Chapter 5 #2
It’d only been one call, but the partial lie had the intended effect. Lincoln scoffed and hitched a hip. As much as Carter had enjoyed the look of awe, the praise he craved, prickly Lincoln was a comfort too, the professor back to his usual self.
“You’ve got what you need?” Carter asked him.
“Yep.” Lincoln dropped his bag on a bench and moved down the aisle. “Thank you, Ryan.”
“Can I ask who or what you’re looking for?” Ryan said.
“We can’t tell you that,” Carter answered.
The chancellor wrung his hands, then straightened his tie. Maybe the lines around his eyes were from smiling, but Carter would bet that receding hairline was equal parts genetics and worry about Apex U. “I just need to know if my campus is in danger.”
“It’s very unlikely,” Lincoln said.
“If that changes,” Carter added, “you’ll be the first to know.”
“Guess I’ll have to live with that.”
Carter withdrew his wallet and pulled out a business card. “My cell number is on here.” He handed the card to Ryan. “Call if you have any concerns. And thank you again for working with us and getting all this set up on such short notice.”
Pocketing the card, Ryan adjusted his tie once more, then glided his hands down the front of his jacket as if sweeping away his nerves. “It’s no trouble. We’re proud of our archives collection here. If it can assist you, if this can too”—he gestured at the lab setup—“then I’m happy to help.”
Carter escorted the chancellor out as far as the stairwell, then made a lap around the floor.
A single hallway looped the rectangular space.
Labs and offices made up the perimeter, clean rooms and dark rooms the interior.
The other labs and rooms were mostly bare, just benches and built-in office furnishings awaiting their occupants.
The only sign of life up here would be Lincoln tooling around in his makeshift crime lab.
Carter was pleasantly surprised at how fast this had all come together.
Ryan had made a miracle happen, and that miracle would go a long way to preserving their cover, expediting their work, and making Lincoln feel more comfortable with this assignment.
Sleeves rolled up, the professor was already situated on a stool at the end of the bench next to the sequencer, arranging a syringe, tube, and vial on a mat in front of him.
“You’re staring,” Lincoln said as he continued his prep work.
“Everything check out?”
Rather than answer, Lincoln picked up the syringe and tapped the needle twice. He turned over his left forearm, the same hand fisted, and effortlessly slid the needle into a distended vein.
Carter rushed forward. “Jesus, L, what are you doing?”
Lincoln released his fist, used his nose to nudge up his sleeve, and with his teeth, released the tourniquet above his elbow that Carter hadn’t noticed. Blood flowed through the tube into the vial. “Control test.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Carter said.
No answer again, Lincoln in his own world. Speaking of, Carter needed to get moving or else he was going to be late for the meeting that would cement his part of their cover. He grabbed his coat and shrugged back into it.
“You headed to the police station?” Lincoln asked as he tied off the blood draw and capped the vial. “Do I need to go with you?”
Carter shook his head. “I’m going as Mr. Polk.”
Eyes wide, Lincoln spun toward him. “Local law enforcement isn’t in on this? It’s been a while since I went through Academy, but I’m pretty sure that’s not protocol. Does Beverley know we’re keeping APD in the dark?”
“My call,” Carter said. “If a serial killer has come and gone here, unnoticed, for twenty-five years . . .”
“He might have had protection.”
“Until I learn more, I’m not taking that chance.”
“So only Chancellor McCullough knows?”
“And that’s one person too many in a town this size.”
Lincoln rotated back to the bench slowly and placed the blood sample in the sequencer.
He closed the lid, keyed in commands on the control panel, and, as the machine whirred to life, folded his hands in his lap, fingers laced.
“We’re out here all alone,” he said, voice heavy with the equally heavy realization.
Carter closed the distance between them.
“We’re not alone, L. We’ve got each other.
” He began rolling down Lincoln’s sleeve, giving Lincoln time to compose himself but also providing tactile reinforcement.
“I’ve got your back, you’ve got mine, and we’re on the clock.
Hopefully, we won’t be here for long.” He slid Lincoln’s cufflink, a cut-crystal rainbow, through the buttonhole, his hand lingering.
