Deadly Chemistry (Entangled Ignite) (12 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Lauren peered into the misty dawn. “Kevin! Here, kitty, kitty!”

Nothing.

She shivered, a reaction that had nothing to do with the cool morning and everything to do with concern over her cat. He’d never,
ever
stayed out all night. He didn’t go in for the whole caterwauling thing. If he wasn’t back by suppertime, she’d start making posters to hang around campus. She told herself that he’d probably been invited into the home of some students who were feeding him sushi and letting him on the kitchen table.

Shutting the front door, she picked up her tea and cell phone and settled in at the kitchen table. She needed to let her mother know that she was still alive—especially after her little dramatic melt down on Thursday. And maybe for some girl talk.

Her mother answered on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”

“Why do you think something’s wrong?” Just because she’d woken up this morning with visions of long walks on a beach holding hands with a certain guy didn’t make anything wrong, did it?

“Well, you did have that little vandalism issue at work the other day, right?”

“True,” Lauren agreed. “But no, there’s been no more trouble in the lab.”

“Then what?”

Okay, yeah. There was something wrong. And she might as well talk about it, since this was why she’d called. “I kind of met someone.”

“And you have a problem with having met someone? A man? Or a woman? Where did you meet him—her?”

“No. Mom. It’s—he’s a guy. From work. But—”

“Is he married?”

“No, he’s single, but—”

“He’s not another scientist, is he?”

“Why would it be bad if it was another scientist?”

“It wouldn’t be bad. The Professor’s a scientist!”

“I know. And because Dad was a scientist, you had to quit being one to be my mom.”

Her mom laughed. “Oh, honey. I didn’t have to quit work to be your mom. I
got
to quit. I hated every minute of being in that lab. I loved the
idea
of being a scientist, but I sucked at it. The reality of being a stay-at-home mom was way better.”

Lauren was speechless. “You’re kidding.”

“No. I thought you knew that.”

The world tilted a little and got a little fuzzy. “But then when I was going out with Alex, why did you tell me he would ruin my dream to be a scientist?”

“Because he’s a…a big jerk. He was always telling you what to do and how to do it.”

Things were suddenly much clearer. Why was it that she’d taken so many years to understand what her mother had done with her life? Why hadn’t she acted like a scientist and asked her mom rationally why she’d given up on being a scientist, instead staying in the preconceived Land of Assumptions? “Oh.”

There was silence on the line for a moment while Lauren digested the conversation.

“Lauren? Are you okay?”

“Um, yeah. I think so.”

“So who is this guy? What’s he like?”

Rock and roll and fast cars. Thunder and lightning. Soft kisses and sweaty sex.
“He…he’s definitely not a scientist.”

Her mother laughed. “Good. You need someone who will help you remember there’s more to life than notebooks and formulas.”

“Yeah…maybe.”
At least until he notices that I’m really boring
.

“And when are we going to meet him?”

“Don’t set an extra plate for Christmas dinner, Mom. I just met him.” And there were a few other obstacles. Like the one where Lauren had to get her algae back to save her career before he got it to save his.

“Don’t forget the Professor’s birthday next week.”

“I won’t, Mom.” And then another thought occurred to her. “Why do you call Dad that? Instead of Dale?”

“Because your dad
is
a professor.”

“But he’s also your husband. And my dad. Why do we call him by his job?” It had never bothered her before, but for some reason, this morning, that title rankled.

“You call me Mom, and that’s my job,” her mother said.

“But that’s…that’s your name to me. You’re more than your job.”

“Oh, Lauren, you’re thinking too much. Go fix your lab, cure some diseases, and make a name for yourself.”

But after they hung up, she wondered. Did her mom really think that all she had was her job as wife and mother? And that all her father had was his job as a professor? Her mother had encouraged her to pursue her plan to become a scientist, had helped with every science fair project and book report, never taking over, but always offering ideas and asking the right questions at the right time, but Lauren had always wondered…did her mother resent Lauren’s opportunity?

She supposed at the moment, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was getting her own career back on track.

