Chapter 13 #2
“Can we count on you to play at the next service?”
“I thought the accompanist was just sick? Surely, they’ll be recovered by next Sunday.”
“Wednesday night service,” Lydia said, handing him a to-go box and bag. “Then we can figure out about Sunday.” She and her bestie had planned this double-team, and Lincoln was fucking stuck. How was he supposed to finagle out of this?
“I’m sorry to cut this short, ladies,” Carter said, and Lincoln wanted to kiss him.
Right there in the middle of FP. “I got a text from our friend Beverley back in DC. He wants to hop on a video chat and catch up.” The urge to make out died.
Something was definitely going on, but first they had to get out of this pickle.
“You’ve only been gone a weekend,” Susanne said.
“And it’s only Monday morning,” Lydia added.
“We used to have coffee with him every Monday morning,” Carter said. “He’s a little out of sorts.”
Lincoln stood and held the chair out for Lydia. “He’ll be missing us.”
Ginger appeared with the two bowls of oatmeal, right on time. “We switching places?”
“We’ve gotta run.” Carter handed her a few bills. “For our tab and theirs.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Susanne said.
“For our new Monday morning coffee friends.” Lincoln tried for one of those smiles Carter so easily flashed.
It seemed to work, Susanne and Lydia thanking them again before he and Carter exited. Outside, Lincoln looped an arm around Carter’s waist, and Carter threw one over his shoulders, pulling him closer.
“Nicely played,” he whispered in Lincoln’s ear.
“Because there are people all around, watching us.” Never mind how good it also felt. “Did Beverley really call?”
“Yeah, he left a message and text to ring him back. No other details.”
“Did you get a chance to talk to Larry too?”
Carter nodded. “He confirmed what Susanne said. Barry and Trudy are prone to these spur-of-the-moment trips. Always have been, though they make them more now that Barry’s retired.”
“Interesting,” Lincoln said, something tickling the back of his mind. “Does Larry still want you to start the survival training today?”
Carter shook his head. “He’s still sorting out fire damage and fighting with O’Shea over the Stacy Weathers case. Wednesday, he hopes.”
They stopped at the side of the car, moving face-to-face, still close so as not to be overheard. “Can we take the call with Beverley at the lab? I’m running a full panel on Jeremiah’s hair sample.”
“Probably the safest place other than the house.” As he spoke, Carter’s eyes drifted over Lincoln’s shoulder, back toward the diner.
“They still watching?” Lincoln asked.
“Yep.”
Lincoln didn’t second-guess his instinct.
He closed the distance between them, lips capturing Carter’s and swallowing his surprised gasp.
Carter caught on quick, lifting a hand to Lincoln’s cheek and curling the other in Lincoln’s sweater.
He opened his mouth, and Lincoln snuck his tongue inside, sighing, the coffee tasting much better mixed with Carter.
It wasn’t the desperate need that had overtaken them last night, but in its restraint, it was almost as intoxicating.
This didn’t feel like the cover. This felt very real.
And Lincoln would’ve stayed there longer, reveled in it, if they didn’t owe their boss a call.
He pulled back with a last peck to Carter’s lips.
“What was that for?” Carter said, the wistful breathiness of his words more charming than any smile he’d ever thrown Lincoln’s way.
“Selling the cover.” That was fifty percent of the reason he’d gone for it, what had sparked the idea. But what had lit the kindling was the lingering desire to kiss him again.
“Is that all it was?” Carter asked, correctly detecting that Lincoln had only given him half the story.
If Lincoln wanted this to be real—which again, fifty percent, because there were so many factors to consider—and was unwilling to cut off that potential just yet, he couldn’t lie to Carter now. “To be determined.”
“I’ll take that.” Carter stole another quick kiss. “But for the record, I fucking hate slow burn.”
Lincoln laughed out loud, and that, more than anything, he suspected, convinced their audience—and him—that this could be real.
Lincoln’s left hand moved from the top of the steering wheel to the center no less than a dozen times on the short drive from Flour Power to the lab.
Carter was counting, and watching with unchecked amusement, as Lincoln navigated the gauntlet of the suddenly packed campus and a student body prone to jaywalking.
“The crosswalk is right there!” Lincoln shouted loud enough to turn a few heads outside the vehicle. But not enough that anyone changed their course.
“They outnumber you, L.” Carter laid a hand over his on the gearshift, and Lincoln jumped a mile, his hair brushing the roof. “And we’re almost there.”
Carter left his hand atop Lincoln’s, anchoring him inside the car, directing his possibly murderous thoughts at him in here and not at the students out there.
