finely honed body to work off some of this outrageous energy building up in her system, but she’d inexplicably backed off.

She’d gone to bed alone, and it was all Gabe’s fault.

“Lorin?”

Jack’s hand was on her shoulder.
Pull
it
together.
“Let’s just say I’m overdue for some time in the cage,” she admitted. She’d feel better if she could just whale on something—or someone. She eyed Jack, who she knew from experience sported some serious muscle under his impeccably tailored suit. Though he was bigger and taller, her stamina was better. In a fight they were pretty evenly matched.

“Name the time.”

“I’ll call you.” She raised her clenched fist for a knuckle knock.

“It’s a date.” Jack tapped back. “Oh, hi, Gabe. You look like you could use a refill.”

“Jack.” The werewolf rumble at the edge of Gabe’s voice vibrated straight to her core. Jack stepped aside, giving Gabe room to refill the mug he carried. Jack was right; Gabe definitely looked like he could use some coffee. Despite the crispness of his executive-casual wardrobe, he looked more visibly worn around the edges than he had an hour ago. His skin was drawn tightly against his cheekbones, and his hair stood on end.

Behind his rimless glasses, his ice floe eyes burned.

“Oh, here you are, Gabe,” Julianna said, heels tapping as she joined them at the shiny coffeepot. The auburn bun on the back of her head sagged just a little, which was understandable. Going head-to-head with Anna Mae Whitman for any length of time was enough to take the starch out of anybody. Julianna consulted her watch then her clipboard, which clenched a familiar-looking spreadsheet between its teeth. “Mr. Sebastiani,” she said as Lukas joined them. “Do you have Wyland’s ETA?”