She looked longingly at the couch, and the remote, which would easily suck her into her preferred Sunday routine of flipping from the Food Network to
Hoarders: Buried Alive
marathons and back again. Instead, she downed the last of her tea and went to get dressed. Her lab wasn’t going to reassemble itself.

A half hour later, as she pulled into the parking lot at Tucker U, Lauren noticed Evan getting off of his bike in front of the Biological Sciences building. He wore the whole cycling-guy get-up—skin-tight shirt covered in racing logos, snug shorts with extra padding in the butt area, skinny little shoes.

As she got out of her car, she watched him take off his helmet, and with one shake of his head, his hair laid right back in place. Bizarre. Even if she wore her own hair an inch long, she’d have to spend fifteen minutes in the bathroom trying to smush everything back in place after sweating with a helmet on. Although he didn’t look sweaty, either. He made the geeky-jock-professor thing look as effortless as his brother did the hot maintenance man/secret undercover guy.

Evan saw her approach and smiled. He really was a nice man. Cute in his extreme dorkiness, but he didn’t do it for her. Not the way Mike did.

“Good morning, Dr. Kane,” he said, pulling his ID badge from his backpack and running it through the scanner. He held the door for her, and she entered in front of him. The halls echoed with the absence of students.

“Thanks, Evan. Did you already take your big ride for the week?”

“Yes, I rode twenty-five miles this morning, and now I’m going to spend some time with the FUCR Frogs.”

She grinned, her automatic response whenever Evan’s research animals were mentioned. He returned the smile, apparently finally accepting that the acronym for the species of tree frog he worked with was really…
fucking
…funny.

“So are you just here to feed the little….uh…FUCRs, or will you be around all day?” She hadn’t given it much thought before leaving the house, but the labs were even more deserted on Sundays than on Saturdays, and she felt a little dash of heebie-jeebies creeping in, especially after her little run-in with those people on the street last night.

“I’ll be here for a couple of hours, but I’m hosting my brothers for our supposedly regular family dinner this evening, so I have a pork roast to prepare.”

That brought Lauren’s thoughts to a screaming halt. “Family dinner? That’s nice.” Surprising, too, given that the guys didn’t seem to get along particularly well, but nice.

“Just before our grandmother died, she made us swear to have dinner together at least once a month.” He turned the key in his door lock. “None of us will admit it—at least not to each other—but I think we’re all a little afraid she’ll come back and haunt us if we don’t make an effort to get along. She was a practicing Catholic, but she’s got roots that go way back into the snake-handling hills of Kentucky.” He wiggled his eyebrows and disappeared into his lab.

Laughing, she unlocked her door, wishing that she’d had the opportunity to meet Grandma Gibson. It would have taken a heck of a woman to raise such strong-minded and different boys after their parents died.

Lauren continued into her own lab and looked around. It was still a mess, but she’d managed to get enough done yesterday that she could start cooking up another batch of algae. She was tempted to forget the whole thing. There was no way she’d be able to get the Pemberton group to give her an extension. She might as well start packing up her lab coats.

Instead, she found one of the big flasks she used as a growing chamber and rinsed it with distilled water, then took a vial of algae from the freezer and stuck it into her pocket before mixing up two liters of her homemade pond water. Then she found a blank notebook and recorded the date and vial number. It was official. She was a compulsive scientist. She’d probably take the stuff home and grow it in her garage if she couldn’t work in the lab.

Huh. She
was
a scientist, through and through.

Not like her mom. Her mom liked science. Maybe even loved it. But she wasn’t incomplete without it. If Lauren ran out of money, she’d find a way to keep going. If she got married and had sixteen kids and lived on the side of a mountain with no indoor plumbing, she’d find a way to keep going. If she got married…

Oh hell, no
. She didn’t have time to think about that right now.

Holding the vial up to the window to make sure it was thawed, she unscrewed the cap with one hand and carefully transferred the contents to the flask. She shoved a sterilized cork with two long glass tubes into the top and plugged in the aerator. There. In a little while, she’d feed the algae, and maybe get home in time to catch a couple of episodes of
Hoarders
.