They waited for the crowd to disperse, then rolled through the aforementioned crosswalk and turned at the next drive.
The crush of students thinned out considerably as they circled to the parking lot behind the under-construction lab building.
“There now,” Carter said, once the car was in park. “Was that so bad?”
Lincoln cut him a sideways glare. “Yes.”
Carter laughed and withdrew his hand. “I’ll drive next time.” He moved to open his door but paused, turning back to Lincoln, who was still gathering his stuff from the back. “One, grab my to-go box. Two, when we get up to the lab, let me sweep the room before you say anything.”
“You think we’re being bugged?”
“Can’t be too careful.” He’d checked the Forester last night when he couldn’t sleep, and the Wrangler this morning.
Lincoln nodded and let Carter lead into the building, up the stairs, and into the lab. Carter swept the lab with the scanner, then made a lap around the floor, checking to make sure no one else was up here with them.
“We’re clear,” Carter said as he reentered the lab.
Lincoln was on the far side of the room, munching on a muffin and staring at his laptop. Carter grabbed the rest of the leftovers, then a chair from the adjacent desk, straddling it backward, and rolled next to Lincoln. The screen was full of what Carter recognized as genetic test results.
“Anything?” he asked between bites.
“It’s just a screen right now. It’s more about having a baseline of an Apex founding family member to compare other samples against if we get them.”
“Baxter?”
Lincoln nodded. “And Clyde Weathers and any hairs ERT found at the motel. Larry too if we can get it.”
“The latter is going to be tough.”
“You’ll figure it out.” Lincoln shot him a wink, and Carter would have leaned in to kiss the smirk off his face if not for a notification ding alerting them to Beverley’s incoming call.
Carter tossed the empty to-go box into the trash can and shoved the bag of remaining muffins into his coat pocket.
He was righting himself as Beverley appeared on-screen, standing behind his desk.
The director looked polished, camera-ready still from his morning presser, but Carter didn’t miss the way he collapsed into his chair or the slump of his shoulders as he peered at the laptop.
Carter wondered how many hours it had been since he’d slept.
“Director,” Lincoln greeted him.
“Agents, good morning.”
“Beverley,” Carter said. “What more do we have on Baxter?”
The director grabbed a folder off his desk and opened it in front of him, rifling through papers inside it. “Jeff Baxter, thirty-three, resides in Silver Spring, Maryland.”
“He’s not from Apex?”
“Depends on what you mean, Agent Warren. He’s originally from Richmond, has resided in Silver Spring for five years now. But in between, he spent some time at Apex U. Did his undergrad in physics there. He’s a rocket scientist.”
“Most physics nerds are,” Lincoln said, and Carter bit back the threatening pot-kettle joke.
The joke was on both of them. “No,” Beverley said. “He’s an actual rocket scientist. Works for an aerospace contractor.”
“He passed the psych test?”
“For his employer, yes, but not for NASA. He tried but he didn’t hold up under the stress tests. So he builds them now. Doesn’t go up in them.”
“He must have crossed paths with Dr. Fear here in Apex,” Lincoln said. “What were the years?”
“I’m emailing you his transcript, along with some other documents.”
Lincoln refreshed his inbox, and once the email from Beverley arrived, opened the attachment titled AU Transcript. Carter saw it a second after Lincoln did and echoed his curse. “He was here,” Lincoln said, slumping back in his chair. “He was fucking here the last time Dr. Fear was active.”
Carter scooted his chair closer to Lincoln. “This helps us narrow down the archives and searches, and now we’ve got at least one face to look for in the pictures. We need to see who else is in those pictures with him.”
“You’re thinking he attached himself to Dr. Fear when he was here? Developed a fascination with him?”
Carter nodded. “That fits with our copycat profile.”
“Also fits with Baxter’s pattern of behavior,” Beverley said. “Check that second attachment. Harassment reports from two former colleagues.”
Lincoln opened the file. Complaints lodged by a physics department professor at UMD, then by a work supervisor at his first employer post-NASA flameout. Men who were older than Baxter in both cases. Also experts in their field.
“Was he trying to replace Dr. Fear?” Carter asked.
“Transference.” Lincoln hummed. “But this is all still years before Baxter made a kill.”
“Unless he made other lesser ones that didn’t get Dr. Fear’s attention. Or law enforcement’s.”
“So he went looking for a bigger, flashier target,” Lincoln said, following Carter’s train of thought. “The agent who tried to catch Dr. Fear.”
“Kirk posited that too,” Beverley said. “O’Shea’s looking into it.”