Deadly Chemistry (Entangled Ignite) (5 page)

They pulled on the shoe covers and stepped across the threshold. Everything from the counters in the middle of the room had been tipped to the floor. The shelves above the center benches were likewise knocked over, contents spilled everywhere. The two cubicle desk spaces on the far wall, where the windows overlooked the parking lot, looked like a paper factory had vomited.

The first thing Lauren looked for was her algae, which should have been bubbling happily in its giant flask. But it wasn’t. Oh, God. She stifled a gasp with a cough.

“Are you okay?” Crawford asked.

“Um, yeah. I just…yeah, I’m okay.” Her algae was gone. The incubation flask was full of pale green liquid, but someone had taken the time to strain out the organisms. All that was left was…algae pee. She swallowed, hard, hoping against hope that the bag of dried step one algae—and the purified step two liquid—were in the safe. They were not. The door hung open, the safe empty.
Crap
. The story she’d heard on the radio yesterday ran, loud and clear, through her head.
A dangerous new drug…sending addicts to the hospital…
Nausea rolled through her, threatening to bring her to her knees.

She looked up. Crawford was examining something in the cell culture room. Mike stared right at her.

“Dr. Kane, can you come in here?” Chief Crawford asked.

Mike looked away.

With slow steps, she walked to see where Crawford was pointing. When she saw the words written on the wall by the incubator, she nearly threw up.

Chapter Seven

Lauren looked truly green around the gills. Mike watched as Crawford put a hand around Lauren’s upper arm and steered her away from the room with the gruesome threat spray painted on the wall. Mike would have rather taken her completely out of the building, somewhere totally safe.

Killing rats is killing dogs is killing monkeys is killing scientists. Are you next?

Below the words was a squiggle that Mike recognized. He wondered if Lauren or Crawford knew it for the gang tag that it was. Dino Romain and the Devil’s Rangers had been here.

“Why would someone say that?” Lauren said, nearly—but not quite—wailing. She was hanging on, but just barely.

“Are you up for some questions?” Crawford asked.

She nodded. “I guess so.”

He pulled a notebook, similar to the one Mike still carried everywhere, from his shirt pocket. “Do you know who did this?”

Lauren shook her head. “No. I don’t know why…” Her eyes flew to Mike’s and then to the safe.

Crawford didn’t miss the look. “What do you keep in the safe?”

She sighed. “step two. It’s a narcotic, stronger than morphine, produced by genetically altered algae. I change it…run it through a series of purification steps and alter one of the side chains on the main—” she said, then stopped, waved a hand, and started again. “Anyway, I turn it into a benign but powerful painkiller. I call that step three.”

“What’s step one?”

She gestured toward the giant flask that Mike recalled had been bubbling with dark green slime the day before. Now it held cloudy green water. “I call that step zero. Grow the algae. Then I strain it and dry it, make it into pellets. That’s step one. I didn’t produce steps zero and one this week.”

She was lying. She’d told the truth about the missing vial of step two drug, but both big bags of step one pellets were gone. He knew she’d taken one bag with her the night before…the one she’d probably handed off to the old guy in the dusty Honda, but what about the other bag? There had been two on the counter when she’d been telling him about her research the day before.

For some reason, knowing Lauren was lying about the missing algae didn’t set Mike’s overdeveloped conscience to DEFCON One. He should tell Crawford that she wasn’t being straight, but he didn’t. And he didn’t think it was because he wanted to bust her as part of the drug ring himself, since he didn’t. He’d give it some time.

Crawford scribbled some more notes. “I think you’d better explain the whole process.”

While Lauren recited everything she’d said to Mike the day before—but with more detail and bigger words—Mike examined the lab, partially to see what equipment was damaged but mostly to see if he could figure out if Lauren could have trashed her own lab. He needed to know in his heart, to be one hundred and ten percent sure that she was innocent—because she was starting to matter to him. It didn’t make sense—she would just take her own stuff out of here, no one would know, no need to make a big mess. But then what was with the meeting last night, passing that stuff off to the old guy in the parking lot at the animal shelter? He had to find some way to casually find out if she’d indeed passed on her pellets to the old dude without triggering her suspicions.

“I know you won’t have a complete inventory until you’ve had time to clean up, but can you tell me anything that’s missing?” Crawford asked.

“Just…my step two drug.” Lauren met Mike’s gaze then, as though daring him to contradict her. But he wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to call her on her lie just yet. He would wait until Crawford was gone, find out what game she was playing. Yeah, he should probably speak up now, but something—hopefully not his hormones—was telling him to give her a chance.

Meanwhile, he had to be a maintenance man. He made a note to check the freezer to make sure it held its temperature once it got set back upright, then pulled the ultracentrifuge away from the wall to see if he could put the control panel back in or if he needed to call in someone else.

The old guy—Dr. Jerrold—who’d spoken to Evan in the hallway the day before, stuck his head through the door. He dressed like Evan probably would in another fifteen years—if not before. This guy’s pants were belted so far over his stomach that the hems were well above the tops of his black socks. Mike conceded to himself that Evan, at least, didn’t wear flood pants, and he kept his belt somewhere closer to his actual waist, even if he did wear a purple and green argyle sweater vest.

“Lauren, do you have a minute? I need you to sign some papers for the insurance company.” The old guy looked at Crawford. “Your people took pictures? I’ll need copies.”

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 her 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.