She’d sort some more slides while she waited and try not to think about Mike Gibson’s lips. Or any other part of his that she was inclined to kiss. Or lick. Or…

She snapped on the radio to distract herself.

But gosh, she really, really liked him. It was weird. She’d started thinking about everything in terms of Mike. Evan was making a pork roast tonight. She wondered if Mike cooked anything that fancy, or if he was all hamburgers on the grill and a container of potato salad.

Aaaaand there she went. Just because she’d realized she could probably still manage a career and a love life didn’t mean she could manage a love life with a guy like Mike Gibson. Or that, late-night condom runs aside, it was unlikely a guy like Mike Gibson would want that with her. He would want the big city and big adventures, bad-guy-chasing adrenaline highs and stiletto-wearing sex goddesses. Not bookish, cat-loving, sneaker-wearing homebodies like Lauren. Though she might like to try out the sex goddess thing for a while.

Wow. She was really getting ahead of herself. Not a safe place to be.

The song on the radio ended, and a teaser for the news played. “Local police are warning that a dangerously addictive new drug called Devil’s Dust may come in a less purified—but more deadly—form. A smokable alternative is rumored to be hitting the streets, with devastating effects. An unnamed person was admitted to University Hospital with severe neurological symptoms after smoking what he told doctors was a new experimental drug. And it’s quite possibly being produced in a lab at a tri-state college. That story and more after these messages…”

Lauren sat up.
No
. Surely whoever had her drug wasn’t smoking the algae. When she filtered the algae to dry it for storage, she’d mixed it with a poison that was bound to the cell walls. This caused the cells to release all of the drug so that when she made it into step two, she could rehydrate it and strain out the cell bodies and be left with only the drug. The poison stayed bound to the cell walls after the step two was released—but if someone was smoking the algae before it was rehydrated and rinsed, they would inhale the toxin.

Hadn’t Mike asked her if the drug could be smoked? She’d hoped until now that he’d been wrong, that they’d find out this was a wild goose chase. The goose had just turned and pulled a gun.

“Dr. Kane.”

Lauren looked up. Evan stood in the doorway, his face pale and rigid. “What is it?” Could he have heard the same news she had? She was glad to see him, though. Maybe she could talk this through with him, get him to help her figure out how this was all some weird misunderstanding.

Her momentary relief at his appearance fled the second he stepped into the lab, followed by her department head, Dr. Jerrold. What on earth was he doing in the building on a Sunday? She saw a uniformed campus security officer standing in the hall behind them.

Dr. Jerrold’s normally round, smiling face was gray and serious. “Lauren, we need to have a word with you.”

“Of course.” Lauren nodded. She shot another glance at Evan, but he wouldn’t meet her eye. “Evan, why are you here?”

Evan cleared his throat. “Witness.”

A wave of fear spread through Lauren’s body.

Dr. Jerrold said, “I’ve been in a teleconference with the chairman of the Pemberton Group.”

“On a Sunday?” Her stomach churned. Whatever was coming, it was going to be bad.

“Apparently, this drug that’s going around—this Devil’s Dust—” He cleared his throat, then continued. “Someone on the Pemberton board is also on staff at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, and they’ve spoken with the authorities. Seems they’d heard the drug is coming from Tucker University.”

Lauren flashed on the email from Pemberton that she’d ignored last night. What if it hadn’t been a reminder notice? What if they had been looking for an explanation from her about her drug hitting the streets?

“I don’t know if you saw the morning news—”

She waved a hand, interrupting Dr. Jerrold. “I just heard something on the radio—”

“There was a photograph of this substance that people are smoking. Lauren, it’s your algae pellets.”

She collapsed onto the stool. Her mind spun. How could this be real?

Evan stepped toward her. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head, then took a deep breath. “I didn’t have anything to do with this,” she said.

Dr. Jerrold smiled sadly. “I hope not. But Lauren, we have to take your lab keys and escort you from the building. Until further notice, the contents of your lab and all electronic information are off limits to you and any employee or student associated with your project.”