Chapter 8
Eight
“How’d the game go?”
Ordinarily, Carter wouldn’t eavesdrop on Lincoln’s phone call with his daughter, but it was impossible not to overhear in the car. And it was impossible not to be drawn in by Lincoln’s enthusiasm as he spoke with Elena about her basketball tournament.
“That’s excellent!” A big smile. “A double-double? For real?” Excitement to dejection. “I’m sorry I missed that.” Then hope bloomed once more, the corners of Lincoln’s mouth curving up and crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, shoot me the link. I’ll watch the highlights.”
Carter had never been more enamored with Professor Monroe than he was in that moment.
More than the first day of class when he’d walked into the lecture hall and seen the lanky blond in argyle.
Nerds had always been his type, and Lincoln was an unparalleled specimen.
More than the first time they’d verbally sparred and Lincoln had glowed bright red with anger.
Carter had tried every class thereafter to make his instructor blush again.
More than all the times the past twenty-four hours Carter had managed to do just that, or the hours they’d spent working together at the library or lab.
Appearances and reactions told Carter part of Lincoln’s story, working with him another, but the conversation between father and daughter told Carter about the most important part of him.
The most attractive. Lincoln’s abject devotion to his daughter spoke to the sort of man he was—a good one, a good father—the sort so different from the ones Carter had encountered when he’d been a teen.
What he would have given to have someone so devoted to his happiness and well-being.
Carter’s stomach did the same swooping thing it had when he’d opened the front door to Lincoln last night.
Potent shit indeed. He probably would have swooned if he wasn’t belted into the driver’s seat.
Lincoln wasn’t so immobile, swiveling in his seat as he looked out the front, side, and back windows. “It’s kind of like a snow globe here. Flurries and picture-perfect surroundings, especially the library.” A pause, then a spluttering protest. “I am not the Grinch in the snow!”
Carter laughed out loud. “She knows you well.”
Lincoln glared his direction. “Shut up.” Then redirected. “No, not you, sweetie, I was talking to my partner.” A pause. “That kind of defeats the purpose of undercover.” After another pause, Lincoln lowered the phone and sighed. “She wants a picture. Proof of life that I have a partner.”
“I can smile pretty.”
Lincoln muttered a “cocky,” and at the next stoplight, Carter shifted in his seat and flashed his flashiest smile for the camera.
“Sent,” Lincoln said, bringing the phone back to his ear.
But not for long. The reception on the other end was so loud—two hooting voices—that he jerked it away again.
Far enough Carter could read the return text. Hot AF.
Carter smirked. “Good to know I have the family’s blessing.”
“All of you stop,” Lincoln chided around a poorly disguised chuckle.
He went back and forth with Elena and his sister another minute, then began wrapping up the call as Carter turned into the parking lot.
“Love you, and good luck tomorrow. Put Trina back on right quick.” Lincoln cringed and held the phone away again, shouting at it from afar.
“Can you stop cackling for five fucking seconds?”
Which only made her laugh louder. Carter too.
Lincoln was not amused. “Don’t double-team me.”
Carter raised a hand, then put it over his mouth to stifle his laughter.
Didn’t work. Lincoln rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the phone.
“Everything good there?” he asked, then listened and smiled.
“Thanks, sis, I owe you one.” Her reply wiped the smile away, and Lincoln’s dramatic outrage face returned.
“No, anything but that!” They shared another laugh, before Lincoln ended the call with a “Love you too.” He lowered the phone and closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the headrest. “Well, that was mortifying.”
“It was charming.” More charming than Lincoln knew.
So charming Carter considered leaning over the console and showing Lincoln just how under his spell he already was.
He hightailed it out of the car instead and waited for Lincoln in the pool of light at the bottom of the station steps.
Larry had left the porch lights on, and a spotlight nestled in the eaves cast a bright halo on the wreathed front door.
“What’s the one thing you won’t do for your sister?” Carter asked as he and Lincoln climbed the front steps.
“Go to the Carolina-Duke game with her.”
“A house divided?”
“You could say that. She followed me out here from California but goofed and went to the other school down the road. You got family around?”
An innocent enough question, a logical segue from his questions about Lincoln’s sister, but family was a literal black hole for Carter.