Lincoln’s fingers closed around his and a rush of warm breath ruffled Carter’s curls. When Carter glanced up, there was a hint of a blush on the professor’s cheeks, and there was also a hint of a smile on his lips. Mission accomplished.
Lincoln twisted the opposite direction and slid off his stool.
“I need to get to the library. Dig into the archives and follow up on the leads you identified.” He checked the settings on the sequencer once more.
“This will take time to run. I’ll come back and check on it later.
” He slid his arms into the coat Carter held open for him, grabbed his bag, and they headed out, locking the lab behind them.
“I already did some organizational work there,” Carter said as they descended the stairs. “Should get you started.”
Lincoln cocked a brow. “Organized how?”
“You should know. You taught me.”
The brow lowered, but the look of caution didn’t totally fade.
“You can tell me everything I did wrong when I get back from the police station.”
They were both laughing as they emerged onto the ground floor, and Carter would have missed the imminent danger if not for Lincoln’s cufflink reflecting off the sun streaming through the window at the far end of the hallway.
The same window bearing the reflection of a security guard about to round the corner. They were going to be seen.
Better to be seen for the wrong-wrong reason than the right-wrong reason. And he needed to buy a few seconds to compute a cover. He grasped Lincoln by the biceps and spun him so his back hit the wall, Carter barely catching the falling computer bag.
“What are you—”
Carter covered Lincoln’s mouth with his fingertips, lowered his bag to the floor with the other hand, and crowded close, nuzzling his cheek and whispering in his ear, “Bogey, coming around the far corner.”
“Hey!” the guard called. “What are you two doing in here?”
Lincoln’s heart raced, pounding hard enough for Carter to feel against his chest. Other parts of Lincoln’s body reacted too, his cock hardening against Carter’s thigh, which was thrust between Lincoln’s legs.
And oh how Carter wished that guard would somehow miraculously disappear.
Wished they were alone so he could reach a hand down and palm Lincoln through his slacks.
Or better yet, drop to his knees, unzip his pants, and get a—
“Hey!” the guard called again, voice louder, closer.
Carter rotated his face toward the guard, hiding Lincoln from view, just in case. “Work,” he said, his own voice strangled, much like his erection, hardening more every second he remained pressed against Lincoln. “Doing some consulting work for the chancellor on the labs upstairs.”
“This don’t look like consulting work,” the guard said, only a few feet from them.
Lincoln’s chin landed on his shoulder. “We’re newlyweds. Thought we were the only ones in here.”
Jesus Christ. Lincoln really was going to kill him.
The guard had a few choice curses for them too, including “Because students fucking like rabbits isn’t bad enough.”
Carter reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a paper bag. “How about some biscuits for your trouble?”
“Are those—”
“Barry’s, from Flour Power.” He tossed the greasy bag to the guard, wished him “Good eatin’,” then, snatching up Lincoln’s messenger bag with one hand, grabbed Lincoln’s hand with the other and hauled them out the exit door before the guard could question them further.
Outside, the lingering pink on Lincoln’s cheeks made Carter want to crowd him up against another wall. But Lincoln wrenched his hand loose and snatched away his bag before Carter got the chance. “You better run back by the café on your way home from the station.”
Did he even realize what he was saying? Or how domestic that sounded? How much it made Carter’s chest warm and ache at the same time? He covered the burning desire with a smirk, and returned a “Yes, dear.”
That got him a middle finger, then Lincoln’s backside as the professor strutted off toward the library. The laughter—and warmth—stayed with Carter all the way back to the car.
Carter parked next to a giant black F-350 and peered through his windshield at the Apex police station.
It stood at the center of the modest government complex, post office to its left, town hall to its right.
All the buildings were trimmed for winter: frosted windows, silver tinsel, and the same Welcome, Winter and Welcome Back, Students banners that were all over town and campus.
But where winter looked cold on the gray Gothic campus, it looked warm and inviting here.
Each of the single-story brick buildings had wraparound porches with old-fashioned rocking chairs, and smoke was puffing out of the chimney of the police station.
The only visible connection between the government complex and the university were the decorations and the Apex-blue gutters and downspouts that trimmed each building, together with a front door to match.