One he never knew how to answer—had never wanted to before—but with Lincoln, maybe .
. . Except that overheard conversation in the car, as endearing as it had been, had also made the prospect of pity seem all the more likely, and that was the last thing Carter had ever wanted from anyone, but especially from Lincoln.
He didn’t want it darkening the brightness he felt in the professor’s presence.
He’d just have to find the truth himself.
Maybe here in Apex, after the Dr. Fear case was solved.
“Holy shit.” Lincoln’s strangled wail drew Carter back to the present, in which Lincoln had flipped on the lights inside the station and was eyeing the reception area with abject horror. “It’s like Old Man Winter threw up all over the place.”
Lit up at night, it did seem more than when Carter had been here earlier today.
The lights strung through the garland and tinsel shone bright, as did each lighted snow globe, forming a collection of glass luminaries scattered around the station.
But Carter didn’t think it was bad or overwhelming.
It was warm and festive and homey, especially for a police station.
He had to agree with Larry—much better than the library.
“Are you sure you’re not the Grinch in the snow globe?” he teased.
Lincoln shoved his shoulder as he moved past him, lifting the counter flip and cringing at its protest. “Where is everyone?”
Carter lowered the counter back down behind them.
“Larry said a remote switchboard handles calls after five. Emergencies get routed to his cell. Better for us.” He directed Lincoln across the bullpen and toward the records room.
“No one except us snooping around.” He punched in the code and opened the door. “Here we go.”
Lincoln resurrected his outrage face. “It’s all paper?”
Carter slid the messenger bag off Lincoln’s shoulder before he dropped it. “They have a staff of ten.”
“Did you see all the decorations out there? Those ten people could have been digitizing records instead of—” He flung his hand toward the bullpen.
“You weren’t bitching at the library.”
“It’s a library,” Lincoln said. “It hurts my soul that so much of it is digital now, but I get it. You don’t want to lose that stuff.
The amount of archival material that has been lost to storms and other disasters is a tragedy.
That said, those bits that are still paper, they don’t need to be accessed as quickly as, say, police records. ”
Carter leaned close. “I don’t think much checking of records goes on here either.”
Lincoln turned his head, bringing them nose to nose. “You’re probably right.”
Carter was so tempted to dip his chin, to claim the lips that were right there for the taking. Lips that were moving again. Making words Carter should pay attention to.
“You get a lay of this land yet?” Lincoln asked.
“Yes.” He pointed over Lincoln’s right shoulder. “Mr. Hates-Paper can use the computer over there to search vehicle registrations. I’ll look through the paper accident reports.”
“You’re a saint.”
“You want to bow to me?”
“Fucking hell.” Fifteen shades of red and an eye roll. Score. Lincoln spun and almost teetered over.
Carter grabbed him by the back of his coat, steadied him, then leaned in, whispering in his ear, “It’s fine. I prefer to be the one on my knees.”
Lincoln lurched forward, out of his grasp with a croaked “Must work,” but not before the fleeting heat from his ear scorched a path over Carter’s cheek.
Charming AF.
Lincoln popped the side of the CPU a second time. “What the fuck, dude?”
“What did I do now?” Carter called from somewhere in the records stacks behind him.
“Not you,” Lincoln said. “This dinosaur of a computer.”
“Maybe you should stop hitting it.”
Lincoln halted his hand a half inch from the imminent third pop. He glanced over his shoulder as Carter emerged from the stacks, a banker’s box in each hand. He hefted them onto the table, and Lincoln spun back around, determined not to fixate on Carter’s bulging biceps in his snug Henley.
“It’s stuck again,” he said, mentally cursing the spinning beach ball on-screen.
“And it had just loaded the search segment on the vehicles before it went all fuzzy.” The results were right there, grayed out behind a command box that wouldn’t finish loading.
He drummed his fingers on the desk. “W-W-E-D?”
“Did you just misspell weed?”
“Weed would probably help right now, but no. W-W-E-D. What would Elena do? My daughter, she’s a computer whiz.”
“Okay, then.” Carter came to stand next to him. “W-W-E-D?”
“Well, I already tried to quit the program and that didn’t work. So . . .” He eyed the power key at the top of the keyboard. “Restart the computer.”